February 22 was the second day of a warm spell and expected to be low wind and Clouny-Drizzly. At the last minute they took the rain out of the forecast. I fish this great local Bass and Pike spot, 1.5 square miles of diked in shallow weedy water adjacent to lake Erie. The first patch of cattail cover I came to yielded 5 pike casting a flashy 1/0 Bead Head White-Charteuse Great Lakes Jiggy ot the cattail edges and pockets. Three of them were average or lager.
The first one hit on the diddle as I jiggled the fly near the kayak after a retrieve. It might be a long day if that was the only way to get them. The second fish hit on the retrieve . The fly is not in its jaws but Damn, a good chunk of white bucktail is. It appeared to have bite scars on its side from something with big tooth jaws. I have never caught this many pike in one pass around this spot.
I lost two average or smaller pike in he next patch of cattails. The next spot was phragmites cover. Casting to the phragmites edges I got one of the big girls I have often hooked and lost in the cover or seen rush my top water poppers and Bullet Dogs. Very hard to get a good picture of a pike this big in a kayak without a lip gripper or a leather glove to lip grip them and control them for the photo. 2 pictures of that big girl here.
I started with the larger 1/0 Brass Bead version with the Cactus Chenille body, that body was very durable. However, the Chartreuse Flash Wing Topping, bucktail and opal Flashabou quickly was stripped down to the size of the smaller version. After 8 or 9 pike total, I lost it on an underwater phragmite stem. The Tungsten Bead and Mylar Tubing version I tied on next, as you can see in the photo, held up very well and took the next 7 or 8 pike also hooking 2 bass. Usually the mylar tube bodies are quickly shredded by pike. The smaller Tungsten version sank much more quickly which worked well as these fish get more aggressive as the water warms up a bit in the late afternoon.
Same fish again.
I finished with 16 Pike landed, the bigger ones shown here.
I forgot three items I want handy while pike fishing; Large long needle nose pliers, a plastic Rapala lip gripper, and a leather glove for the left hand. You need this stuff to get the hooks out of Pike. They tend to suck flies back deep past the last gill raker. I was lucky today, a lot of fish were hooked in the lips, those that took it deep were docile in the cold water and didn't clamp their jaw shut. I was able to get everybody off OK with only a small forceps. I always break off the barbs when pike or bass fishing. The big net lands fish quickly so fewer get off.