Went out to Congress Lake in Hartville today (Monday), for the first time this year. We were targeting bass but couldn't keep the pike off of our cranks and spinners. I guess thats a good thing though, except when you come unprepared!
Almost all pike we have ever caught there have been unintentional, as they were today, and we have only ever had as many as 2 in one day. We have also had many lures bitten off by probable pike. Well...we boated 8 today, 4 apeice actually. There was one big problem, my large pliers were still on my other buddies boat from Sunday, and all we had were these little dinky 4-5" needle nose. All Pike were about 20' or so except 2 monsters. One of the monsters went well over 36"+ I bet. It maybe went 8,9,10,12 lbs, no idea. I wasn't grabbing it. My whole hand woulda fit in his toothened mouth. It sure was fun catching it though!!! It took 10 minutes maybe to unhook it unfortunately, but luckily was only in bottom of mouth and was returned in fine health.
Never before have I got into so many pike. We had another 3 or 4 hooked that cut off the lure. All pike were caught on either a large or small blue/chrome ratt-l-trap, firetiger Shad-Rap, or white spinners.
BTW, we only landed 3 keeper-size bass, biggest only 2 1/2 lbs. Also got into 8 crappies, about 11-12" that we kept, all other fish released. I have been having a tough bass year so far. I just can't seem to get in tune with them yet! That doesn't bode well for LaDue next Saturday.
Even though it was windy, the sheltered shorelines were obviously productive. I wasn't even going to try to fight the wind in a club boat! Today made up for the debacle that was Sunday at Mogadore (zippo!)
Almost all pike we have ever caught there have been unintentional, as they were today, and we have only ever had as many as 2 in one day. We have also had many lures bitten off by probable pike. Well...we boated 8 today, 4 apeice actually. There was one big problem, my large pliers were still on my other buddies boat from Sunday, and all we had were these little dinky 4-5" needle nose. All Pike were about 20' or so except 2 monsters. One of the monsters went well over 36"+ I bet. It maybe went 8,9,10,12 lbs, no idea. I wasn't grabbing it. My whole hand woulda fit in his toothened mouth. It sure was fun catching it though!!! It took 10 minutes maybe to unhook it unfortunately, but luckily was only in bottom of mouth and was returned in fine health.
Never before have I got into so many pike. We had another 3 or 4 hooked that cut off the lure. All pike were caught on either a large or small blue/chrome ratt-l-trap, firetiger Shad-Rap, or white spinners.
BTW, we only landed 3 keeper-size bass, biggest only 2 1/2 lbs. Also got into 8 crappies, about 11-12" that we kept, all other fish released. I have been having a tough bass year so far. I just can't seem to get in tune with them yet! That doesn't bode well for LaDue next Saturday.
Even though it was windy, the sheltered shorelines were obviously productive. I wasn't even going to try to fight the wind in a club boat! Today made up for the debacle that was Sunday at Mogadore (zippo!)
