Been a while since I've posted content to this blog, as I've been busy with other priorities. Fishing's been OK, nothing out of the ordinary throughout spring. I've been looking forward to this year's family trip to Mijocama for a while, figuring the pike fishing likely improved even more since last year. Turned out that my hunch was right, and we enjoyed better than ever pike fishing for that lake.
Day 1:
Zev and I headed up early enough, and Avi followed in his car. We got to Mijocama early, and by the time we found a couple suitable boats and hit the water, it was around noon. With rapidly climbing temperature during an incoming heat wave after a few days of rain, the bite was on fire.
Zev started off trolling on my boat, while Avi went casting solo on the second boat, being that we had more of my family joining later that day. Zev landed couple pike, and missed a bass on the first pass of the troll.
At the end of the pass, we started casting. Bite was just as good, if not better.
Within a couple hours, we had landed 10 pike, keeping our 6 fish bag limit for some family shore lunches over the next couple days. Knowing that the rest of the group had likely arrived, we left a hot bite to go pick them up.
They were both shocked and thrilled to see the results of our first efforts.
Heading back out, Avi joined Zev and myself, while the rest of the family took the other boat. Being that we only had one landing net, I gave it to them, relying on my experience to hand land any pike if need be.
First casting pass throwing jerk baits, yielded a double header for Zev and Avi. Avi's pike turned out to be a lot bigger, I was barely able to bet my hands around it to hoist it on board. This pike is bigger than most we catch at Mijocama, and by far the biggest of the trip.
Eli and Audrey managed to catch some on their boat, and we ended up switching passengers for the last outing of the day. Unfortunately, the bite died down, but Lindsey managed her first Mijocama pike.
Day 2:
Eli and Audrey were up to join me for the morning bite, as was Zev. The troll started off nicely, with Audrey landing the first bass of the trip. Quite rare to catch them trolling.
Eli and Zev followed up with some pike caught while casting the end of the pass.
After heading in to shore for mid morning prayers, I spent the next couple hours filleting, deboning, and cooking the previous day's catch for lunch.
Avi had to leave early, and Levi and Lindsey were set to leave the next morning, so I took them out again. Trolling for pike paid of for Levi, with another nice catch.
Sweltering heat with a humidex over 40C made for tough sleeping, and we were up bright and early the next morning.
Day 3:
With only Levi, Audrey and Zev left with me for the rest of the fishing trip, we stuck to one boat. They took turns on the trolling rods, and we stopped to cast every once in a while to change things up. Both techniques worked at time, some better than others.
A couple pike from day 3:
Towards evening, I decided to spend some time targeting largemouth bass. They are much rarer then they were back in the early days, almost non existent. I have a hunch that most of the lake's population was killed off by the largemouth bass virus (LMB) a few years ago, but the surviving part of the population seems to be staring a slow comeback.
Sure enough, I managed to hook a bass casting a PopR, but it came off after a couple jumps.
Day 4:
Cold front moved in during the early morning hours, and we took advantage to catch up on some much needed sleep once the cabin temperature was bearable. I started off taking out one of my friend's kids for a short pass trolling, as he had never caught a fish up to that point. Within 10 minutes, he had landed 2 pike.
After dropping him off, I took my kids out again, and the hot bite continued for another 1/2 hours, with all 3 of them landing another pike each. Eli's was the biggest of the day.
That evening, I managed my first Mijocama bass in a couple years, nice topwater hit on the PopR.
As well as a nice sunset pic.
Between all our caps and my t-shirts, you'd think we were sponsored by BassPro...
Day 5:
Our last day fishing at Mijocama during this trip, fishing was slower than the previous days. Still we managed some pike, mainly while casting, maybe 1 or 2 while trolling.
I managed to landed another topwater bass, this time over deeper water, while casting a walking mullet for pike.
Big adventure for the day, was my son messing up a cast, and getting a treble hook embedded into my hand. Luckily, I know how to remove them, and had Audrey film the procedure. See the video at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KOFBzLtFpBc
All's well that ends well, and we managed to land a whopping 60 pike during our 5 day stay, despite 2 of those being only 1/2 days of fishing. By far the best pike fishing we ever had at Mijocama.
As for bass, the magical 100+ fish trips seem to be gone for the foreseeable future, We managed to land 3 of 5 decent bass, but I'm hoping they'll make a comeback over the next few years.
Have a couple upcoming trips to Lac Wahoo at le Domaine Shannon coming up in July, hoping to have some more pike fishing tales to share.
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