bassinbrooksy

i think im getting pretty goddamn good at this pike fishin thing! ok so upon request I will try n keep it short and use proper story structure and im also tired from fishing til 5 am so here goes. I got back from my week in maine with the fam today and I will post a trip of that cause I got some nice bass and my little 2 year old reeled in his first fish (pumpkinseed) all by himself! but other than his first fish I felt this story trumps all and needs to be told first.

I left the house around 10 pm to go pike fishing with 2 rods, one with a dead bait , the other with artificials. I had alotof action on the deat bait stick and finally set the hook on a huge snapping turtle that I ended up cutting the line after I got it to shore and then put that rod away cause i was too lazy to make a new fluoro leader so i threw lures all night long.

at around 4:00 am i decided to go home and call it quits but decided to just check one more spot with my flashlight and to my surprise saw a nice little pike looking to be around 5 lbs. not wanting to get skunkd i started throwing everything i had at it and even provoked a few bites but they all missed then the fish swam away up the spillway.

i cast up the tunnel a few times with no luck and then saw another pike swimming in the murky water in front of me so i threw a 4" strike king shadalicious swimbait with a 4/0 weighted hook in his direction and the proceeded to s*** my pants!! a monster had just came up to the surface as i was going to pull my bait to re cast and attacked my swimbait with ferocity! i set the hook on this fish no more than 3 feet in front of me in heavily stained water about 2 to 3 feet deep while standing in ankle deep water on a rock in the dark.

all hell breaks loose as this huge monster pike tail dances on the surface like flipper for literally the next 10 minutes! she was pulling very very har and making many strong surface runs trying to escape!

at precisely 4:40 am this morning i landed my new official biggest northern pike beating my old personal best by 5 lbs! measuring 39 inches and weighing in at a (for me) mind numbing 13.47 lbs!!!! after weights,measurements and a few photo ops i let her recover for about 10 minutes and she swam away back into the deeper water (i hope) unharmed. i screamed and laughed like an escaped mental patient for 30 minutes then ran home to tell you guys this story. ill let the pictures speak for themselves :)

well you guys wanted a shorter story so here it is lol. i went to my spot again lastnight and had 3 pike hookups 2 of which came off the hook and one i got to shore had it in my hands while unhooking it then i found myself playing tug of war with its tail as it flopped out of my hands back into the water before i could get a weight or any pics, BUT...... i went back this morning for a couple hours and threw the same swimbait and got a couple hits but couldnt set the hook (no matter what i do these specific swimbaits just suck with hook sets) so i switched to a mepps aglia and proceeded to destroy every fish in sight! i came... i saw.... i conquered..... i am no longer a pike virgin... short enough story for ya? hahaha

