Bait for pike in winter and summer. We lure pike to the fishing spot

Is it possible to feed pikes

Not only is it possible, but it is also necessary. Experienced fishermen have long noticed that some time after feeding the fishing point, not only peaceful fish become active there, but also predatory ones that come to feast on easy prey.

There are two main approaches to baiting pike:

1. Feeding small fish that the predator feeds on.
2. Preparing special bait for pike.

Popular bait options for pike

Probably every spinning angler is familiar with this situation when you go through all the baits, change fishing spots and experiment with wiring, but nothing in response. Sometimes an hour or two passes, but in the end there is not a single pike bite. Naturally, the question immediately arises: “Why does the “toothy” one ignore any balancer, all kinds of spinners and wobblers? At the same time, you also think about how to get the pike to attack the bait.

One option is to feed the fishing spot. Seems strange? Completely in vain. You can feed not only peaceful fish, but also various predators. Including pike.

Catching it is often much more effective if the fisherman uses bait, which can be a wide variety of options:

1. Bloodworm. Including feed - the one that is intended for feeding aquarium fish.
2. Maggot. Both red and white. Can be combined with sawdust or sand to create an attractive haze.

   
   Various products can be used to feed pike

3. Dry mixtures and homemade do-it-yourself bait in the form of porridge, cereals, dough, bread, etc. Naturally, such food is not of interest to pike. But it attracts “whitefish”, topfin, fry and other small fish, which the “toothy” one hunts for.
4. Breadcrumbs. A couple of handfuls of such bait, thrown into the water, attracts various small things, and the pike “catch up” with it.
5. Pieces of meat or fish. Pike almost always respond to such feeding. After all, although she loves to chase all sorts of “laundry”, she is unlikely to refuse food in the form of a nutritious piece of meat or fish.
6. Pork or beef liver, various offal. They are finely chopped and simply placed in a mesh bag or gauze bag. Then they are thrown into the water. The smell released by the liver (or offal) spreads throughout the water area, attracting pike.
7. Combined bait. It includes both cereals and grain, which roaches, rudds, bleaks and other small things rush to, as well as ingredients with blood and flesh. Any predator can sense them in water at a great distance.

You can feed the pike with pieces of small fish

In fact, there are a lot of options for bait for pike. It’s just that experienced fishermen are in no hurry to give away their secrets. In addition, not everyone attracts a predator at all, relying only on baits. Therefore, even in specialized literature or on the Internet it is difficult to find a good homemade recipe for pike bait. But if you decide to cook it yourself, be sure to use:

• odorous substances;
• protein food (maggots, worms, bloodworms);
• meat and bone meal;
• dry blood;
• pieces of small fish and many others. etc.

What attracts pike: smell or noise

This question can be safely classified as rhetorical, since I also call the pike a freshwater shark that uses all senses to find its prey.

To catch the victim, the following are used: vision, hearing, lateral line and smell.

But the fact that pike can easily find completely motionless but tasty-smelling bait has been known for a long time. It is on this particular feature that catching a predator with a piece of dead fish is based.

Hence the conclusion that the smell of the prey during hunting for this type of fish comes to the fore.

Smells that attract pike

On this score, amateur fishermen agree that the best way to seduce a predator is the smell of dead fish. Many types of sea fish are suitable for this: mackerel, capelin, sardine, smelt, etc. They have a persistent aroma that is many times stronger than the smell of any freshwater fish. Pike can detect such an aroma from quite long distances.

About

Catching pike with scented baits

Catching pike with scented baits

, an effective, but rather rarely used method.
After all, many fishermen simply do not think that pike can be caught with such fragrant baits as sea fish. It seems that such a bait as a sea fish, although completely motionless, is not a natural prey for pike. However, it has its own secrets - first of all, the smell. Sea fish has a stronger and more pronounced odor than fresh water fish.
Pike, which has an excellent sense of smell, reacts very actively to such a strong and attractive smell for a predator. Why is this smell so attractive to pike, which is accustomed to hunting for roach, crucian carp, bleak, perch, and gudgeon? With age, pike becomes less and less mobile and its diet is increasingly dominated by carrion, and it becomes more of a scavenger rather than a hunter. And instead of chasing small and agile fish, a respectable adult pike begins to look for more accessible food. And this is mostly dead fish. Therefore, she senses the persistent and strong smell of sea fish at a great distance and rushes to the source of this smell.

