I hooked into two pike in nearly the same location as my last outing, one of them being a personal best 27", 7 pounder. I also caught a 23" 4.5lb pike. Both were caught on a blue/pearl Mister TWister "Sassy Shad". Not surprisingly I found fish of the same size & color in both pike's belly's!
I was fishing in approx 20' of water, about 50' off the shoreline, running the Sassy Shad on a jig head along the edge of the weeds. Both fish gave up great fights, pulling off line each time they'd get close to the boat. Both just dove to the bottom and sat real quiet after hitting the hook too. I thought one had run under a log or something because I just couldn't get him to lift. I didn't know what kind of a hook set I had and feared that if it were a deep one he was just down there sawing off my 8lb line (no leader).
Managed to boat both (no net!) and brought them home to eat after reading all the positive comments about their taste and watching the YouTube fillet video. Well after working so hard to fillet around those "Y" bones, I have come to the conclusion that they better taste pretty darn good or I'm not going to keep anything smaller than that 27"-er. I got a nice 12" long, 1" thick strip off the "tenderloin" along his back, but it was pretty slim pickings along the sides in spite of the girth. Next time I think I'll try to just clean it like a regular fish and see if I can't grill the whole thing and pick the meat off/around the bones.
That was just too much work and I'll likely just C&R from now on (no pike limit in ID panhandle, by the way, I guess they're such a prolific predator).
Another shout-out to Crappie007!! Those Sassy Shad where donated to my tacklebox by the crappie secret agent man. ;-)
