Spring Kawartha pike

This year we decided to skip NGTA Bass Anglers Open Pike tournament on Balsam as I was having some health issues and lots of work this Spring, so we decided with my buddy to take it easy and just enjoy pike fishing on our own schedule at our own relaxing pace.

Saturday afternoon, my buddy and I hit one of the Kawartha lakes invaded by nasty pike for some spring fishing. The weather was pike perfect: warm, overcast with light wind and boy did the hungry pike cooperated. In about 4-5 hours we landed 19 pike and kept 10, plus a buddy caught and released a nice 4 lb (estimate) largie and I lost also a nice largie, who shook off my jerkbait on a jump.

Suspended jerkbaits worked really well for us (in different color patterns)but we had to pick the ones going deeper to the bottom as Mr. Pike was not willing to chase them up high in the water column, and was mostly hugging bottom sitting in the last years weeds. We were fishing 5-9 FOW depth.

All in all it was a good day to be out and enjoy what we love most: pike fishing with jerkbaits.

Buddy's largie...

Some help for Kawartha musky...

Sunset was beautiful....

Nicely done!

Awesome, crazy the difference In color patterns.

The lightly coloured ones are simply the ones that have died in the livewell, so they were all pretty much the same color pattern.

Sounds like a great day
what leader do you use while jerkbaiting for pike?
I use stell leaders but really feel like the action of the jerkbait gets taken away with them

For pike under 8-10 lb I use the following set up:
Main line - braid 20-30 lbs
In Spring and fall I also tie a 2 meter fluo leader to braid with FG knot
Then steel leader about 10” long tied to fluo or directly to braid

I make my own steel leaders from E guitar string (0.3-0.4 mm in diameter)
You need quite a few of them for the season as although they are strong and light they can fairly easy be kinked so when this happens I just retie a new one

For bigger pike or musky I use titanium leader

That was realy very good haul for that early time of pike fishing, congrats!

Good stuff. Eat a pike, save a musky.

Now thats a great way to start the season. Congrats!

Great outing.
Jerkbaits are my favourites.

Fantastic outing and good eats..

Congrats on the haul..

Thanks for the report and fish porn..

Nice load of pike there congrats. I fished quinte area, we only caught 5 but all in 7-10 foW