These flats serve as staging spots for spawning panfish or baitfish, or gathering spots for any trout (or juvenile salmon or steelhead)that may swim down following an upstream stocking. Find one where the depth is 3 to 10 feet.Pike might have traveled up the inlet to spawn and will now be drifting out into the bay. Mouths of swampy inlets make good starting points, but you’ll probably catch more pike in the flats just offshore.

The wilderness waters in the Canadian provinces have the least fishing pressure-and the biggest pike. The Dakotas and Colorado have good pike fishing in reservoirs, and Alaska has some fine pike fishing. With its Great Lake border, NewYork is an excellent pike state, as are Michigan, Minnesota, and Wisconsin. In New England, Vermont has the best pike fishing of the whole region. Nearly all states in the northern tier of the country have pike lakes. Use your bass tackle: 6- to 10-pound-test spinning gear, light or medium baitcasting outfits in 12- to 14-pound-test, or a 7-weight fly rod.

To catch the latter, 5- to 10-pound northerns, you have to convince a nervous 30-incher that the plug sputtering across the surface really is a wounded perch.

Pike fishing setup in fishing planet