On Saturday 8/29, Larry and I hit a section of the Elkhart River that neither of us had been on before. It rained off and on all day but never rained so hard that it was a major problem. the biggest problem was getting good pictures as everything was wet so it was hard to wipe off water spots. A lot of my pictures were ruined by water spots. The trip got started on a somewhat sour note when on my second cast, a small Pike devoured my fly and broke me off instantly. Bad news in that I lost my fly, good news in that I had seen a Pike after less than 5 minutes of fishing. The 2-mile section of water we fished was absolutely loaded with great features. It meandered a lot, had tons of deep runs, tons of laydowns, several feeder creeks, backwater areas just off of the main flow, and a nice hard bottom in the main channel. After immediately losing my fly, I switched to my spinning rod and fished a large double blade spinner bait the rest of the day. Unfortunately I forgot my SD card at home so I didn't get any GoPro footage of the action. It still blows me away how aggressively Pike will take lures. In a backwater area, I had a Pike swirl on my lure on my first cast into the area. After it missed, it followed the lure until it got into shallow water then stopped and sat there. I cast past the fish. As soon as the lure hit the water, the fish quickly swam off and disappeared from sight. After only a few seconds, the fish slammed the spinner and the battle was on! The biggest fish came from a small backwater area just off of the main flow. I made a cast into shallow water (probably less than a foot). I immediately saw a fish hit and miss my lure. I reeled it in and cast again. I could see the wake of the fish coming for my lure. This time the fish slammed the lure and got hooked solid. It was a beautiful fish measuring just over 30 inches and was my biggest fish of the weekend. We had about 5 hours to make this float but I could have spent upwards of 10 hours fishing this stretch. It looked THAT good. Larry ended up catching his first very Pike and both of us caught several Smallmouth over the course of the trip. A great day on the water for sure.
On Sunday 8/30, I made a solo trip to the Tippecanoe River. The river has been extremely high and muddy all summer. Now that it had finally come back to normal, I was curious how it was going to fish. There were numerous river-wide log jams that made moving upstream very difficult and time consuming. Within minutes of starting to fish, I started seeing signs of life from Pike as I had several fish swing and miss at my spinner. The Smallmouth Bass were in rare form and I had a hard time keeping them off my Pike lures and I must have caught somewhere around 30 of them throughout the day. They were all between 10 and 14 inches. I even fished with the fly rod for a while and caught 8 on a large streamer. I did end up catching a few Pike in the low to mid 20 inch range. The fish I did catch were very aggressive and would hit my spinner shockingly hard for their size. I saw quite a few very small Pike over the course of the day. This bodes well for the future of Pike fishing on this river. I also had a follow from a GIANT Pike. By the time I saw this fish, I have seen tons of Pike over the course of the weekend. So believe me when I say that it was hands down the largest fish I have seen it quite some time. It followed my spinner to the boat and without thinking, I immediately started into a figure-8 as if I was Musky fishing. The fish didn't buy this tactic but it never hurts to try it. Overall I had an awesome weekend chasing Pike. I'm looking forward to continuing the hunt this coming weekend. If you are reading this and are looking for an adventure this weekend, drop me a line.
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