Yesterday got off to an amazing start. On his second cast of the day, the Packernut stuck a fat 9-10 pound pike. I promptly netted the fish and declared the day a 5 right off the bat. The fish gave one head shake, ejected the spinner bait from it's mouth, and ensnared the lure in the net . With the fish lying quietly in the bottom of the net and plenty of water around it, I figured I would get the lure untangled from the net. As I was removing the lure, I noticed the net had a 10 pound fish sized hole I it, and the fish was hanging half way out. I turned my attention to the fish and notified Mike that his fish was nearly an escapee. I reached to pick up the fish and with one mighty wag of it's tail, she was off to the weed beds. No photo this time. Fortunately for me he was excited to have caught a nice fish so early in the day. I did a quick repair on the net and we got right back after them. Over the first hour and a half of the day, we caught and released a total of 5 pike, all quality fish going from 28-31" and weighing in from 6 to just over 10 pounds. We also both missed another fish or two. Then the breakfast bite shut off and we moved on. For the rest of the day we only had 3 or 4 more bites and the only other fish we landed was about a 15" snot rocket that took a liking to a 1 1/8 oz Johnson silver minnow. All fish were caught in the main lake. We did run into one of the chain lakes, only to find water temps at 76 degrees, a ton of that stringy weedy crap, murky water, and half the boating population jammed into one small chain lake. We decided to head out and called it a day at about 4pm.
We found fish in 5 to 12 feet of water.
Our fish were caught on a variety of baits including spinner baits, spoons, glide baits, and the new "Secret" lure I bought online from a manufacturer in Sweden, that produced the biggest fish of the day. Assuming of course the one that swam out of the net wasn't a smidge bigger. Sorry about that Mikey. I'm anxious to see how it performs for the rest of the season.
I'm not an aquatic horticulturist, so I don't know the name of the plants, but I refer to it as that stringy sh#% that grows through the majority of the summer. This stuff is everywhere in the main lake as well as the chains this year. It sucks for now, but if memory serves me right, in past years where this stuff was bad during the summer, the fishing in the fall has been very productive once the stringy sh#% dies off later in the year and makes the cabbage beds more accessible.

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