First Pike and a fun story (pics)

[. Ron]

Last weekend I broke a pretty impressive streak of hours spent fishing for pike without catching one.  And I broke it in style.  That's mine in the first picture below.  39", measured with the ice scoop that we had along.  No weight, but pretty fat and wide.  Not much of a story on this one...I got to the trap as it was still running, waited for a stop, and set it within a second of the stop.  She was on the ice within five minutes. 

The second picture is of my friend who caught a nice pike (half an hour after mine) on his first trip after them.  There are a few cool things about his fish.  First and foremost, it was smaller than mine by three inches, so I forgave him for putting in an hour of fishing as compared to my 50 hours before catching one.  Secondly, the trap that he caught the pike on was his Dad's.  He lost his Dad a couple of years ago and brought the trap along on a lark.  And the best part of the fight is indicated in the third picture.  As he was fighting the fish, he said that he felt something "ticking".  I figured that he was feeling the line rubbing against the ice.  After fighting the fish for 20 minutes or so, he gets to within six feet of the leader and sees that the backing is frayed to the point that there is only one little strand left holding it together.  I tell him to keep the line tight, tie a quick knot to bypass the frayed spot, and the line isn't even out of my hands before the pike makes another run tearing the line out of his hands.  From the time that we noticed the fray to the time that she made her run was no more that three seconds.  He proceeded to play the fish for another 15 minutes as she made some great strong runs, then landed it with my help. 

They were the only fish that we caught that day, but the day was an absolute success.  I can't wait to do it again.

If anyone's interested, they were both caught in 35-40 feet of water 10 feet under the ice on 5 inch live shiners.


-Ron

 

[MG39]

For a two fish day, you couldn't have done much better.

[Sprocket]

Dad Mojo FTW!  Nice story - thanks for sharing

[Maddog]

Nice looking pike and a good story congrats

[Loudmouth879]

Nice pike... fish shallower and you might catch more...

[Shrinkage]

Great pics and a story that's no fish tale. That's cool

[bee]

Very Nice. Congrats to both of you. Next time just use the jig rod and some 2lb. No different than a Crappie just a little more fun.

[moosehunter]

2 nice ones . that's for sure.

[Slammah]

Awesome fish and cool story!

[. Ron]

Very Nice. Congrats to both of you. Next time just use the jig rod and some 2lb. No different than a Crappie just a little more fun.

I drilled the holes with my Nils 8" and cordless drill. I figured that since I had only drilled a couple of holes on the charge I would be good to go without recharging the battery.  So I only got nine and three-quarters holes drilled.  The tenth was to be the jigging hole.  So instead of jigging we played a few good games of cribbage. 

These pike are a lot easier to fillet than crappie, for sure.  I filled a gallon sized Ziploc bag in ten minutes.  It would have taken me three hours and an 18 pack to do that with Hermon Pond crappie.

[TinyTim]