frozenfire
Moderator
- Joined
- Sep 19, 2006
- Messages
- 1,869
After the crappie opener on the kawarthas, I've been going often with some pretty good results. After a while, it got kind of repetitive with the slabs, so I decided to try something different. Have never targetted pike before and have never landed one myself, so I decided to give it a try.
Yesterday (May 8th) we made our way down to the islands early morning to beat the morning rush hour. We wanted to catch the 6:30 ferry to Ward Island, but unfortunately, the stupid machine at the dock is really screwy and didn't take any of our cash... we will from now on remember to bring change. Ended up missing the first ferry out and ended up getting the next one.
Awesome day with nice sunshine and weather.
We started walking along the shoreline casting in all directions with little luck. Soon however, my girlfriend gets a big hit, and it quickly slices through the powerpro like nothing, taking the #4 black fury. Perhaps I should be using some kind of leader to save my lures, any insight on this?
We keep walking and I end up retrieving my xrap to see something following it. I thought that this would be my first pike ever, but it continued to just watch the lure and bolted for deep water after it got too close to the shore. That was soooo cool. Watching the fish stalk the lure. It had some serious heavy scarring around the head though, I'm assuming from the aggressive mating behaviour. I call my gf, my buddy and his gf over and they continue to cast where I saw this fish.
Soon enough, my buddy lands this little one, his first pike.
5 minutes after that, my gf lands her first pike and the biggest fish she's ever caught. She was so happy
.
At this point, I'm getting pretty confident that I won't get skunked. We keep walking around the shoreline being adventurous, and my buddy hooks into another one, but it shakes the lure out and swims away. We continue to walk around the islands and there is no other fish to be seen for a couple hours. I was starting to feel that I'd be skunked.
As we're fishing, we pass by two other anglers who said that they've been getting lots of follows but no takers.
Then to my surprise, as I was retrieving my lure, a pike shoots up from a patch of weeds and takes it! YES! My first pike. Man, it felt good to see the fish on and to watch it curving it's body in the water.
We continue to walk with the sun beating down on us and we reach this stretch that produced nicely for me.
First one
Second one
Third one. Biggest of the day! was 28.5 inches long and about 5 lbs.
4th and last fish before we called it a day.
All in all, I landed 5 pike, gf landed 1 and my buddy got 2 and lost 1 (He also caught a huge OOS largemouth... one of the fatest i've ever seen). I'd say that's pretty good for a first time out targetting a new species.
Another shot of CN tower on our way home.
Okay, after this trip, I have some questions.
I'm using 35lb powerpro on a shimano stradic 2500 on 6'6" shimano compre combo. This sufficient? I'm loving the reel though. I'm not currently using a leader, and wondering if I should. I noticed that in the morning, the fish weren't that aggressive, and only usually had one hook in the corner of their mouths. Later on in the day, the fish really turned on would totally engulf and swallow xrap 10's.
I noticed that these fish bleed... A LOT, and quite easily as well. Why is this? Whenever they took it in deep, we had to improvise and use branches as jaw spreaders as I forgot to look into them at BPS or Le Barons. Hahaha. One of the pike bled VERY bad, the ending treble on the xrap caught onto the 3rd gill branch beneath the operculum and it took a while to get it out. It didn't seem to hook into anything, but i'm guessing during the fight, the hook caught onto the gill filaments or the rakers on the other side of the gill arch. They all swam off with a splash, but am unsure of their survival. Is there any way I can avoid the damage done? Don't want to see these cool fish die. Perhaps using barbless will save a lot more fish? My gf got so disgusted with all the blood and didn't want to catch any more cause of this haha.
Had so much fun that I'm going to head back down tomorrow. Hope the second time is as good as the first. I'm looking to break 30 inches.
***Edit by Openfire to add map showing where frozenfire caught fish***
Yesterday (May 8th) we made our way down to the islands early morning to beat the morning rush hour. We wanted to catch the 6:30 ferry to Ward Island, but unfortunately, the stupid machine at the dock is really screwy and didn't take any of our cash... we will from now on remember to bring change. Ended up missing the first ferry out and ended up getting the next one.
Awesome day with nice sunshine and weather.
We started walking along the shoreline casting in all directions with little luck. Soon however, my girlfriend gets a big hit, and it quickly slices through the powerpro like nothing, taking the #4 black fury. Perhaps I should be using some kind of leader to save my lures, any insight on this?
We keep walking and I end up retrieving my xrap to see something following it. I thought that this would be my first pike ever, but it continued to just watch the lure and bolted for deep water after it got too close to the shore. That was soooo cool. Watching the fish stalk the lure. It had some serious heavy scarring around the head though, I'm assuming from the aggressive mating behaviour. I call my gf, my buddy and his gf over and they continue to cast where I saw this fish.
Soon enough, my buddy lands this little one, his first pike.
5 minutes after that, my gf lands her first pike and the biggest fish she's ever caught. She was so happy
.At this point, I'm getting pretty confident that I won't get skunked. We keep walking around the shoreline being adventurous, and my buddy hooks into another one, but it shakes the lure out and swims away. We continue to walk around the islands and there is no other fish to be seen for a couple hours. I was starting to feel that I'd be skunked.
As we're fishing, we pass by two other anglers who said that they've been getting lots of follows but no takers.
Then to my surprise, as I was retrieving my lure, a pike shoots up from a patch of weeds and takes it! YES! My first pike. Man, it felt good to see the fish on and to watch it curving it's body in the water.
We continue to walk with the sun beating down on us and we reach this stretch that produced nicely for me.
First one
Second one
Third one. Biggest of the day! was 28.5 inches long and about 5 lbs.
4th and last fish before we called it a day.
All in all, I landed 5 pike, gf landed 1 and my buddy got 2 and lost 1 (He also caught a huge OOS largemouth... one of the fatest i've ever seen). I'd say that's pretty good for a first time out targetting a new species.
Another shot of CN tower on our way home.
Okay, after this trip, I have some questions.
I'm using 35lb powerpro on a shimano stradic 2500 on 6'6" shimano compre combo. This sufficient? I'm loving the reel though. I'm not currently using a leader, and wondering if I should. I noticed that in the morning, the fish weren't that aggressive, and only usually had one hook in the corner of their mouths. Later on in the day, the fish really turned on would totally engulf and swallow xrap 10's.
I noticed that these fish bleed... A LOT, and quite easily as well. Why is this? Whenever they took it in deep, we had to improvise and use branches as jaw spreaders as I forgot to look into them at BPS or Le Barons. Hahaha. One of the pike bled VERY bad, the ending treble on the xrap caught onto the 3rd gill branch beneath the operculum and it took a while to get it out. It didn't seem to hook into anything, but i'm guessing during the fight, the hook caught onto the gill filaments or the rakers on the other side of the gill arch. They all swam off with a splash, but am unsure of their survival. Is there any way I can avoid the damage done? Don't want to see these cool fish die. Perhaps using barbless will save a lot more fish? My gf got so disgusted with all the blood and didn't want to catch any more cause of this haha.
Had so much fun that I'm going to head back down tomorrow. Hope the second time is as good as the first. I'm looking to break 30 inches
.***Edit by Openfire to add map showing where frozenfire caught fish***