Thus, catching pike with fragrant baits

, gives the angler the opportunity to catch not just pike, but real trophy specimens. To successfully catch large pike, you can use many types of sea fish, primarily mackerel, sardine, capelin, smelt and, of course, herring.

You can hunt for pike using sea fish as bait in almost any body of water where pike lives. On any such reservoir there are places where pike look for carrion.

On rivers, you need to pay attention to places where the river bed has a bend. The most promising place on the bend is the outer side of the bends. In such places, the current is usually slow and the dead fish carried by the water in these places sink to the bottom and lie there.

In those reservoirs where the current is weak or they are not flowing at all, the most promising places for catching pike with aromatic bait

will be successful - these are the bays. As a rule, dead fish arrive in waves in the bays.

Also excellent places for catching sea fish are those places where a lot of small fish are concentrated. Usually in large schools of roach or bleak there are always sick or wounded individuals.

Pike constantly cruises around the reservoir and perfectly knows those places where there may be suitable food for it and always checks them.

Smelt fishing

Experienced fishermen believe that smelt is the best natural bait for spinning pike fishing. It is on smelt that pike most often bite. In addition to the pleasant cucumber smell, smelt has a strong skin, which allows this bait to be securely held on the hook during long and repeated casts.

Catching pike with smelt

occurs on special equipment. As with any pike equipment, a metal leash 0.4-0.5 m long is used here. The leash is equipped with two treble hooks No. 8, between which there should be a distance of about 5 cm. The upper tee is threaded through both lips of the smelt, and the lower tee hook the bait in the middle of its body.

This equipment does not require a sinker. Monofilament with a cross section of 0.25-0.27 mm is used as the basis; it is excellent for fishing with baits that do not require weight.

A fish that is thrown without additional loading smoothly and quite slowly sinks into the water column. Therefore, with such bait you can successfully catch pike even in reservoirs heavily overgrown with grass. For fishing, a spinning rod with a dough of 30-60 g, equipped with a spinning reel, is used.

Fishing technique

In addition to its aromatic smell, smelt also has a very useful property. It is her body structure that can play well in the water. It perfectly obeys even subtle movements of the tip of the spinning rod. None of the above sea fish that are used to catch pike are capable of creating such a game.

Catching pike with smelt

occurs when the fisherman uses smooth and calm wiring and slow reeling of the reel. After casting, a smooth, very soft jerk is made, and then the slack line is reeled in, then the smooth jerk is repeated again. The rod is held at an upward angle.

With such a slow retrieve, the pike’s bite resembles a soft hook, as if the bait is being lightly held. If smelt is used as bait, the pike never makes sharp strikes, as happens when catching a spotted predator with other baits. There is a feeling that the pike is sucking the smelt into its mouth, rather than swallowing it. It is better to do the hooking right away, without delay. Often the predator is spotted on both tees at once, and convergences occur very rarely. Such bait as smelt, although small in size, attracts quite large pike. Often individuals weighing about 7-8 kg are caught with this bait.

Sardine fishing

Such aromatic bait as sardine is very attractive for pike fishing. However, such a fragrant bait for catching pike

has some disadvantages when compared with smelt.

Sardine has soft skin and if there is a strong cast, it can easily tear on the hook. Because of this, sardine is not suitable for spinning fishing as bait. But it is an excellent bait when fishing for pike using float tackle

. As a rule, sardines no larger than 15 cm in size are used as bait.

For equipment for sardines, a sliding float is used, the carrying capacity of which, depending on the fishing location, can vary between 10-15 g. The tackle is also equipped with a sinker corresponding to the mass of the sliding type float. The leash should be metal, approximately 65-70 cm long. 2 tees No. 6-7 are attached to the leash. One of them should be at the bottom, and the other a little higher at a distance of 4-5 cm. The base of the monofilament equipment is 0.28-0.30 cm thick.

