Bonus Round!

Once I had gotten home, cleaned and grilled up my trout.. I was still yearning to get out and do some more fishing.. So I geared back up and headed down to the backwaters to do a little fishing and see what I could find...

To my surprise.. Wasn't a single fisherman at this spot.. Normally there is a minimum of 4 cars lined up.. With up to 8+ lined up down the road.. Maybe they were all streamside!  I tie on a simple white bugger.. Nothing fancy.. I attach 25# Vicious Elite Fluorocarbon to the end of my furled leader as pike love slamming all sorts of flies out here and better to be safe than sorry...  Within a couple casts I tie into my first fish.. It's something decent...  He starts jerking line out from my hand.. It's a biggger guy.. And takes off.. My reel clicking away as the fish runs and takes me to my reel.. Ok.. It's pretty big.. Or at least for my 5wt as it bends.. Almost doubling over.. I get a little edge on him and finally see.. It's a big pike.. He quickly jets back off and takes me for another short run.. Finally after about 10-15min of fighting I grab him behind the head and remove the bugger from his big toothy jaws.. 30" pike.. Biggest on the fly this year.. If not my biggest pike on the fly ever...

I continued fishing until I basically couldn't see where my fly was landing.. I caught a pair of crappies and that's all she wrote.. That pike sure was a blast though!