What is your stangest pike catch?

[polarsusd81]

Last year, a week after bass opener, my buddy and I brought my mom out fishing on Green Lake in Chisago. We were fishing some deep water, with 1/4 oz jigs and Gulp! Leeches. We were catching eyes and a couple dandy bass. I decided to switch to an unweighted Red Shad 5" Senko wacky rigged. I let the thing drop to the bottom in 22 fow, gave it one twitch with the rod tip, and the fight was on. I caught a smaller pike, about 5 lbs or so, but thought it was odd to catch it on a wacky senko that deep.

What presentations have surprised you with a pike? Looking forward to hearing some of the stories.

[cjac]

Couple come to mind.....

Lost a nice fish on a topwater jitter bait, only to find the lure with a few feet of line while swimming the next day on the other side of the lake, upwind no less!

Once in Canada on Lake Utik years ago a guy in our party got stripped of his line off the reel. One hour later he a catches a 47" pike with the lure and 100 yards of line out its mouth!

[redhooks]

Here's a pike I caught a few years back on opener- the head is misshaped like a bubblehead.

As far as presentations-it seems like just about anything can work at one time or another but lately I've been keeping a big walleye imitation bulldawg handy for when a goator grabs a little walleye up on basswood-It sure is fun to throw when you you know there is something lurking!

redhooks

[polarsusd81]

Redhooks,

That has to be the fugliest pike I have ever seen.

[DTro]

This is probably very hard to believe, but it's true and it happened to me.

Most of us have had a pike or musky take a run at a panfish or walleye after you've caught them, maybe even a northern on northern. But how about this one.

I was fishing a small lake North of Duluth, trolling a sucker minnow/strip on rig. I got a hit and started reeling in. I felt another "hit" and it got heavier. As I get it closer to the boat I see a nice northern about 6 pounds coming in. But instead of seeing a hook or spinner I see smaller northern in it's mouth.

As I'm checking this out, out of nowhere this monster Northern grabs the fish I'm looking at! I instinctly pull back and actually fight the large fish for a few seconds and then it was gone.

I did end up getting the two smaller ones in, but sure would've been cool to get all three. The middle one, sure was tore up though from the incident.

[RK]

Hiya -

Redhooks, that's one funky looking pike. When I was in Alaska we fished around the Iditarod River some, and there was an area there where mercury naturally leeched into the water. About half the pike we caught had some kind of deformity - bent backs, extra fins, funky snouts. Caught one that was bent right in the middle so the last half of its body was bent down at a 45 degree angle. Pistol grip pike. It was a real freak show. Weird thing was they were all as fat and happy as could be. Kind of puzzled me how they were able to feed effectively being so deformed, until it dawned on me that the stuff they were eating was probably just as messed up as they were...

As far as weirdest... This is a true story. That having been said, I wouldn't believe it if I hadn't been there.... So I won't take offense if anyone thinks I'm full of it

About - geez, 12 or 15 years ago now - I was fishing muskies in fall with a jerkbait called a Reef Hawg. Had caught two muskies already, and probably half a dozen small pike, so things were going pretty well. I had a hit way on the end of the cast, and knew right away it was a small pike. So I just start cranking the thing in. About half way to the boat, I felt all kinds of weight, and a nice muskie rolled... I immediately though, [PoorWordUsage], it was coming right at me the whole time. So I start fighting the muskie, but it still feels weird. Get it to the boat... and there's about a 42" muskie on the front hook, and a 2 pound pike on the back hook of the Reef Hawg. The muskie rolled and tore the pike off before I could get a picture, but for a while, I had two fish on one jerkbait. Only thing I can figure is the muskie saw this little pike apparently chasing a baitfish and decided to steal the poor thing's dinner... Probably never have that happen again...ever...

Cheers,

Rob Kimm

[Flaco651]

Probably about 10 years ago while carpin' I was reeling in my corn and it was spinning in the water. I was watching it the whole way, then a pike came out of no where and slammed it. Only went a few pounds, but it was a nice surprise.

[Random guy]

Fishing walleye on Upper Red back in the 80's when a pike attacked the landing net and got his teeth tangled in the old cloth netting.

[redhooks]

I talked to a guy who was paddling across the whole BWCAW east to west (or vice versa) on a couple week trip. They were up in the middle of nowhere w/ nobody around ,or so they thought,and they landed a pike for dinner-when they filleted it open it had 2 whole hotdogs in it's stomach. So either someone came through just before them and was throwing hotdogs or hotdogs don't digest well in pike.

[Nick Kuhn]

There was a while back when I was fishing in late November. It was extremely cold after a cold front and we were after some cold water panfish. Our best working presentation was to take a live worm and throw it on the bottom, waiting for the line to move. After catching a dozen or so gills I set hook on something really solid. Didn't take long to figure out what it was as it made the telltale run. 5lb pike on ultralight tackle, that picked a live worm on an otherwise plain hook up off the bottom.

[Scott M]

I had a boundary waters smallmouth on that got absolutely shredded by a pike. We were in Seagull lake south of Saganaga and I got a nice medium sized smallmouth on a heddon tiny torpedo. Had it canoe-side when it got blasted by a pike. The darn thing wouldn't let go, and it kept repositioning the poor thing. By the end of it there was no way I could release the smallie since it had flaps of scales and skin missing so we had fish sandwiches that night.

My dad had a double on a husky [jerk-bait]. He was pulling in a frisky hammerhandle when all the sudden his line and reel stopped short and headed in the opposite direction. It was a tank of a fish, easily mid-30" fish, on the other treble. He gets it boatside, it makes one mighty shake and gets leverage on the first fish, and away it swam.

