How to combine aggressive jigging with the most effective tip-up techniques.

I recall a TV commercial featuring a talented athlete. Asked football or baseball, he quipped, “Both.” With the topic narrowed to football, he was questioned offense or defense? 

Answer: “Both.”

When fishing winter pike, people often inquire: Tip-ups or jigging? 

My response: Both! 

Tale of Two Techniques

Set correctly, tip-ups provide precise depth control, a quiet, natural live-bait presentation, and a highly visible, instant strike-detection system virtually indiscernible to biting fish. Jigging, on the other hand, allows a less-restrictive, mobile approach. It’s easy to change location, adjust depth and make presentation adjustments such as bait style, size, color and action. Using sonar, you can monitor reactions to your presentation and adjust it to determine what triggers strikes.

But who says you can use only one technique? Assuming you’re allowed multiple lines, tip-ups and jigging are a powerful combination. You can spread tip-ups over shallow feeding flats, critical structures and associated breaks, with each unit strategically placed over turns and pockets along high-percentage contours and edges. At the same time, jig deeper margins of the same features. It’s a highly effective one-two punch — provided you plan ahead.

Focused Effort

Begin by focusing your efforts in the best spots during prime times. First and late ice offer excellent opportunities. Under first ice, pike often cruise shallow, vegetated flats. The key, however, is being discreet. When ice isn’t thick and there’s little or no snow, the noise of footsteps, clinking ice cleats, scraping sleds and the flash of shadows cast over shallow water can spook pike. To be consistent, get there early, and use a stealthy approach. Set your tip-ups over shallow, healthy green vegetation. Then move away to wait them out while jigging deeper, adjoining edges or drop-offs. 

Not all vegetated flats are created equal. Don’t just randomly set up. Reference a map to identify vegetated flats located near the deepest water in the area. Then use underwater cameras and sonar to find distinct edges where the density, height or type of vegetation changes. You’ll often find changes along drop-offs, bottom content transitions, edges of deep pockets, boat channels and even less obvious slots like beaver runs. All are prime examples of areas that might concentrate forage and pike. Drill your holes accordingly.

Late ice is another prime time. Pre-spawn pike begin staging along shallow, weedy spawning flats and dark-bottomed, marshy inlet or outlet areas. Spreading lines throughout these areas will provide action. However, it’s more effective to focus on features where pike are funneled into narrow areas they must pass through en route to primary spawning flats.

Intercept pike at necked down openings, saddles or channels dividing the main lake from the spawning bay, and shoreline points or bars extending just outside primary spawning bays into deeper basins. Look for distinct edges of live green weeds. Set tip-ups along shallower contours while jigging deeper outside edges, always looking for pockets and projections along inside and outside turns where baitfish are likely to concentrate.

Rigging the Flag

When setting tip-ups, I prefer proven, smooth-operating designs like HT’s Polar models. If cold temperatures or blowing snow are issues, Polar Therms with built-in hole covers are helpful. When fishing tip-ups a distance away, high profile Arctic Bay Polars stand tall and are easily visible. 

Spool tip-ups with premium, 20- to 40-pound braided Dacron, carefully winding your line evenly under slight pressure so subsequent wraps won’t dig in and tangle. Fill until your line is about 1/4 inch from the spool lip, and add a ball-bearing barrel swivel.

You can choose from a variety of terminal rigs. 

Standard fare includes a 12- to 24-inch, 17- to 20-pound mono or 20- to 30-pound wire leader adorned with a No. 2 to 8 treble hook and split shot. If your target waters are heavily pressured, consider lighter, longer leaders and smaller hooks. With larger baits or when targeting trophy fish, go heavier and larger. 

Place one tine of the chosen treble just below the dorsal fin of a lively shiner, chub or sucker, with the remaining hook points aimed toward the tail. Pike usually strike the head or center of baitfish, and this presentation places the points in a prime hooking position. For added attraction, consider sliding colored, faceted beads or flashy holographic spinners onto the rig. Or, try snagging a short length of colored yarn on a tine or two. Soak the yarn in fish attractant prior to rigging. Every edge helps.

When using large baits, balance rigs such as HT’s Hot Rigs are outstanding. These pre-tied models consist of thin, flexible wire leaders with dual trebles, colored beads and attractor blades incorporated into the rig. The advantage is the double hooks can be spread fore and aft to increase hooking percentages — an asset when fishing with large minnows. This also works well with dead baits because the hooks can be placed to help the bait hang in the desired position. 

It’s important to note two-hook rigs feature beads and spinners not only for attraction but to ensure legality. In some waters, stand-alone multi-hook tip-up rigs are illegal. But with attraction blades incorporated, they become defined as “lures,” making them permissible. Keep this in mind, especially when tying your own rigs.

