A wax worm all ready to entice a bluegill to its surprise demise. Waxworms worked well for the bluegills, but nothing was working for the pike. Pike are apparently very difficult to catch during the summer. In the winter, it seems easier for some reason—perhaps because they don't have much food so they're more likely to find and bite at your bait. Whatever the case, you use small fish to catch bigger fish, so this picture at the right is what they call a “sucker chub”—a little fish you put on your big 3-prong hook to sucker a pike into thinking it's going to get a free meal. Although I've never had the chance to try it, I'm told this is how you catch a pike:
- Hook up the sucker chub with a bobber a couple of feet above it on the line. Cast it out and just let it sit.
- Watch the bobber. When it goes down, get ready.
- Once the bobber goes down, wait for it to come back up and then go down it again. You're waiting for the pike to really get it in its mouth. When the bobber goes down a second time, jerk the line pretty seriously to set the hook.
- Reel it in and have a net handy—you probably just caught a big fish!
That sounds simple, but I think that's because I'm forgetting something. At any rate, we didn't get any “hits” from pike. Maybe next time.
A wax worm all ready to entice a bluegill to its surprise demise. Waxworms worked well for the bluegills, but nothing was working for the pike. Pike are apparently very difficult to catch during the summer. In the winter, it seems easier for some reason—perhaps because they don't have much food so they're more likely to find and bite at your bait. Whatever the case, you use small fish to catch bigger fish, so this picture at the right is what they call a “sucker chub”—a little fish you put on your big 3-prong hook to sucker a pike into thinking it's going to get a free meal. Although I've never had the chance to try it, I'm told this is how you catch a pike: 
