Home Forums Fishing Freshwater Finally caught a pike!

Yesterday morning, I hooked up the boat and headed out to a reservoir 20 miles away. Had my boat in the water about 6:30am and it was a beautiful morning!


I stayed close to the boat launch because my little brother was going to come out and meet me. I don't have great cell service out there so I wanted to be able to see him if he showed up. I started across the bay from the launch and was casting a perch colored crank bait along the flooded willows and bushes. I could see pike but couldn't get them to even follow. About 8:00am I ended up in a small cove right by the boat launch where tons of pike hang out for some reason. As soon as I entered the cove, I saw a pike that had to be pushing 15lbs zoom off into the brush. I decided to change lures and figured I'd try the 8" storm kickin minnow in perch color for the heck of it.

After a few casts I saw a decent pike follow it. A couple casts later, I was reeling it up and about 5 feet from the boat, I saw a pike swirl by my lure and my pole bent over! I fought it for a minute or two and had my biggest pike ever by far! Not huge but I was beyond excited!





Little bro showed up about 30 minutes later so I had him take a picture of me with it


And one more at home


It weighed 8lbs on the nose and was 32" long.

After little bro showed up, we fished most of the lake. I had a few more pike follow my storm lure and one even grabbed it, but had it sideways so the hooks didn't get set. I could see it holding it in its mouth right under the boat. Little bro finally caught one about 3pm. We could see one laying on the bottom by some willows and he casted one of my 4" perch berkley ripple shads in front of it and twitched it. The pike inhaled it! It also happened to by his biggest pike ever and weighed 4lbs some how. It wasn't even half the size of mine but weighed half of what mine did!



We fished until about 5:30 and tried out some of my quick set rigs I made with dead smelt but never had a pike grab one. So we loaded up the boat and left my pickup and boat there and drove up the canal road about 6 miles to a little lake. The lake was like glass when we got there and it looked like it was boiling from all the grayling hitting bugs. We fly fished for about an hour until the wind picked up and we caught close to 20 grayling between us.

When I filleted them, I cut open their stomachs to see what they had been eating. Little bro's only had one small worm in it and mine was packed full of 1"-2" long baby perch.

All in all it was an awesome day. Hadn't seen little bro much due to his freshman year of college so it was good to spend some time with him. Now little sister is bugging me to take her. We made plans for next Saturday. Who wants to bet we won't be putting the boat in the lake at 6:30am again?!

Good for you!!

By the way, your little brother looks exactly like a childhood friend I had, the photo of your little brother in the back of the pickup made me feel like I was looking at a ghost.

Pick up a few of these, the pike will destroy them but you can get them pretty cheap.



Get an assortment of colors and blade types. These things have worked better than spoons for me in my pike efforts.

That's me in the pick up with the green shirt. I've got some spinnerbaits too. Have a bunch in red/white red/black and chart greet/yellow. Little bro used one for a while but never got a bite.

We would keep them spinning at a constant speed, then pull up on the rod and let them fall. that's when the pike would give it a go.

Seems they always feel frisky when the quarry is in distress.


We also use the floating baby ducks on occasion.

That was fun.

Well, do you remember the time we took the lug nuts off the back wheels of the cop car in Soudan, then we threw rocks at the police station door and made them chase us on our bicycles?

I swear, you look exactly like my old buddy Thad.

Haha! That's hilarious! Sounds like a good time!

Both back wheels fell off that cop car.

We hid for about 14 hours I think, must have been about 1983.

Nearly laughed ourselves to death.

I can still see it in my mind, one of these old cruisers laying on the back drums, both back tires rolling down the hill in front of the car. I think the tires almost caught up with us on our bikes.

We have lots of pike here, next time take a few pics of the Grayling! iv alway wanted to fish for them!

Bad news Dave, statute of limitations for destruction of Govt. property is 35 years, better get back on that bike !!!

Really nice pike there, they can be a riot to catch in shallow water !!

Congratulations! Pike are my favorite fish and they are delicious. Do you know how to remove the Y-bones? That makes eating them ever so much easier.

If you can catch them big enough, those bones make good shovel handles.

If you can find them, try silver William's Wabblers in size 70 - deadly on pike! Mike

I agree with this.

Will do!

Cool, man! I might be moving to pike territory, so I might be picking your brain on trying to catch them...

Try black spinners with copper colored blades. This always seems to be a hot color combo, no matter where I fish for them. Make sure the hooks are sharp.

I love fishing for pike and have an Ontario trip coming up where we will hit them hard. Biggest last year was 44.5 inches.

Couple of random tips I have learned the hard way (you prolly already know most of them, but maybe there is a tidbit in here somewhere!):

Use cross-lok snaps and good leaders. I used Titanium or Flourocarbon leaders. Those cheap snaps will open right up.

Inline bucktails are becoming more and more my go to lure of choice. Big cranks work well too. Jerkbaits also work well. I dont like spoons even though many people like them. Jigs work well too on fish that arent too active. I will usually just fish them with my walleye rig and expect to lose a few jigs.

Best line I have found is Tuf Line. I use 35#.

I hand land fish up to about 36-38".....unless the back treble is not in the fish. That is a time I might put one in the net. Watch the smaller ones, the crazy shakers. Those are the ones that will put a hook in ya.

Look up a youtube video on taking the Y bones out. It is easy to do.

When you are releasing a fish, just before it is ready to swim away, slide down and give its tail a little squeeze right ahead of the "fin" part of the tail. Make a point to do this when your buddy is leaning over looking at the fish from the rear.

Make sure you have good pliers and jaw spreaders.

Dont hold a big fish completely vertical as it can be hard on its spine. If you are gonna release the fish, have the camera ready, the pliers, jaw spreaders, etc so you minimize the time out of the water.

If you get a follow from a nice fish but it wont bite, give it about 3-5 minutes and hit it with a different lure.

I will re-emhasize one point: Watch those crazy wild head shaking little ones. You put one of those in the boat still green and you are unleashing a tazmanian devil!