Chain pickerel fishing can be a lot of fun and if you know what you are doing, your chances of catching a bunch are good. A pickerel resembles a pike and is often considered the pike's little brother. Chain pickerel like to eat live bait fish and can get pretty large in size. If you are looking to catch a fun fish that gives a good fight, you might want to investigate the possibilities of fishing for pickerel.

Chain pickerel can be caught on live bait, live minnows, artificial lures, and plastic worms. If you are fishing for large chain pickerel, it is recommended to use a heavy pound test fishing line with a leader. Larger pickerel are known to bite through fishing line because they have sharp teeth. When catching pickerel, the fish will often swallow the bait which will result in the hook being set deep inside the pickerel's mouth and body. When this happens, it is better to cut the line then to dig the hook out of the fish because the pickerel will most likely die when they sustain internal organ damage.

The usual size of a pickerel is about two pounds but they can get much larger. Catching a monster pickerel more than 5 pounds is not uncommon if you know how to fish for them. Pickerel like to hang out in weeds and lily pads as they wait for bait fish. During the early months of spring and summer, you can snag a load of pickerel by fishing the shallow weeded areas with live bait or plastic worms. When the humid days of summer arrive, pickerel prefer the deep cold waters. If you are fishing in the cold waters, make sure the lures you choose to use will be deep enough to reach the pickerel hotspot. Some good lures for deep-water pickerel fishing include spoons and plastics.

Many lakes and ponds become overrun with large amounts of pickerel because they eat anything and everything. Large pickerel have been known to eat smaller pickerel and all pickerel eat baby Bass and other game fish. Many anglers are disappointed that the more popular game fish are being eating by pickerel.

Pickerel is it not known as a good eating fish, but they can be mighty tasty if prepared correctly. In Pennsylvania, the legal limit for pickerel is 18 inches and the creel limit is 4 a day. But the pickerel have extremely bony bodies which can make eating and cooking difficult. Inside the pickerel, there are Y bones and whisker bones which make filleting pickerel difficult. A good portion of the pickerel meat is lost during filleting and eating around the bones is a tedious and annoying task. But there are ways to fry the pickerel which makes the bones disintegrate. My personal motto is, throw the pickerel back unless they swallow your lure which will cause internal damage to the fish.

Finding good pickerel locations is not a hard task. Pickerel like small ponds and lakes that are over run with algae and weeds. You will be surprised when you find a pond which you thought was empty but actually is loaded with pickerel.

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