The float should be adjusted so that the bait hangs upside down or lies on the bottom. This position is assumed by a dead fish in natural conditions. A rod with a length of 3.2 to 3.6 m with a test weight of 30-70 g, with a spinning reel is used for pike fishing. It is best to hook the sardine upside down. To a predator, this position of the bait probably resembles a dead fish carried by the current. The tees are attached to one side of the sardine with the top hook, hooked closer to the tail, and the bottom hook next to the head. When a predator bites, there is no need to rush into hooking; they usually hook after the prey has completely pulled the float under the water and then hook.

Mackerel fishing

Mackerel is a large bait, so catching pike with mackerel

mainly carried out by bottom tackle. This is a powerful tackle that requires a powerful rod with a test weight of 60-90 g, up to 4 m long. Equipped with a powerful reel and fishing line with a cross-section of 0.35 mm, with a sliding weight weighing up to 50 g. A metal leash with a length of 60 to 70 cm, with treble hooks No. 4. Mackerel is hooked in the same way as a sardine. After casting, the bait should not hang in the water column, but lie on the silt.

Happy fishing!

How to lure pike to the fishing spot

To attract pike to the fishing point, you need to throw bait not only in this place, but also in an area 20-100 meters wide along the shoreline of the reservoir. Due to the fact that the predator likes to hide in thickets of reeds, snags or grass, where fishing is almost impossible, this technology will help lure it into an open area and start fishing.

Fishing should begin after 3-4 casts of bait.

Bait for pike in winter

The main feature of winter “hunting” for pike is the place for fishing. The fact is that with the appearance of ice, fish often emerge to feed in shallow water, where they can remain motionless for a long time. Thanks to the right bait, at this time of year, it can be caught with less effort.

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Features of bait for predators

Sometimes it happens that in a proven place, where reckless perches and furious pikes have always been caught on artificial baits, there is not a single grip of a predator, even if you go through all the baits. Meanwhile, the predator did not leave its territory.

But it’s as if he lacks something to start the hunt, some kind of push, a signal to attack. This can be seen even from the fact that the pike’s grip on the summer fliers standing to the side at the windows of the water lilies rather resembles not an attack and hunting, but something like, ah, okay, I’ll swallow it... No, I won’t, I’m lazy... The result of such sluggish indecision is empty grips, where the bait is only scuffed and cut by the teeth of the predator. It’s the same story with bites on artificial baits. Sometimes someone hits the spoon, stops the bait, but does not want to sit on the tee. Such episodes of low-active predator hunting occur in mid-summer, in the heat, in the so-called wilderness, or before prolonged bad weather. And here sometimes bait containing particles of blood or cut fish can help. Then the predator’s reflex to blood dissolved in water, like sharks, can work.

Another case. Sometimes pike or perch hunt in hard-to-reach places. In the very thickets of water lilies or reeds you can hear the heavy blows of a large fish tail, the hasty splashes and gurgling of hunting perches. The predator does not want to go out into the open, where it can be caught with spinning baits. There is, of course, an option that would allow you to catch pike and perch directly in the grass, but this option is often too labor-intensive and requires good command of gear and special baits. And these baits are surface baits, capable of moving among the vegetation or even jumping from water lily leaf to leaf, flopping in the windows among the grasses and again sliding over the water lilies. These are gliders. To some extent, silicone worms also work. Not every spinning player knows such techniques and does not always have such baits in his kit. Some people are narrowly focused and professionally accustomed to fishing with wobblers, spinners, and oscillating spoons, which are not allowed into such wilds.

And in order to lure predatory fish to more open areas of the reservoir, you can successfully use predator bait. One of the articles on the topic of bait already talked about ancient methods of luring predatory fish using a bull's bladder, pierced with a needle and filled with fresh blood from the slaughterhouse. It turns out that in those blessed and abundant fish old times, the topic of feeding a predator was also relevant. Nowadays, such methods are probably not used, although nothing prevents you from replacing the bull’s bladder with a plastic bag and filling it with the same blood from the meat processing plant. There is a simpler option, namely, buy the liver and place it in a fine mesh bag or gauze bag. The blood released is enough to attract a predator from all over the area. Moreover, such bait can be used as a surface bait when catching sabrefish, which, also in terms of predatory habits, is not much inferior to the famous hunters - pike, pike perch, asp and perch. Especially if the saber fish is large.

