I've caught plenty of pike on herring, prefered it actually until it got so hard to find in the Devils lake area. I've also caught them on smelt and minnows. The last two years I caught shiners and chubs in the summer and froze them. They also catch pike and are a LOT cheaper.
I have spent a fair bit of time watching pike in clear water, spearing and sight fishing. I've watched them hit herring, smelt, minnows, jigs, moving baits, and still baits. My main take away on the pike preference is that it changes a lot from day to day and fish to fish. People say that pike will hit anything that moves and they will, sometimes. I watched pike bump a bait with his mouth closed and swim a way and not come back. Others come through like the Hulk, smashing anything that moves. Some take one swipe and leave while I've had others come back again and again. My record is about 7 or 8 strikes by the same fish before i finally hooked and landed him. I've even fought them up to the hole, lost them and had them come right back in. Other days they come and look but wont touch.
Sometimes while spearing they will swim past several tip ups to check out a decoy. Just last month I had a friend determined to spear a pike. She stayed in the spearhouse for over two hours before she got one. She saw about three come through in that time. Meanwhile we had over twenty flags on the tipups all close to the spearhouse. Probably had thirty flags or more that day and maybe ten were seen in the house, go figure.
So if there's a bunch of guys, what I like to do is set out some regular tip ups with quickstrike rigs. One or two windlass tipups to see if they would like some movement with their dinner. Set out some rods with live minnows on a plain hook, and do some jigging with bladedancers, jigging spoons, or rattlebaits. Then if the water is clear set up a spearhouse or watch down some holes. Usually one method will outproduce the rest, some times by a large margin. And of course sometimes even pike fishing sucks and can't buy a bite.
Of all the hits I've watched I have never noticed that that a vertical hanging bait makes much differnce. When the come in they just roll slightly sideways and when they flare their gills to suck the bait in it swings right in. I should hang some horizontal and watch just to be sure but they seem quite competent at grabbing it from any angle if they really want it. And as far as bait size it probably makes some difference but my guess is it depends more on the fishes mood than being a set rule. I've caught large pike on little minnows and jigs and watched dink pike come and slam a decoy not much smaller than themselves. You can learn a lot observing them in clear water.
And watch out for ice pirates. Did you know that those pirate will will even try and steal you pike spots?!? I thought they were mainly after perch, walleye, and oil tankers. We were on a hot pike bite this winter, a flag ever five minutes with doubles. We had the whole place to ourselves, nearest houses were some walleye guys almost a mile away. Two miles of empty shore line to choose from and here comes this pickup bouncing across the ice and pulls up right next to us about fifty feet away, talking distance. Two nice old fellows sit up a whole passel of tip ups right beside us and started catching pike like crazy, which dropped our flag rate by about half of course. Really? Seriously? You could at least set up out of talking range, maybe a few hundred feet would be nice. Its not like there's hidden structure along a flooded slough shoreline that's attracting pike. Oh well, apperantly they had caught pike there a few days before and wanted to fish the exact same spot, bless their hearts. We still caught plenty but it did slow down a lot with them side by side with us on two miles of empty shore line.
Arrrrgh Pike Pirates, didn't know they existed.
