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3. Flyfishing for pickerel

Iknow, I know, its not trout but feel like I want to diversify a bit this season! Anyway, put my boat on a local pond and casted my Dahlber diver Frog for pickerel. Manged to raise 2 nice ones but couldnt get them to actually take! Also, they wouldnt go back after it, only semed to have 1 shot! Unforutunately, I discovered while out in the boat that I forgot my streamers pike, and bass flies, otherwise, I would have changed patterns to try to seal the deal! Anyway, just looking for insight, shared experiences, etc. flyfishing for this toothy gamey predator!!

Thanks,
Adirman

Just use whatever bright, gaudy streamers you'd use for bass or small pike. And remember heavy tippet. Those things have teeth like those on a pike. They are common to abundant in most of the larger Missouri trout streams, so I've had plenty of encounters with them while targeting large browns and rainbows. They are not very hard to fool most of the time. On trout streams I find them in the slow, weedy "frog" water for the most part that you probably would skip over if you were fishing for anything else. I've never fished for them in stillwater so I can't offer any help there.

Messed around a little again yesterday and still same result:only 2 rises, no hook ups. Tried different streamers, buggers, and poppers and bass bugs. My feeling is that 1)this pond is fairly small and VERY heavily fished so I think these fish are pretty use to seeing lots of lures!2)The population is relatively low so theres little food competition and finally 3)theres abundant aquatic life present so theres plenty of food available!! I read somewhere on the internet yesterday from an In-Fisherman article that a guy was saying a river that he fishes has alot of pickerel but that theyre much harder to catch in the summer and you can only catch them with bait mostly that time of year. Who knows!

Best of luck. There is a little spring-fed pond not too far from where I live that is supposed to be full of them, but I've never fished it. It's right on a good trout stream so I might have to give it a try the next time I make it that way for the sake of variety. If I do any good I'll let you know what techniques I used!

Yeah, give it a try and LMK how you do and I will as well.

FINALLY got my pickerel on the fly today! Got him on a Frog diver pattern. Seemed like the strikes I was getting but missing the fish before was due to too fast of a retrieve cuz I slowed it down some and introduced lots of smaller twitches and pulls this time. I think that the faster retrieve might be more useful when the water is cooler, say, in the spring or fall and the fishes metabolism is a little faster. what do you think?
Also, got a HUGE Largemouth, around 5-6 lbs (not a monster, but solid)as well, also on the frog. Good action today and wish good kuck to anyone else goin out this weekend!!

Pickerel are pretty aggressive, so any streamer will likely work, but I used to fish for them as a kid with a small slug-go or a gold Mepps spinner. While the spinner is tougher to mimic with a fly, the slug-go can be copied quite easily. Think Surf-Candy without the epoxy.

Also, unlike pike, a heavy leader isn't needed. 10lb Maxima is all you really need.