Every winter just as hunting season is coming to a close I get to thinking about what fish I want to get back to chasing first. I don’t think we ever stop thinking about fish, but for me, winter is a time to go back to my roots of kayak fishing. In my home town of Salisbury Maryland, there are three easy access freshwater impoundments/ponds full of winter time action.
Comprising almost 170 acres between the three; Leonard’s Mill, Schumaker and Johnson (the largest at 104 acres) ponds offer kayak anglers a hop, skip and jump to a full day of fishing on all three bodies. They’re all just a few minute’s drive from one another. Since my childhood and soon after getting into my first kayak these ponds became my home from late-December through April, before my attention would turn to the salt. Home to largemouth, crappie, cats, sunfish and the usual suspects, they are chock full of trophy class chain pickerel. Not to mention, the two most recent Maryland record chain pickerel have been pulled from Johnson Pond.
This area of the Mid-Atlantic rarely sees a harsh winter and the water is open the majority of the time. Although the average depth of these locations is about 4 to 6 feet with some holes, it can be a bonus during a winter warming trend. In recent years, the warming trend has been brutally obvious with more than a few T-shirt weather days sprinkled into the January/February forecast. Over the past few weeks we’ve had a few overnight ice skims quickly followed by a two-three day period of day time highs in the upper 50’s. There’s no better time that I can think of to go after these aggressive little pike than now.
Typically, all the gear you need is whatever you’d take for any freshwater outing with the exception of either some beefed up fluorocarbon leader or for my money, a short steel leader. Pickerel are not known for a finicky bite and will usually strike hard and fast most any lure that comes their way. When largemouth have slowed down in the winter months the chains will still be feisty, so finding the right retrieval speed is not such a delicate task of finesse.
For casting to submerged structure, I always have a few rods rigged with an assortment of small spinner or chatter baits, perhaps a rooster tail spinner, and a minnow imitation of any sort. But by far I have had the most success with light jig heads dressed with a 3-6” white or chartreuse twist-tail grub. They just can’t seem to get enough of that lure. Plan to bring plenty as they will tear a soft plastic up.
My love for the veraciousness of the chain pickerel in its hard strikes and fight began in my childhood and I’ve found that it’s often the freshwater species I introduce new anglers to first when they become comfortable with casting, especially kids. A live minnow (if you can find them this time of year) on a bobber is still a ton of fun for a new angler or child but in the case of my own kids, I teach them my favorite and most effective winter chain pickerel tactic; trolling.
Just last week while out on Johnson with a few friends, locating the fish was a chore where we expected them. As these ponds all previously existed as unrestricted tributaries of a larger river system they all have one thing in common, a channel running right down the middle. No major depths mind you, but enough to concentrate their ambush points once the summer/fall weed beds dry up.
So I take out my trusty shallow diving suspending jerk bait (back to basics with the white again) or a twist tail jig and start varying my speed on the troll back and forth, up and down these depth changes. At times I’d just let the wind take me for a drift with the lures on auto-pilot. Before long, we are all hooking up. As chain are often an overlooked species to target, trolling as a tactic is often overlooked as well, but I speak from experience when I say it works.
Back to my point about new anglers and kids, what better way to build their confidence then to go after a fish that’s nearly a sure bet. On one of those recent T-shirt weather days I mentioned I loaded up with my two sons. The youngest, not wanting to miss any action fooling around with a paddle asked to take a perch on the front of my ATAK. Hey why not? He can hold the rod on the troll while I do the dirty work. After plenty of fish had been pulled up and put back, we started on the way home.
My youngest happened to spot some commotion on the water surface in the shallows and a few shiners scatter. Not to be outdone and already a solid angler at eight years old, he stands in a instant; makes a precise cast to the swirl and immediately hooks up with a citation size chain. He couldn’t have been happier and I couldn’t be prouder.
Don’t forget there’s more than just one green colored fish in the pond and take advantage of a no frills hard fighting species this winter. With a habitat distribution across much of the east you’re sure to have plenty in your hometown just waiting for a lure to pass by.
is a Wilderness Systems and Adventure Technologies pro staffer.
