The wind can definitely play a role in where northern pike will be located. Northern pike are opportunistic feeders and they will follow the bait fish. Wind can help position bait fish, which helps anglers locate northern pike. Wind-swept points and shorelines will usually hold plenty of bait fish, so you can expect to find plenty of northern pike in these areas. When pike are found deeper, a slight chop on the water tends to help improve the fishing.
Wind Blown Points
Wind blown points will usually help position bait fish, which also helps position panfish, walleye and smallmouth bass too. Northern pike will move into these areas to feed.
Wind Blown Shorelines
Wind blown shorelines will usually hold more fish than a shoreline out of the wind when rocks, sand or mud are involved. With shorelines that have weeds, wind will usually not affect these areas as much if the wind isn’t blowing into them. For example, if you have a nice weedy shoreline on one side of the lake and it is somewhat calm and on the side of the lake, the wind is blowing into the shoreline. The wind blown shoreline has rocks and no weeds. The calmer shoreline may still hold more northern pike because of the weeds. However, if you take weeds out of the equation, the wind blown shoreline will usually hold more pike.
If you’re fishing up in Canada, many of those lakes are full of rocks, so if one rocky shoreline is calm and the other has wind blowing into it, you are almost always better off fishing the wind blown shoreline as it will usually hold more bait fish which will then bring the fish into it as well.
Wind Blown Islands
Islands out of in the middle of a lake could be great spots to fish. When pike are relating to offshore structure, an island with the wind blowing into it can be very productive at times. These spots will usually hold walleye and/or smallmouth bass and pike will move right in to feed as well.