Bait Rigs Refined

Another excellent rigging choice is the quick-strike. Like balance rigs, quick-strike rigs typically feature a wire leader with two hooks, one in the front and one in the back. However, the front hook is adjustable and can be slid up and down the leader, allowing a custom fit for various sized baits. This system also makes it difficult for pike to hit without at least one hook being in a prime hook-setting position. You can feel confident about setting the hook virtually anytime, without hesitation. The result is solid hook-ups with fewer swallowed hooks — a big plus when practicing catch-and-release or fishing lakes known for producing numbers of fish smaller than the minimum size or outside established slots.

In some regions, particularly where live bait is not permitted, multi-hook quick-strike rigs featuring three hooks are increasing in popularity. These rigs incorporate wire leaders with a central “balance hook” positioned between one front and back, so you can spread the hooks and position dead baits as desired. Again, be sure to check local regulations when using these multi-hook rigs, adding attractor blades as required by law.

Slip-style rigs are another option. They are typically used when fishing areas swept by current. Instead of split shot, a slip-sinker is added to the rig, with a swivel set so the slip-sinker can’t slide down to the bait. The length of the leader from the swivel minus the distance currents might push the bait down equals the approximate distance the minnow will be positioned off bottom.

For rigs that don’t already have one, I recommend adding a snap to the end opposite the hooks. This way, set up is as simple as clipping the snap to the barrel swivel connection to your Dacron backing — no knot tying with cold fingers.

 Pre-tie a variety of rigs, and use a length of foam pipe insulation or cut-off section of a swimming noodle to store them. Slip a hook tine in the foam, wrap the leader and push a tack through the snap to secure the opposite end. You’ll be ready for a variety of situations.

This system also helps organize at the end of the day. Removing your rigs and wrapping them before packing up helps eliminate loose lines, tangled tip-ups and snagged hooks.

After you are organized it’s easy to quickly drill a series of holes across the target region, and then spread tip-ups with appropriate rigs positioned above the weeds to keep your baits exposed. 

Place your minnows just beneath the ice to a third of the way down when fishing shallow, cloudy conditions. If you’re fishing deep during sunny conditions, put your minnows a foot off the weeds.

Try setting a line or two over adjoining deep water, too. Pike are known to suspend. 

Add to the Excitement

Think it’s time to sit back and rest after you get your tip-ups set right? You can — but you’ll miss out on some great fun. With tip-ups covering the shallow areas, it’s time to start jigging. 

Longer, limber rods — 42- to 54-inch semi-fast tipped — such as HT’s SPI Sapphire or LKP Laker Pro allow smooth sweeps when working baits, increased power for setting hooks and improved control when pike make strong runs.

Team your rod with a reliable spinning or bait-cast reel spooled with 8- to 12-pound mono, followed by a ball-bearing swivel and a 24- to 36-inch, 17-pound mono leader for normal situations. I switch to 8- to 12-pound Power-Pro style backing with a thin, 12-inch, 10- to 15-pound wire leader when targeting trophies.

Larger, flashy swimming minnows, tube jigs, swim baits or Jig-A-Whopper Hawger style spoons generously coated with fish attractant and tipped with small minnows or minnow heads are great bait choices. In shallow water — say 8 feet deep or less — simply work a foot or two beneath the ice. In deeper water, work all depths from just above the weeds to right under the ice. Pike might hold or strike at virtually any depth. It’s up to you to determine where.

Start by jigging with 18- to 24-inch lifts of the bait. Then allow the bait to fall back to the original position under a semi-slack line. Pause briefly between lifts, always working various levels.

Pike will often come crashing in to nab your bait, but like any species, they can get finicky. Use sonar to monitor the situation. If you notice a large mark charge and then move away, approach but not show serious interest, or simply appear and spook, begin experimenting. Try different lure sizes, styles, colors and jigging cadences. Often, lure changes, depth adjustments, shorter and less frequent lifts, longer pauses or slower  finesse-style shimmying motions will spark a reaction. Keep an open mind and experiment until patterns become apparent.

Dual Approach

Of course, always position yourself where you can monitor your tip-ups while jigging. Should a flag go up, approach slowly — preferably from the opposite direction of where the fish is swimming. Carefully lift the tip-up from the hole. Grasp the line gently to feel for weight, and set the hook with a quick, sharp snap of the wrist.

One last tip: With tip-ups and jigging rods, always remember to replace your leaders regularly and re-tie knots often, especially after catching a fish. Pike have a way of damaging line with their teeth and razor-sharp gill rakers. 

Most important, don’t forget your camera. With these strategies, you’ll likely find this one-two punch a knockout.

— Tom Gruenwald is a fisheries biologist, an angling writer and author of four books on ice fishing. Look for him on his television program, “Tom Gruenwald Outdoors.”