Georgian Bay, Ontario

What a day. Was not planning on a pike day but i was given a really good one with the colder water. With the weather network's lenient interpretation of mother nature's plans, I figured I could still get a trip up north. I had conveniently forgotten that autumn winds are built different than summer breezes, and coupled with forgetting my windbreaker, made the day less than comfortable and a bit sketchy by the afternoon. After acquiring a proper weedless punching jig I was excited to try and replicate Feng Li's success by the remaining water shields by the launch. While nowhere near as big, I did manage to catch one out of the dying jungle! Moving across the lake to the opposite shore, I dragged a Uoze swimjig below visibility, and felt a heavy thud. The thud also came with an empty swing as I made the confusing realization that my line broke, way up in the rod... Whatever bit was now stuck with a mouthful of metal and about 30ft of braid... This was a very unfortunate prelude my losing of all 3 Uoze jigs by the end of the day... RIP $60 Moving on, I tied up another Uoze with a white paddle tail trailer, hoping to find another willing customer. As I slowly drifted away from the area of the first bite, I saw a splash. Believing it to be the unlucky victim trying to remove it's unwanted piercing, I hopelessly threw the new jig in it's direction. With some sort of miracle, I made contact with something. It turned out I snagged the broken off line! Quickly I dropped everything and started hand-lining it in, hoping to retrieve my jig, but the fish came up as well! The decent sized pike had unfortunately inhaled the jig, and he was badly gill hooked. I tried in vain to save him and ended up with a dead fish and a bloody mess in the kayak. He tagged along the kayak on a makeshift stringer for the rest of the day. Eventually given to a cottage builder for dinner. The rest of the windy and splashy day was filled with a number of good sized pike, mostly caught on a mepps aglia long #5. White seems to do really well for pike on this lake. Even after skipping some of the lake after a mad dash to the launch racing scary clouds, I ended up with 8 pike landed total, 7 of which were all pretty nice sized. This is the most pike I've ever caught in a single day so far! Definitely better than all the hammer handles I caught here on warmer days. A cottage owner shared that he caught a 20lber recently... I might try to sneak back here again on a calmer day and try my luck again...

Prob one of, if not the last trip to my favourite lake this year depending on weather. Today was a numbers game. Many fish landed but mostly small. Had a 4-5lb largie that broke off at the knot on a dropshot... I had retied the setup on a previous outing with 3x tippet for stealth and it seems there was either damage to the fluoro or I was just pulling too hard... Found a use for my TDEye rod. Using it for Texas senkos exclusively now. Found out I could launch those things comically far with this rod lol. Could also achieve some precision skips/casts as well. I don't seem to miss hooksets either, pretty nice I don't have to retire it On another note, I finally got a lake smallie on a streamer! I had tied this white shiny bucktail fly with a removable curly tail specifically for big pike, but finding my 8wt doesn't have enough punch (not helped by my ass casting skills), I removed the curly tail and did jerk strips like jerkbaits. Well it worked! Between wind gusts, I casted at a structure known to hold fish, and stripped it in just like a jerkbait, and this feisty guy smashed the fly! I was so happy I could have ended the day right there lol I'm starting to feel the difference between pike and bass hits. While a bass grabbing a lure may hit hard, a pike really puts its entire body into it. Quite a few times now I've nearly had the rod yoinked out of my hands when a pike full sent it into my lure, and these are not big fish! A trophy pike would probably actually take a rod from me lol

Went out to Georgian Bay for pike and muskie ended up feeding the birds with gobies and hooking over 10 rock bass on shrimp. Last pike sighting there was about 3 months ago. A guy who caught one muskie and over 70 pike last year said he can’t figure out what’s going on this season.

My kayak fishing this year is finished by today. With the great help from Danny Danny Liu My native slayer max12.5 is installed with trolling motor and upgraded! I got the chance to visit the great lakes in Ontario. Today I almost got skunked(hooked 2 small mouth and 1 pike but lost all three due to cheap hooks…) but the last 5 cast got this 3.5lber and saves the day! What a great finish! Never give up. Looking forward to steelhead fishing this year!

Forced myself to stay on the fly most of the day, and managed to fool 3 pikes. 2 dinkos that were fun to see the strikes, and the larger one nearly took the rod out of my hand when he slammed the minnow pattern. Hooked a 2lber smallie but hook didn't stay, lost it after 1 jump. I'm starting to realize the super fast walleye rod may not be good for bass fishing..... Thinking back, I think most of my hooksets with this rod were bad... Oh well time to shop for a new rod 💸

Bling bling bass fisherman 😁😁

Catching a nice bass with the whopper plopper

This smallie was cool so I let him wear my bass bling bling chain 😁😁