100 fish morning

Pumpkinseed tubes were the bait of the day

Phil with his personal best smallie 3.1lbs and 19"

I love bringing people to the river for the first time. I talk it up enough that it probably sounds like one fish story after another. After a year or so of throwing the offer out  to my good buddy, Phil, to join me for some smallmouth fishing. Everything came together last Friday. We met at 6:30 am at the downriver boat ramp, loaded the boats into one vehicle and drove the 4 miles upriver to the launch. After a few minutes of roadside tackle-rigging and unloading boats, we were off. I hooked Phil and his son Johnathan up with my "go to" spinner for the river, knowing that it usually produces a fair amount of fish. For whatever reason, it wasn't. For any other spot, the 8 or so fish we caught in the first hour would have been pretty good. Not for the river. I started going through a few different baits with limited success until I put on a pumpkinseed tube. Anyone that fishes knows when you hit on the correct bait for that particular day the fishing can jump to a whole new level. The eddy that I had been fishing, and getting skunked in for the last 15 minutes, produced 10 nice smallmouth in the following 15 minutes! I told Phil and his son what I was using and it was game on for the rest of the day! Double and triple hook ups were normal for the rest of the morning. As was a whole lot of ear to ear grins! Phil told me right after he caught the lunker pictured that this was without a doubt the best smallmouth fishing he had ever seen. For the next few hours the fish count went up so fast that Phil and his son quit counting. I was into the morning for 40 and there were times when both Phil and Johnathan were pulling them into the canoe a whole lot faster than I was. Now, numbers don't matter. The fun you have with your buds outdoors in a beautiful environment is what it's really all about. That being said the final number, and this is a conservative estimate, was around 100 fish between the 3 of us. Not bad for a morning on the river. Thanks for reading!

River smallies with the fly rod. Good times!

I got away from fly fishing for a bout a year up until a recent canoe trip. 4 days spin casting out of a canoe and you start looking for something different.I'm not complaining about fishing and never will. I'm just saying changing things up can be fun. And when you're playing these hyper and super fun fish to catch on a fly rod, well, changing things up can be a ridiculous amount of fun!

A little something for the moto heads!

Nantucket sleigh ride (Maine style)

36" TDT rulers are usually enough!

I usually don't fish expressly for Northern Pike and up until last year hadn't caught one of these eating machines. The section of the Androscoggin River that I typically fish for smallmouth is known to contain a few of these submarines in the 7lb and up range. Until this session the largest pike I had boated was 25" and about 4lbs. Both of those measurements would change by a few digits at the end of this particular session. This day on the river was about average and by average I mean ridiculous amounts of fun. Beautiful 70+ degree temps, bluebird skies, and about a dozen smallies in the previous 2 hours. I was paddling back to the boat ramp when I remembered an old timer telling me that he had seen some "decent sized pike" in a shallow weed bed a few hundred yards North of the boat ramp. Seeing as my "schedule" was somewhat open for the next couple hours I figured I'd sling a couple spinners and see what might be hiding in the weeds. It hit on the second cast. Now compared to the smallmouth that I'd been catching, hit doesn't quite describe it. It felt like I snagged onto the bumper of a truck with an inebriated driver, a horrible sense of direction and a love of doing donuts. He took line! Lots of it! My drag had been set for the 1-2 lb smallies I typically catch at the river so when this torpedo took my spinner it was like dropping the gate on a supercross main! Let's do this! After the initial hit and line strippage, I settled into what I figured would be maybe a minute or two of back and forth and a nice pike in the boat. Then he started towing me around the cove and I realized he might be a little bigger then I had originally thought. I couldn't, and didn't see him for at least ten minutes. The water in the Andro this time of year looks like chocolate milk because of all the run off from different tributaries. It doesn't really clear up much until the summer when the rains slow down and the flow drops off some. So he starts towing me around in my 13.5' kayak. At first I'm cracking up until I realize he's towing me towards a downed tree about 40' away. If there's cover nearby, fish will try to get to it and he was heading straight for a potential line snapper of a submerged maple tree. As he's pulling, I'm holding onto the fishing pole with my right hand and trying to paddle/steer the kayak away from the tree with the left. After nearly ten minutes of this his pace slowed and I was able to  get him up alongside the boat and he gave me another surprise. He surfaced then dove, and as he dove I saw my spinner hooked right in front of his tail! He was literally pulling me around! After talking to a buddy of mine after the fact, I found out that if a pike misses a bait fish or lure, they may slap at it with their tail to try and stun their prey. Knowing the sketchy hook placement, I loosened up my drag a bit more and continued to play him less aggressively, letting him take line and not hurrying him to the boat. After about 5 more minutes he seemed to tire enough for me to bring him up alongside the kayak. His tail came out of the water first with the embedded lure right at the front of it. As quickly as I could, I grabbed the tail with my left hand, avoiding the lure, dropped my pole, and yanked the biggest pike I'd seen in person up into the boat. I didn't realize just how big he was until he landed in the right hand leg well of my kayak. He took up the whole thing! I paddled the 50 yards back to the boat ramp in complete disbelief. A couple back at the ramp was nice enough to take a few pics for me. And another fisherman who had also just come in from the river asked me if I wanted to weigh him. Commenting that he looked to be in the "8lb or so range." We hooked the scale to him and were both shocked when it settled on 15 lbs even! Outweighing the largest freshwater fish I've caught to date by about 10 lbs! And at 38"(measured on an adhesive,  customizable thatdangthing.com fish ruler) it was a solid foot longer than any pike I had previously caught. It was an amazing end to another great day on the river! Oh, and I just relined my poles with 25lb test and dug out my steel leaders. You know I'm going sub hunting again! Thanks for reading!