My grandpa had one pike wrapped around some vegetation. He had spent like 10 minutes fighting it and then the line stopped moving. Finally he handpulled in the line and pulled the boat on top of where it stopped. The water was so clear we could see the little devil down there thrashing around in 18 feet of water. Eventually we got it up. Not too often can you catch them after they take it down into the brush and veg. I'll always remember that setting of looking down and seeing that guy wrapped up in vegetation with a Bass Oreno in the corner of its mouth.

I want to say my first pike came in a little channel between lakes. I was pretty young, don't even remember the age. Everyone else was catching sunfish and I wasn't. I put on a Lindy jigs with big fake veiny insect wings. The thing kind of looked like a parodied bumble bee. I was dinking around, sticking my rod tip in the water, jerking it around, playing with the thing. I had let out tons of line and the coils of line were sitting on top of the water. I stopped for a second and took in the birds and bees (as most young kids do). When I looked back at the coils, I noticed they were starting to quickly disappear into the water. I started reeling up and the fight was on. My grandparents were pretty proud of me and we had pike for dinner. I'll always remember that those herky jerky movements sure are great for pike.

[evinrude19]

one time i was fishing for sunnys with a slip bobber and my friend said (joking) that if i click the bobber with the weight with reeling it in i would get a pike and behold first try a pike hit and got snag on my line behind the bobber while it jumped at the bobber haha will never forget that moment

[minneman]

last march I pulled a 42" pike up a 10" hole tail first.

[b1gf1sh1]

weird ''was'' every time i'd get a pike on a fathead or crappie minnow. but then it happens so much not only to me but almost everybody it really isn't. pike on worms, pike even on lures carved outta carrotts fer petes sake. they just don't care. momma pike taught baby pike, ''if it it moves, eat it junior''. there really aint a weird time or presentation, IMHO.

[OneWay]

Several years ago I was fishing in the Northwest Territories on a prdominant lake trout lake. We discovered an uncharted spot that was full of 6-7 pound lake trout in about 65 feet of water. We would catch on on every drop of our spoons. Someone in the group caught a pike and as it surfaced it "tail-walked" about 5 feet across the surface of the water. It's entire body was out of the water and it was literally walking across the surface of the water by its tail. I have never seen anything like that in my life and feel sure I never will again. One of those rare moments that makes a trip to the "North-Woods" special.

[kywest]

I few years ago, I was dating a girl who had a cabin on some small lake around Aitkin. We went out on her pontoon fishing for some sunnies or whatever we could find. On on particular cast to the weed edge, I had a few bites, then nothing. I figured it had taken my bait so I started reeling in. All of the sudden my bobber that was splashing across the top of the water was engulfed by a pike. No clue how big it was but though it was awesome that it hit my bobber.

[crazyice]

Two years ago on Minnetonka, in mid July, a friend and I were pike fishing and having an absolute blast. Usually we manage a few "eater" pike when we fish there, but this trip had us limited out in less than two hours from getting there. Anyway, we were using the simpilest of methods, a jig and sucker minnow, and we fast ran out of sukers, so I put a big gob of crawlers on reluctantly. I had never heard of using crawlers for pike, but hey they seemed hungry that day. Well just as soon as I get my jig to the bottom, my buddy hooks into another one on the last sucker minnow, so as I am reeling up to help him, just as soon as I am able to start seeing my jig, I see this 3oish inch pike come up from below and just slams it! That was our first of maybe a half dozen doubles that day. And this was very early in the day. So now we are out of suckers, so we use up the crawlers and catch a few more on that, by the end of the day, we had gone through 3 1/2 dozen suckers, and two tubs of crawlers, all for pike. We lost count but we estimated that we caught around 45 pike that day, with the average size probably running 5 lbs.

[mrklean]

Casting for pike i snagged one about 7 inches long with a big old red eye

[slurpie]

was out lindy rigging catching a few eyes, when i got a hit felt small. Reeled up to find a string caught on the weight. Grabbed the string pulled in a 6 lb northern with a bonus shad rap.

[Maximum12]

Caught a pike on Crystal Lake in the south metro a few years ago shaped like a boomerang. It had obviously had its back broken sometime & healed up just fine. Kicking & hungry.

I especially liked my boatmate's reaction as it came up to the surface. "What the *^(*% is that thing? I'm not touching it!"

[UdeLakeTom]

Caught the same northern on two different tip ups at the same time. Had one flag, let it run, set the hook and the 2nd flag went up. We set the hook on the 2nd flag and the onlookers started laughing as two of us were fighting each other.

[polarsusd81]

I would be laughing at you too. That is funny right there.

Who won?

[UdeLakeTom]

My son-in-law to be wanted his future father-in-law happy. Guess who won..

[traveler]

Kinda long but...years back fishing Sag, we left a small eye (maybe 1 1/4 lb) on the stringer overnight cause it was a solo and figured we'd catch more in the a.m. Anyway, morning comes and no walleye. Figured we'd lost it to a turtle, no big. Couple days later, same thing, 1 small wally last trip out, so we left it again (we don't learn quickly). Next a.m., walk down to the boat and theres a big pike listing on the surface right next to the boat. I could see it was messed up, went down and pushed it with an oar and it just rolled over. I plucked it from the water, pretty much dead, with one side of it's gill ripped up. Oh, and it was ON my stringer! As was the walleye, at the end and pretty chewed up. We pieced it together...the pike swallowed the eye, got it stuck in it's gills, eventually pushed it out the back of the gills, pretty much killing itself and strigning itself at the same time! 12 lb pike. Hows that for easy fishing??

[polarsusd81]

Traveler, that is pretty crazy. Easy catch though huh.