This is my first of many reports I hope to have this year. Sunday morning I headed up to one my favorite lakes up near Ladysmith, QC to fish for some Pike. My aunt used to have a cottage on this lake up to last year so I got to fish it whenever I wanted but she sold it so that luxury is now gone. However, my brother's friend has a cottage on there and when he told me the next time he'd go up he'd give me a call and that just happened to be this weekend. He's not a big fisherman and he's never caught a Pike in that lake before so I know he's never really fished it. Anyways, I got up a 7am picked my brother and his buddy up, stopped at Timmy's and then we where on our way. We fish our Pike with dead minnows. This is the only way I've ever fished them. Close to our lake, there are many creeks that run across the roads so before going out to fish, we went to catch a dozen minnows. 15 minutes later we had our quota and we were on our way. We set our lines and I'm ready for my first dip in 2010. Crazy sun all day with scorching heat didn't help the fishing what so ever. After 2 hours of Pike fishing we did not get a single bite. It may have been 10am when we finally got to our spot but still nothing. We decided to fish are way back to the cottage for some pike and maybe some bass. Well we caught 2 OOS Smallies just a little under 3 pounds each. We released them right away knowing they we're OOS. Went back in for some lunch and the guys wanted to go tubbing. 4 hours later and a couple of sun burns later, they were pooped and I was ready to go back for some Pike. 30 minutes into our evening fish, my brother says "I may have a bite. No wait it's just weeds". 10 seconds later "BANG! No it's a fish!!!". He's using my lite bass rod with 4 pound test on it but a 12" leader on it. This fish ran that drag wild for a good 10 minutes and I finally saw this beast come up. Another couple of little runs and this fish was tired out. I net him and here are the picture.
My brother is 6'3" so you can see from this picture that the fish is kind of long as it goes from his shoulder to his knee. However, he was about 8"-10" wide. One hell of a fish.
After little debate, I told my brother to release the fish. My dad wanted some fillets but this fish deserved to live to be another fisherman's story.
After that monster we decided to call it a day. It was prime time for fishing but they wanted to head in and I was just happy with the fish that I didn't mind heading back home. All in all it was a great day. I'm still surprised we only got one bite. We have never been skunked in that lake in my life. I've caught many 10lbs+ fish in that lake and there are many more. I just hope that the other people who fish the lake don't keep them everytime they catch one.
Until next time...
Big D
