Home water pike

[smarty140]

After striking out turkey hunting with a friend this morning, I headed out fishing on the river that I live on this evening. It was a beautiful evening on the river.

A couple of the spots that I normally found fish last summer didn’t yield any fish, but a flooded area (river is still slightly high from runoff) the looked like “there should be a pike in there”, didn’t disappoint:

It was 30-31” long, one of the bigger pike I’ve gotten on a fly. It had quite a wound on it - not sure what would attack that big of a pike? There are supposedly some muskies in the river, so maybe the pike isn’t king of the river. This is small enough water that I don’t think it was a boat prop or anything like that.

I had a couple more attacks from pike through the evening and landed one 13-14” smallie, but nothing to match this one!

ryan

 

[Ard]

Nice,

That's a really nice pike buddy, the wound........... unless there's a pond nearby where it could get hit with a prop then I'd say it may be from another fish. It's been about 5 years ago now but one day I was way back a creek that drains a huge wetland out near the cabin, I call it no name creek and I saw 2 huge pike fighting in a slough. Think on the order of 40" and larger and it was late May or first of June, breeding season. The water where they were having at it was only about a foot or so deep and they looked like 2 alligators wrestling. I'm talking thrashing and rolling generally raising hell with each other. I've never seen anything like that before or since and I'm sure they had some wounds on them by the time the mud cleared.

Nice catch

 

[flav]

Nice pike. I agree with Ard, that's probably a wound from another pike during the spawn.

That river reminds me of the one I grew up on in Wisconsin. Lots of little known rivers there full of bass and pike, and very little competition.

 

[ia_trouter]

Real nice pike Smarty. It does look like prop damage but if that's not possible then a pike or musky is the very likely cause. Pike and musky prey on each other as part of their diet.

 

[smarty140]

Nice,

That's a really nice pike buddy, the wound........... unless there's a pond nearby where it could get hit with a prop then I'd say it may be from another fish. It's been about 5 years ago now but one day I was way back a creek that drains a huge wetland out near the cabin, I call it no name creek and I saw 2 huge pike fighting in a slough. Think on the order of 40" and larger and it was late May or first of June, breeding season. The water where they were having at it was only about a foot or so deep and they looked like 2 alligators wrestling. I'm talking thrashing and rolling generally raising hell with each other. I've never seen anything like that before or since and I'm sure they had some wounds on them by the time the mud cleared.

Nice catch

Ard-
That would be really neat to see - I’ve never seen fish fighting! I love pike and how they vivaciously attack a fly, so it’s exciting to find some decent sized ones in a river I can walk to.
About an hour after I caught this one, I was casting in a natural backwater area that is 2-3 feet deep and something BIG swirled around my fly but didn’t strike. I’ll have to get back there in the next few days and try to find that fish again!
ryan


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[Ard]

Backwater sounds right for a big one this time of year Ryan. The days of seeing the big ones at the cabin may be passed as I learned that Fish & Game has began establishing a large camp from which they will run another eradication gill netting program beginning now. Seeing those 2 was an event, I crept into that slough on foot the next day to see if I could catch something and found it completely empty. They had vanished just like that.