In the winter is when i do most of my pickerel fishing, they seem to still be active even in extremely low temperatures. Its a lot easier in winter too because pickerel prefer reaction baits so you can afford to use crankbaits and other such lure without worrying about weeds. I find that best places are small ponds. If you can find a pond in the woods that not many people would fish, thats a key spot. Try to look for a deeper pocket or hole, also look for flowing water or outsource points like maybe a small creek flowing out from the pond, these are key spots. You want to throw reaction baits, all year long, i find that a pickerel will prefer a moving bait like a crank versus a slow moving bait like a worm no matter how cold the water is. Ive caught pickerel on rapala original floaters in temperature under 20 degrees consistently. Ive even caught pickerel when a majority of the pond was ice covered. My personal favorite baits are rapala lures. Original floaters, shad raps, jointed shad raps, and scatter rap cranks are my favorite choices. Hope I helped. Good luck!
Yo Hockey! Excellent advice about the pickerels, i find obscure ponds - small lakes - i fish in the rain ( like today ) and the pikerel are just killing my spinnerbaits - blue/yellow - black and red and the bucktail and some roostertails. I love that all the lilypads and weeds are going away and the insects are gone and the best thing is that there ain't too many people fishing these spots! I did buy a 2.00 bag of a small frog looking thing with 2 legs and caught 2 nice pikerels last week with it. I will try the rapala lures you mentioned and see what happens!
