This is part 4 of a photo essay of a trip by Fishing Traveler friend Mike to Eddie North’s Attawapiskat River Adventures. If you haven’t read the intro, please check it out for more details on the trip report. This part features some of the many trophy pike that Mike caught on his trip.
Here’s Mike…
Now on to the important stuff!
As mentioned the water was incredibly low. Many of the back bays we fished last September were high and dry. The pike were still in many of the same spots but instead of fishing for them in 4-5′ of water it was now 1-3′ of water. These extreme shallows were already quite weed choked and could only be fished properly with a weedless lure of some type. The bread and butter lure for most of the group was the venerable old Johnson Silver Minnow, in both the 3/4 and 11/4oz sizes. Tipping it with a large twister tail or a piece cut from an 8″ Reaper slowed the sink rate. This allowed us to crawl the bait slowly over and through the thick slop. The big gators were lurking and many of the strikes in the extreme shallows were heart stopping. If a pike saw your bait more often than not it’d hit, sometimes rushing the lure from 10-12′ away.
As the week wore on and the water temps rose the pattern changed a bit. Instead of extreme shallows we found them in broad, almost featureless weed flats in water depths of 4-8′. Anywhere we found an obvious weed clump we found the big pike. In this type water I used 2 baits. Either a 1oz inline bucktail or smallish bass sized 3/4oz spinnerbait. The really large musky sized baits didn’t work as well. We did try trolling the deeper river channels with oversized diving baits like the Grandmas, but it didn’t really produce for us.
I also caught a good number of my larger pike on my follow up bait which was usually an 8″ black Reaper rigged on a 1/4oz Esox Cobra head jig.
Many times a large fish would follow to the boat but wouldn’t commit. I had a fast action spinning rod and Shimano Sustain 4000 loaded with 30lb Power Pro rigged with the black Reaper. If a fish refused the flashy stuff a quick flip with the oversized plastic almost guaranteed a hook up.
Between all 6 of us I have well over 600 photos to choose from. There’s absolutely no way I could possibly give a blow by blow account of the action so I’m going to provide a sampling of some of the best.
I caught both the largest pike (47 3/4″) and the largest walleye (29″) were bested by yours truly.
Numerous fish over 40″ were caught, many in the 42-45″ range. These fish were all amazingly fat and I know that a large number of our fish were well over 20lbs.
Now on to the fish pictures starting with the pike.
The Fishing
This next shot is both Dan and myself. We put two huge pike, one 45″, the other 42 in the cradle at the same time.
Part 1 – Introduction
Part 2 – Trip to Eddie’s North Attawapiskat Adventures
Part 3 – Exploring at Eddie North’s Attawapiskat Adventures 2010
Part 4 – Trophy Northern Pike Fishing at Eddie North’s Attawapiskat Adventures 2010
Part 5 – Walleye Fishing at Eddie North’s Attawapiskat Adventures