There is a method of feeding predatory fish, which is primarily based on attracting peaceful fish to the place chosen for catching the predator. Following the logic, mass releases of sparkling silver bleak, which also has a bright smell, as well as small roach should attract the attention of predatory fish. Here, of course, there is also the possibility that with an abundance of small fish, the predator will have no need to rush to artificial decoys. But most often, during a sluggish predator’s bite, the creation of such a cluster of fry will still cause the perch and pike to bite. And there is a special feature here. As soon as the perch begins to hunt, making a terrible noise, fish of larger standards, namely pike and asp, will certainly become interested in its hunt. It has been verified by experience that pike, and, probably, other predators, are very envious of other people’s successes and, even when well-fed, will attack the objects of other people’s hunts, if not the hunters themselves. This competition is in the blood of a living creature, especially a predatory breed. Here there is such a scheme for the beginning of a pike meal, which consists of several periods. Let's take such a case on the Volga channel of the Cheboksary reservoir. First, seagulls appeared above the channel. They began to fall onto the water, emitting their shrill sounds of a market trader, and snatching fattening bleaks from the surface. The water began to boil from the blows of the perch tails.

Red-finned humpback whales and sailor whales all hurried to the noise made by the seagulls and also began to hunt. One by one, they began to fall for rotating spinners from the famous “Mepps” series. But the tackle was made according to the tandem principle, where a small oscillating yellow spinner – “Senezh” – was attached to the spinner. It created the effect of a fish hunting for even smaller fish, which was imitated by the Mepps spinner. At first, the grips were only on the rotating spoon, then the blows followed on the spinner. And perches of larger sizes began to fall on it. But events developed further. Somewhere nearby there were pikes or they also came up to the sound of a collective hunt, who was after whom... They had not taken a spinning rod before. There was not a single grip and not even an empty exit. And here, apparently, the same law of competition and ordinary fish greed played a role, however, not much different from the greed of people... And the pikes began to grab the oscillating spoon.

Another method of luring predatory fish can be called combined. It can attract a school of small fish, and at the same time, with its composition, attract purposefully predatory fish. It’s just that, in addition to the usual bait, which roaches, rudds, breams, breams and other small fry rush to, the composition contains ingredients with blood and flesh, which any predator in the water can feel at a great distance, especially in places where there is at least some current . In addition, wounded fish probably emit their own sounds and smells, even vibrations at the level of higher vibrations and energies, something like waves of death. This is the basis for luring a predator to the fishing spot. Things, of course, are cruel, but fishing and hunting are cruel from the very beginning, since they have always been a way of survival for the breadwinner and his family, until they became entertainment and pampering on the principle of “catch and release” or indiscriminate shooting at crows and all living things that fly and moves.

It has also been noticed that where girders are exposed, whether in the summer or during winter fishing, close to live bait gear, the predator takes better on artificial baits. Obviously, this is due precisely to the fact that live baits are mounted on the girders, smelling like prey, and also emitting prey signals. Although this is not a rule.

DIY bait for pike

The effectiveness of bait lies in its correct formulation. It’s no secret that raw materials made by yourself will be much more appetizing for fish than many store-bought ones.

Here are some proven recipes that you can easily prepare at home:

1. Take fresh herring (or any other sea fish), preferably a few pieces, grind through a meat grinder, and roll the resulting minced meat into balls (this bait is well suited for stagnant bodies of water at any time of the year). Can be pre-frozen in the freezer.
2. Cut pork, beef or chicken liver into medium cubes and salt (the method is suitable for summer and winter fishing).
3. Catch a few bleaks or other small fish, make scratches on its sides and trim its fins, then release it into the fishing area (the fish will not swim far and will quickly attract a predator).
4. Cut any sea fish into pieces, add salt and rub with garlic (bait is perfect for winter fishing).

Bait is a great bonus for a good catch. Despite the fact that there are still many factors influencing the pike bite (weather, atmospheric pressure, water temperature), feeding in tandem with your fishing method will undoubtedly give an additional advantage on the pond.