Snot Rocket Morning

[Scott F]

Due to the virus, the resort I had booked for this week was closed. The friend I was going with had vacation time scheduled, the upcoming weather looks promising, so we booked a room at a motel and headed north. This morning, was the tail end of the storm that dumped huge amounts of rain all over the Midwest. Windy, overcast, and chilly, had us thinking the bass might not be very cooperative so we hit a lake we know that is loaded with small pike. This is my first real day of fishing this year and I wanted some bites. Turned out to be a good choice as we boated 67 “snot rockets” in 4 hours before the bite shut off. I got my half of the fish on a #4 Mepps, and a 1/4 oz RedEye Shad while drifting over a large weed flat in 4-5 feet of 52 degree water. After our break, we’re going looking for bass. This pike is pretty typical of what we caught. Nothing approaching even nice size was caught.

 

 

[ArthurLK11]

Nice job. Way to make something out of a not so good situation. 

[Vilas15]

I changed my schedule around to head north wednesday night instead of friday night. Hoping I can beat the rain a bit. Temperatures look to be heating up and I think we'll see the last bit of smallmouth prespawn action. Friday is a new moon. Things are lining up I hope we can both get on some fish! Are you there through the holiday weekend?

[gim]

3 hours ago, Scott F said:

This pike is pretty typical of what we caught. Nothing approaching even nice size was caught.

Those things have over run so many of our lakes here in Minnesota too. Slimy lure wreckers that attack anything that moves

[RoLo]

The main thing is that you got out there, and you gave it your best shot (case-closed).

During our last 2 pike outings, Lois & I also had trouble getting past snot rockets (mid Manitoba).

Not to worry, next year we're going to give them Heck  ?

 

Roger

[Scott F]

3 hours ago, Vilas15 said:

I changed my schedule around to head north wednesday night instead of friday night. Hoping I can beat the rain a bit. Temperatures look to be heating up and I think we'll see the last bit of smallmouth prespawn action. Friday is a new moon. Things are lining up I hope we can both get on some fish! Are you there through the holiday weekend?

The smallmouth on the lake I’m on will barely be starting pre-spawn by the weekend. Water temp is only 46. The water has a long way to warm up before they’ll even begin to start fanning nests. Anymore big cold fronts like went through here last week could push it back even farther. I am planning in staying at least till Monday if the weather holds up. I’m retired, I can stay as long as I want! 

[Ogandrews]

That’s awesome, glad to see some other people targeting an under utilized fish. It’s crazy how some places here in the north have such an issue with crazy amounts of stunted pike, then you go somewhere like where I live in southern mn and almost all of our Pike fisheries are low density with really nice size potential. I’m not sure what it is, we have warmer water down here so you would think that the bigger ones would die off but it’s pretty much the opposite situation. My favorite fishery that’s close to me is almost like musky fishing when it comes to pike, regularly get follows from big fish and get few bites in a day but they are almost always fish over 30”. Prime time on that lake it’s rare for me not to see a fish that is at least in the upper 30’s, truly incredible place. Then you go 50-100 miles north and all the lakes are just loaded with little 15-20” fish, really odd how that is. Once you get up closer to the boarder with Canada the size gets a lot better in some lakes but a lot are still over run with hammer handles. A lot of it comes down to people keeping the wrong fish, but it still doesn’t make sense to me why there are such quality fisheries around me when most of them are shallow water stained lakes that are half way full of silt.

[Vilas15]

1 hour ago, Scott F said:

The smallmouth on the lake I’m on will barely be starting pre-spawn by the weekend. Water temp is only 46. The water has a long way to warm up before they’ll even begin to start fanning nests. Anymore big cold fronts like went through here last week could push it back even farther. I am planning in staying at least till Monday if the weather holds up. I’m retired, I can stay as long as I want! 

I think by friday temps will be high 50s by me and maybe touch 60 on smaller lakes. Then rain comes and might cool them off a bit. So youre probably right the spawn is likely 2 weeks out at least. Im optimistic for this coming weekend though.

[Cdn Angler]

On 5/18/2020 at 10:34 PM, Ogandrews said:

That’s awesome, glad to see some other people targeting an under utilized fish. It’s crazy how some places here in the north have such an issue with crazy amounts of stunted pike, then you go somewhere like where I live in southern mn and almost all of our Pike fisheries are low density with really nice size potential. I’m not sure what it is, we have warmer water down here so you would think that the bigger ones would die off but it’s pretty much the opposite situation. My favorite fishery that’s close to me is almost like musky fishing when it comes to pike, regularly get follows from big fish and get few bites in a day but they are almost always fish over 30”. Prime time on that lake it’s rare for me not to see a fish that is at least in the upper 30’s, truly incredible place. Then you go 50-100 miles north and all the lakes are just loaded with little 15-20” fish, really odd how that is. Once you get up closer to the boarder with Canada the size gets a lot better in some lakes but a lot are still over run with hammer handles. A lot of it comes down to people keeping the wrong fish, but it still doesn’t make sense to me why there are such quality fisheries around me when most of them are shallow water stained lakes that are half way full of silt.

Interesting. I'm in Ontario Canada and around here we have almost entirely small pike sub 5 lbs. But 3 hours south in NY I see people catching huge pike on small bodies of water. I don't understand this either. Pike up North get huge from eating walleye/whitefish etc, but there aren't any mote of these in NY than Ontario. We have less fishing pressure. The muskie here get huge. But not pike. Go figure. 

[Way north bass guy]

1 hour ago, Cdn Angler said:

Interesting. I'm in Ontario Canada and around here we have almost entirely small pike sub 5 lbs. But 3 hours south in NY I see people catching huge pike on small bodies of water. I don't understand this either. Pike up North get huge from eating walleye/whitefish etc, but there aren't any mote of these in NY than Ontario. We have less fishing pressure. The muskie here get huge. But not pike. Go figure. 

I’m not sure exactly where in Ontario you are, but I can assure you there are many pike here that would not be considered “small”. Just this morning I got one over 40”, and saw at least one more that size and several just under that size, and I am not really that far north, despite my member name ?. There’s plenty of big ones around, you just have to know where to look. 

[Cdn Angler]

South eastern. Not many that size around here, though they do exist are far from common. A local tournament had a pike tournament dating back to the mid 90s. Heaviest pike was 10 lbs. 

 

Think Ottawa to Kingston to Cornwall. Bigger up in Quebec or North Bay and beyond. 

[Ogandrews]

It doesn’t make any sense to me either. I fish lake vermilion a lot in northern mn and although there are some big ones it is mostly hammer handle central. I’m fishing the lake right now and the biggest pike I’ve seen has been maybe 28” at best. Thankfully I’ve also landed a 47” musky this trip and there are ones in this lake over 10” bigger than that. I know if you go into Ontario north of Minnesota here there are monsters in small lakes. I have friends that regularly go into I think what they call north west Ontario and will catch truely monster pike. It all comes down to forage and population density I think, where there is easy food and not a whole lot of competition there will he big fish.