NationalProStaff.com - Pike A'Blaze!!

Today was just another day on Great Slave Lake. Ryan Gregory (NPS'r) and I, went out to hit some cabbage pike. Water temps dropped 3 degrees since last time out and the fall is definitely setting in up here. Moose season started on Saturday and if we had only brought the duck guns. Ryan!! ha.

Wind was shifty all day and never in one direction for more than an hour. This showed in the numbers of 30-34 inchers landed or following. Not many at all. We were working the mixed greens between the various shallow and deep with CLFishin Bucktails. Ryan was a bait switcher today. haha. Because the fishing was slow it was hard to stay faithful to a couple baits. We are a bit spoiled and have gotten used to the non-stop action. This also may be in part to the long weekend and a guide that has been pounding my area recently!! BUGGER!! Enjoy our sloppy seconds today pal. haha. We saw you going in as we went home!

After all the bait switching Ryan realized that the best bait in the boat was a Blaze Orange CLFishin tandem with chartruese and orange blades. So as soon as I put it down he snatched it up. haha! And when I grabbed it back later in the day he rooted through his bags of goodies and found an old orange musky killer that turned out to catch his best fish of the day a 41.5 incher. But the Blaze Orange Torrent was the giant slayer today!! 46 1/2 incher!!

We caught multiple others over 40 inches. The fish were finicky and weird. Some would go nuts on a bait like the 46er. It jumped out of the water and hit the bucktail extremely hard. Others were tapping the butt end of the tail and not hooking up. We had many big follows and a few misses that may have turned the day into an epic one had we stuck them. Ryan got a great fish on a figure 8 today with a CLFishin Whitefish Flash. Man that was great to watch!

It was a fun day fishing together. We had a few laughs at how difficult and scary it was unhooking the big pike bare hand style with the tandem trebles on the tails. The pike are getting more crazy as the temps drop and they were especially loving towards our hands today! ha.

Our strategy was to comb over the areas and then restart with jigs to fish for the lower level cabbage pike. This takes patience and skill. Its is an amazing rush cause your pitches are short and hooksets have to be hard. We landed a few more trophies this way. Ryan had an absolute monster appear under his big gibbs white double tail at the side of the boat. We paused the Minn Kota and hoped she would take before the boat drifted over top. She was gone. It was a bummer for sure as this may have been Ryans best of the year. It was a slob!!

All of the times Ryan and I have fished together this year we have nailed some huge fish together and had a blast. Our summer has pretty much come to an end fishing together. Ryans off to work out of town and Im heading to school soon and ICE UP IS ALMOST HERE! NO!!! But thanks to NPS for helping us meet as we became good fishing buds and grabbed some monster pike together with great pics!!

This day we landed 6 over 40 inches and 9 over 36. Biggest were 41.5 and 46.5 inches! Enjoy our pics!