Spring pike fishing in Montreal

Pike fishing season around Montreal opens early in May. Being one of the only sport fish species that are open this time of year, I naturally take the time to target them in our zone ever spring. The St Lawrence River, along with it's tributary rivers and canals, all contain pike, and many of my fishing spots have easy shore fishing access, as well as wading or float tubing.

With strong winds gusting on the day I planned the outing for, I brought along my son and his girlfriend to do some wading in the St Lawrence River. While I've managed to catch some decent sized pike there, most are rather small, and I wasn't expecting any sizeable pike.

Casting a #4 Mepps spinner, I hooked into a very nice pike, proving to myself yet again, to expect the unexpected when it come to fishing. 

This stunning 10 lbs pike turned out to be my first ever double digit pike caught in the St Lawrence river. Being that I've been fishing for nearly 5 decades, and having caught many hundreds of pike over the years, I'm glad to see that there are still some very nice pike in the river.

Released her in good condition, she took off like a torpedo in the cold water. With the new slot size and reduced bag limits for pike in this zone, we'll hopefully start seeing more of these large females.

All of us managed to land some fish, mainly on spinners and spinnerbaits, and Eli landed the only jerkbait fish of the day.

A few days later, I headed out to chase some more pike with my friend Mike. We launched mid morning, was still a bit colder and windier than planned, but outer temperature was warming quickly. After spending a good hour or so casting with only one pike and a small bass to show for, we decided to do some trolling a bit deeper. Bite was sort of sporadic throughout the day, with a lot of short striking pike. Still, we managed to land around 15 pike between the two of us, mainly trolling with spoons. 

Towards the early end of our outing in the afternoon, I tied on a mid size crankbait (Big O) I recently found while fishing, after swapping out the old trebles with new Gamakatsu hooks. Sure enough, it worked like a charm, landing my last couple pike of the day, and ending up catching a nice bonus walleye on the last pass of the day.

With walleye season opening two days prior to out outing, and the fish measuring 51 centimeters, the walleye fell into the allowable slot size, so I kept it for the table.

A few days later, I took Eli back to where I had landed that nice pike the previous week. Water level had dropped by a good 18 inches or so, and the water temps had warmed up a few degrees as well. Fish were more active, hitting a variety of lures. After hooking some bass at the first few spots we fished, I eventually connected with another decent sized pike casting a smaller #3 Mepps spinner.

We also managed to spot some bigger species warming themselves in the shallow water, namely a big musky and some fat carp.