Careful, spearing is addicting. That said the best advice I can give you is LOCATION LOCATION LOCATION. By that I mean, find the fish highways. The drop offs, weed edges, points, and channels. Pike tend to follow these regardless of their feeding mood. I don't like to be deeper than say 8-9 ft and prefer weed edges or points that are close to deep water. Each spot is different so you have to decide at what depth the pike can see your decoy the best. Sometimes it's right on the bottom and others it's a few feet up. Take for example a steep dropping point which goes from shore to 20 ft deep in about 40 yards that has weeds close to shore and you set up right on the weed line with your decoy a foot off the bottom in 7 ft. Fish that are deeper can cruise by the point and see your decoy at pretty much any depth as you are in open water. Conversely, if there are fish in the shallows, they may not see your decoy due to the weed growth and fallen weeds that tend to cover the bottom of the lake. In that case, I tend to put my decoy about a bit higher, say 2-3 ft off the bottom to start with and see what happens. I have noticed that when you set up on the weed edge or drop off edge the majority of the fish come parallel to the edge so I set up the house to maximize my throwing space for that. As far as the action of the decoy the most important thing to remember is that the pike will most often, mirror the action of the decoy. If you put lots of aggressive action into the decoy the pike will tend to come in super aggressively. Many times that isn't the best as they come flying in, smack the decoy, shake their heads, and bolt or they only give you what I call an "Oley" shot as they are swimming away. If you decoy is still, the pike tend to slowly creep in giving you time to organize yourself. A more stationary decoy will also attract more neutral to negative fish as I've found that an aggressively moving decoy can actually prevent, especially larger pike, from wanting to come in and chase something. However, a stationary decoy can also be overlooked by passing pike more often as it isn't moving. I tend to prefer a slowly spinning decoy with slow lift fall jigging action as I believe you get the best of both worlds. A bit of movement, but not to much to trigger those explosive strike and bolt type attacks. That being said, there are days where you have to throw everything I've said out the window and throw the kitchen sink at'em. Like I said, careful, spearing can be addictive. Good Luck!!
