21 May Jekyll and Hyde

I had Steve and Neal on board today. Due to time constraints they had, we were not able to fish the southern end of the river where we knew the bite to be good. They were fine with fishing the Rocky Hill stretch so that’s what we did. It was a quick 4 hour trip but we made the most of it. We fished hard for stripers with top waters, Houdini’s and Revolution Shads but had no interest so they asked to switch over to pike for a bit. No sweat… I changed leaders to 50lb fluoro and we headed south to a couple of out of the way spots I know. Along the way we saw several eagles out today. This pair was enjoying the sun while keeping an eye on the nest.

 We got to the bend in the river and found ourselves all alone… Within 3 casts we had our first follow and not long after that Neal had a beast of a pike come up and inhale his Revolution Shad. The fish hit right at the boat, we were in only 3 feet of water and the I could here the fish banging on the bottom of the boat.  What a gorgeous fish!

We had several other follows and swipes at that same spot. One of which Steve saw and said that it was at least as big as the one that Neal boated! We were running out of time so we started working our way back north again and stopped one more time at a spot that usually produces for me. There were a ton of fish there as well. no hook ups but lots of follows. We were running the lures over the tops of the weeds and you could wath the pike just materialize out of the weed cover and stalk the baits. We could have done better with a little more time but if we actually had the time, we wouldn’t have even launched up here.  I will have to make time to get back out there and target the pike again in the next few days…