Sorry for this, but your post has brought many fond memories of pike fishing to the surface for me.
I think the funnest pike I ever landed was about an 18 pounder hand over hand from a rocky outcropping on the shore of a boundary waters lake in Minnesota.
We were unpacking our camp gear at the campsite when my then very young son pointed to a spool and large bobber I had pulled out of a pack. Nathan says "What's that for, dad?"
I think I told him it was a "meal kit" or something like that. I explained that it was for catching us a fantastic meal.
It was a spool of white and green braided Dacron with a large single hook, and a baseball sized red and white plastic bobber.
I grabbed a dead smelt from a zip lock bag, baited it up, set the bobber at about 3 feet. I spooled off a pile of loose line onto the ground at my feet and cupped the bobber, bait and hook in one hand and carefully lobbed it out from shore underhanded, a careful toss as to not tear the soft smelt off the hook.
I stripped off a little more line and let the breeze take the bobber out further from shore. Then I peeled off more line from the spool and tied a quick release knot to a springy cedar branch at shore. We went back to setting up camp and I instructed the boys to keep an eye on that rig.
Not 10 minutes later...
We had this guy on a stringer.
hand over hand from shore, that was a hoot!
Yep, we ate him.
That is one fish inside those 3 foil packs. 2 adults and 2 boys, we feasted on that pike all day. It was awesome.
Before anybody hates on me for eating a big mama fish, I knew the lake well, and I knew that although it was a large pike, it was not large for this lake.
this fish head by my boot represents a "big pike"