Chain pickerel are the fish that keep New England ponds interesting when nothing else will bite. A member of the pike family, they are aggressive ambush predators that will attack a lure twice their size, and unlike most of our warmwater fish they stay active in cold water, making them a favorite of hardwater and early-season anglers.
How to identify them
Pickerel are long, slim and green, marked with a distinctive dark chain-link pattern over a golden-green body, and a duck-bill snout full of small sharp teeth. A dark vertical bar runs under each eye. There is no mistaking that chain pattern for anything else in our ponds.
Where they live
Pickerel are classic weed-edge ambush hunters. Find them along the outside edges of lily pads, submerged weed beds, fallen wood, and shallow weedy coves, where they sit motionless and rocket out at anything that swims past. Shallow, weedy, slow water is pickerel water.
Tip Pickerel are aggressive but they have teeth. A short, light fluorocarbon or single-strand wire bite guard saves a lot of lures, especially when you are casting for them on purpose.
How to catch them
Pickerel are not subtle. Give them something flashy moving through the weed edge and hang on.
- Spinnerbaits and inline spinners buzzed along weed lines.
- Spoons, the classic red-and-white among them, wobbled past cover.
- Soft plastic jerkbaits and swimbaits twitched over the weeds.
- Live shiners under a float, deadly, especially in cold water and through the ice.
- Fly: big flashy streamers and poppers on a 6- to 8-weight draw savage eats.
Eating and handling
Pickerel are tasty but notoriously bony, cooks who know the Y-bone trick prize them, others release them. Either way, mind the teeth: use pliers and a jaw grip, keep fingers clear, and handle them like the small pike they are.