Ok, so after you guys peaked my interest this past week, mainly Kingmartin and Imissedem with their awesome pictures, I mentioned to the guys I usually fish with that we should try to fish for pike, and maybe try Stump Pond. Actually, after telling showing them the photos, they asked me to go. Then the question was, what the hell do we use for bait???... well, we had no idea, so we went with the regular bait, large live shiners, figuring we'll at least pick up some bass and whips. The guy at the bait shop said dead shiners, or dead suckers; so we left our shiners alone throughout the day, dead or alive.
We got to Stump around 7:00 am, fished right off the boat ramp (Log Road) and it was beautiful... cool (32 degrees) and sunny, 5 inches of ice, a perfect ice fishing day. Although I got skunked, the three guys I fished with all caught some nice pike. Biggest one was 30 inches, and a few smaller (24 inch or so) ones. I have to say, I really enjoyed it! It was much different than bass fishing, eventhough we picked up two small bass and a bunch of whips. We had a day of snow, then sleet, then rain... back to snow, then rain, etc... It seemed like the fishing changed everytime a different front would push through. Well... pike fishing is fun, I couldn't believe the way they stripped line, and I can only imagine what it must be like catching a 10 pounder. Anyway, we took off around 2:00 pm after getting soaked by the afternoon rain.
We saw ten other guys out there who all seemed to be having some decent action. Kingmartin... was that you that caught the nice pike in the cove in the early afternoon?
Happy New Year folks!
