Fished Cda lake Saturday with my "Older" brother. He has been MIA from pike fishing this year while he chases that little white ball around with a bag of clubs.
He started the day catching the first fish, then building a 7 fish to 4 fish lead on me. However, I finally hit my stride after finding a hot lure for me (as recommended by a friend from his trip the day before) and on the day, I managed to catch 14 pike to his 9. A nice fat 28"er was the first and biggest fish of the day. I did however lose 2 nice fish, and 2, 12 dollar lures on back to back casts.

Heres a lesson for everyone to learn.
Just because your 22 year old step son has a really nice fishing rod and reel setup (that you picked out for his girlfriend to buy him for Christmas) in your boat, don't assume that he didn't leave it sitting outside at his grandparents house for a month or two since you last saw it. My guess is that the rod and reel handled sitting out in the weather just fine but the line apparently didn't. When I lost the first fish shortly after the hookset, I figured it was a freak weak spot in his line. I put that line on there myself earlier this year, and it hadn't been fished much. It was fresh 20lb PowerPro braid at the time. I had also removed 20-30 feet of line and added a nice 80lb flourocarbon leader to it on friday night before this trip. On the hookset I turned the fish about 30 feet from the boat and could tell it was a 10-12 pound fish. Boink, broken line. I removed another chunk of line and put on another leader, attached another $12 lure and made a cast. Bam fish on and bam fish off with another broken line. Needless to say those were likely the most expensive two casts I made this year. The rod found it's rightfull resting place in the rod locker and I went back to one of my own rods. when I got home I asked him where his rod had been for a while before it showed up laying on the front of my boat a couple of days ago. That's when I heard the left it outside story. :(

The weather looked bad, with lots of clouds and dark skies, but there was only a slight drizzle once n a while and very little wind. Ambient temps were starting to get a little cold. Water temps were 53-54 degrees all day, and the fish were slightly scattered from in the weeds to wandering around aimlessly out in 6-10 feet of open water. They weren't too particular about what they wanted. We caught them on spinnerbaits, jerk baits, spoons, frogs, and deep diving, floating crankbaits. The best producing lure of the day was a Rapala Xrap. Only 2 fish came on spinnerbaits so I think the colder water has them wanting something a little slower moving. The fish sure aren't slow moving though. We had a ton of very aggressive strikes.
All in all a great day, and my brother was glad that see my guarantee that he would put fish in the boat this day, held up. It was nice to see him get in to a few since he had been skunked on all of his last three pike fishing trips.

P.S. Don't worry about the blood on the fish I am holding in the photo. The blood did not come from it's gills, and it as well as all fish caught were released to swim away very strongly, to fight again another day.

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