The Packernut and I hooked up with a friend from the Idaho Falls area Saturday to do some pike fishing.
You know, it never fails. Every time I go pike fishing when one of the local bass clubs is having a bass tournament, I end up catching a nice bag of both species of bass, along with the pike I'm out looking for. This trip was no exception. I had checked the Idaho tournament schedule and knew there was a Bass tourney going on, held by an association that normally has a pretty good turnout. We arrived at the boat ramp at 4:45 am hoping to get a parking spot. When we got there we were 4th in line and it appeared there were about 6 or 7 spots left. Guess it was our lucky day. Last time we had to divert to another ramp.
We were fishing by 5am as the bass guys headed across the lake to their morning meeting. At about 5:10 am, as they were all running across the lake, I hooked up with the first fish of the day. Throwing a 5" pike bait, I landed an energetic 4lb 7oz largemouth. It wasn't the species I was lookin g for but it was pretty cool watching her jump out of the water a couple of times with both treble hooks securely locked in her upper and lower lips. Not a bad way to start the day. A few minutes later, I landed another large mouth, a fiesty 10"er that hit the same 5" pike bait. We didn't find any pike in our first location so it was on to the next. Our old friend Lucious, a former poster on this website, broke the "Pike Ice" with the first pike of the day. A nice 26-27"er taken on a spinner bait. He then followed with the second pike of the trip, a little shorter but still a pike none the less. I could see the smile on his more then compettive face as he took a 2 pike to none lead on us. It wasn't long and I had another hok up. Yep, another large mouth. This one weighed in at 5lb 2ozs. Nice fish but still not a pike.
OK, enough of the play by play. we moved to different locations throughout the day and the final tally was 2 pike and one small bass for Lucious, 6 pike and 4 bass for myself, I also released a nice 3 lb smallie, and the Packernut had the most action on the day as he had the pleasure of netting all the fish we caught (which didn't give him time to land any of his own). That's OK he'll make up for it next time.

Most productive bait on the day was the spinner bait. AAll fish were caught in about 8-12 feet of water. We saw water temps from 70-76 throughout the day.
It's a bit of a strange year, with the fish being pretty spread out. The weed beds were a little late coming around, but seem to be in good shape now. Some of our favorite haunts are yet to start producing but that won't keep us from baeting the water there until they do. It's only a matte rof time.

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