Milton, Vermont

Caught a new pb today with a 35" beast of a pike! My friend invited me to take his boat out on the big lake today and I had a great day of fishing. The day started off slow from 2-4, as I only caught one little smallmouth. I did have a nice 26" pike just miss my squarebill, and I wasn't able to hook him It was hot, so we stopped in for dinner and went back out for the evening. We started off catching some small yellow perch. We drifted the weed edge down the lake and 30 minutes in I caught a nice 17" smallmouth, which is just under 3lbs. A few casts later, I hooked into something big again on my perch colored deep diving crank bait. It was a much better pike, probably around 30". Unfortunately, he snapped my 20lb braid before we had a chance to net him. I was kicking myself for losing that fish, since my drag was probably tighter than it should have been. Thats when I decided to switch to my 30lb test rod and try and catch a bigger pike. I was using a 6" green creek chub pike crank bait, the same one I caught my pb pickerel on. Sure enough, it worked. This fish smacked my lure boatside, and good thing I set my drag right. It went on a few nice runs, but luckily I was using my medium heavy setup and we netted him easily. Luckily, the fish was very calm and did not flop or thrash once, which made getting the triple tremble hooks out easier. I measured him when he was curled up in the 4th picture, and got 32.5", so I think he was easily 35", which is 10lbs. My friend told me that he's been fishing the same stretch of lake since he was little and has not caught a fish nearly that big. After that, we headed in and watched the sunset. It was such a beautiful day on the water, and I was lucky enough to get some awesome fish in the boat too.

PB 3lb lunker with a soft plastic rig

Looked good on the outside of the boat 😂. Definitely not going on the inside

Really nice bullhead during the day.

Ended the cold streak of catching a largemouth today.

Nice little Mother’s Day smallmouth