Bass and Pike 5/21

[Brian]

Put in at Benson's Landing at 10:45 (the dock is now in). It was a pretty day to be on the water Friday . Light north winds, water 62 to 64 degrees, various water colors but mostly clean, lake level 97.6. Fished from Plunder Bay to Brown's Bay, stayed on the main lake except fro a brief foray into Mill Bay. Won't be going back in there again until the chestnuts are up. Found LM and pike around weeds, milfoil was best, in 2' to 6'. All day we caught and released 22 and 1/2 LM, (the half was due to the extreme shortness of one little skipper that had to eat my buzz bait) 4 pike and a pickerel. All on haredware...spoons, spinnerbaits, chatterbaits a couple on buzz bait. Pics follow



36" pike with a blind eye, only weighed 7 lb. 1 oz., pulled hard though.



Another Vibratron spinnerbait victim.



Best of the day, 4 lb. 4 oz. Beat up tail.



Diane battling a pike that blew up on her 3/4 oz. Johnson spoon..



There it is...25" and stout!

[VT FishBio]

Glad to see you guys are starting to find the pike. That 36-incher looks like one of "my" fish from this spring. If I'm not mistaken, the upper caudal lobe looks like it has a healing hole punch. I mark all game fish from my trapnet with a single-hole paper punch in the upper caudal fin, so if I get it again in the same (or different) net that year, the data (weight, length, sex etc.) isn't duplicated in my database, which skews things like population assessments, length frequency distributions etc. The hole heals within a couple months. Looks like that one is right on track.

[mjh]

Nice day of fishing. You and Diane have a lot of success with hard baits and frogs.

I am making one more trip to Ti this coming Mon and Tues in search of a 5# bass. Last week I was very patient using a crankbait or spinnerbait. I waited at least 10 minutes before throwing a Senko.

Hope to see you on the water.

Mike