The wife was out of town on a trip so I invited my younger son along to try and hook him up with some smallmouth on a nice sunny afternoon. Arrived at the Cusick launch around noon and headed out to our usual spot to the left pilings. I toss out my white 3/8oz chatter bait with the 5" curly tail grub towards the middle of the river and wham! I hooked into what I thought was a big smallie, but started to take some line which is unusual so I told my son to get the net, I have something big! As I got it closer to the boat I realized it was a pike! Then my old Pike fishing instincts took over, and when I saw that there was no line in it's mouth (because I didn't have a leader on) and the chatterbait was just in its lip I gave it the double Pike yank to set the hook. After a couple line peeling runs I finally got her to the side of the boat, it was funny watching my son trying to net something bigger than the net! After several attempts to get it netted the hook got stuck in the side of the net which prevented him from getting it in the net so I decided to reach down and gill it to get it in the boat, which of course tore up my hands. I didn't get a measurement or weight but to me she appeared to be about 8-10lbs. While in the boat I did think about fish tacos, but decided to release it due to how rare these are now, and perhaps it may survive another gill netting by the WDFW boys. The rest of our day we did not boat or hook a single smallmouth. I did catch 2 Largemouth about 2-2.5lbs each though. Fishing with my younger son and catching the Pike are a 5 rating for me!

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