Chain Pickerel

Silver spoons with pork rind trailers, small spinners (Rooster Tail spinners are particularly effective), spinnerbaits with bright colors like yellow and red, chugger plugs, slim-minnow lures, jigs, crankbaits, soft plastics like Texas-rigged pearl flukes, and topwater lures like jitterbugs in late summer.

Chain Pickerel fishing peaks during winter to early spring, especially November through February. Early spring is considered the absolute best time. In spring, summer, and fall, fish from shoreline to 10 feet deep.

Retrieve lures with steady, moderate speeds parallel to cover, or use twitch-and-stop retrieves for topwaters. Try 'skittering' with long cane poles in heavy weeds, jerking pork frogs across weed openings. Ice fishing works well with bright spoons and tip-ups baited with shiners.

These opportunistic carnivores are ambush predators that feed almost exclusively on fish as adults, including sunfish, catfish, minnows, and other pickerel, plus frogs, small mammals, snakes, and large invertebrates.

Limited primarily to the Mississippi embayment of west Kentucky, inhabiting slow-moving streams and densely vegetated lakes.