ok so before i start my actual report a little backstory is needed just to show the self affirming importance of what happened lastnight, ill keep it as short as possible cause i get carried away with details and my reports turn into novels lol. when i was young i fished all the time and loved it until age 11 when i started riding bmx and no longer had time to fish. fast forward to 4 years ago while on a family vaca to maine my old ladies uncle took me out in the boat and pointed out a few massive fish swimming under the boat that he told me were northern pike. whats a northern pike i asked and the legend was born .. atleast in my eyes. so i told my woman i wanted to get some fishing gear so the next summer when we come back up i can try n catch a pike, so for fathers day she bought me a cheap shakespeare tiger spinning combo and some tackle which i used constantly and still use the rod (not reel) today as my carp rod.fast forward to 2 days ago and even after countless thousands of hours of dedicated pike hunting i still have yet to tame the beast having only ever hooked into a few all of which were bite offs usually cause i was using bass gear and got the accidental pike bite. so im slaving away in a sweltering hot building all night waiting for 1130 so i can punch out of work and head to my favorite night time haunt to try for a lunker bass. the time comes and away i go, get to the spot and go threw the checklist : jig box,crank bait box, 2 rods ,scale, pliers, and a few things i dont usually carry with me when i fish , boga grip and camera with a flash in favor of my phone lol. get to the rock and tie on a 6" berkley havoc sick fish swimbait that i dipped the tail in chartuese garlic scented dipn glo and i start to cast to some new cover in the form of trees that got blown down then floated over to my spot where theyve remained stationary for days now. maybe 6th or so cast i feel a hard wack and set the hook which immidaitely stripped a little drag then i felt the weight come off and dissapointment set in. i reel in my bait and see that the hook didnt come all the way threw the hook slot and therefore not exposing the point .so i angrily take out my knife and slit the belly to remedy the problem which apparently must worked great. 12:20 comes and i realize that i probably missed my only bitefor the night so i decide to ritualistically declare my final 3 casts. on the first cast im reeling in my swimbait and about 6 feet in front of me feel a bite so i set the hook and see my 7 foot medium heavy rod bend damn near in half and feel what feels like a cinder block on the other end! i got really excited at this point thinking i just hooked into the biggest bass in the lake until to my surprise i saw a big ass pike come to the surface! well the next couple seconds is kind of a blur cause i got really nervous knowing that im running straight 30lb power pro with no leader and i have a big heavy toothy fish on the other end just waiting to bite me off like all the previous ones and break my heart yet again. id like to say it put up a long hard fight and ran with lots of line but id be lying because ive never been in such a rush to get a fish to shore in my life! i drag her in between the natural choke point created by 2 small boulders barely peeking out of the water where i fish from and get her up onto shore and man is she pissed off! because she was muscled in quickly on heavy gear and there was no real fight to speak of she was not tired at all and an energized angry pike thrashing about at your feet in the dark out in the woods by yourself is a scary thing! lol! i then unclipped my boga's from my belt and locked on her bottom jaw and at first let out a quick sigh of relief which almost instanstly turned to childish screaming and school girl like laughing and glee as i felt a huge rush of emotion at my triumph . i was finally holding in my hand the fish that had rekindeled my love of fishing and had eluded me for the past 3 years!one of the best parts about catching this fish was that she had previously broken someone elses heart because when i went to remove my swimbait which by luck set in the corner of the mouth keeping my line away from those teeth i noticed a shiner hook with a 2 foot length of what looked like 6lb cajun red line lodged in the other side of her mouth!so i removed that annoyance for her and set her free and practically shed a tear of enjoyment at the happiness and triumph i was feeling. there were a few luck factors involved and they are as such, i usually dont bring my camera or boga grips but for some reason i felt the need to lastnight and thank god for a flash and self timer or i couldnt have got any good pictures, i had thought about changing out the swimbait for a small hook with corn to try for a carp but something told me to just stick with the swimbait until it was time to leave. the stars were aligned for me lastnight and someone was looking out for me cause i expected heartbreak and yet another bite off. this has been a great week for me in that ive not only fought a 29lb carp out of a river but i finally cought my white whale! it may not be the biggest pike in the world but its certainly no shrimp and it was my first one and i couldnt be happier about the way the whole night played out :) i can now close that chapter of the book and happily move on to bigger and badder fish. thank christ!!!! lol.

so the weekend starts quite different from most of my weekends being that friday i only had a half night of work (full nights pay though ) and my old lady was taking the kids to maine for the long weekend so i felt like a teenager again at home all weekend with no responsibility other than keeping the cat and dog fed and not getting myself into any major trouble ;) oh and catching a few nice fish for this little arrogant angler contest put on by jwall so i fished starting friday night around 8:30 pm til bout 2am then left the house early saturday morning and stayed out til way late again and i did ok that day catching a mirror carp around 7 and a half lbs as well as a bunch of hornpout and some small bass but nothing major other than my carp which to me is a nice fish but to actual dedicated carp anglers is a mere pipsqueak! so anyways sunday morning comes around and i begin to pester my ol pal muskie about coming out to fish this contest with me and i got him to stop by my house for a quick visit and to check out my fish tank and what not. so i says to him hop in my truck and lets take a little ride i wanna show you one of my favorite spots and see what you think. so we hop in and take a drive to my little slice of heaven that is fairly secluded but also hidden in plain view in the middle of suburbia, a spot where many of the freshwater fish that the 2 of us go to great lengths to find and catch. apparently the brooksy adventure tour did right by bringing muskie to my spot cause he had a look of awe in his eyes like a little kid walking into a newly opened toy store for the first time and i guess he saw the potential that i had originally saw in the spot when i first found it and began to fish it.soon we went from talks of what i had cought there in the past to what the 2 of us would be catching there that night lol. we made plans to meet back up after a few hours so we could get baits in the water and begin to play the waiting game only we had a one up on the ol waiting game because we came prepared with beer ;) so about 330 pm or so we get to the spot and start chumming for carp and thats when i take my boat rod and ocean reel out and proceed to hook a ruffly 7 inch long hunk of sucker tail that i had been saving so i could throw it out and hope ol man essox came home for dinner. so we have 3 lines wet at this point ,2 waiting for carp that i happen to know frequent this area and my big boat rod with half a fish on the other end in the middle of the pikes front doorway. around 630 pm i start to throw out a senko to try and see if any bass are home when out the corner of my eye i see line flying off my carp reel and before i had time to register what was happening i hear muskie say " brooksy your on!!" so as fast as i could i reeled in my senko and ended up just chucking the rod in the reeds next to us cause i was taking to long to get to this damn fish! i pick up the rod close the bail and go to set when i felt it! wham! then the next thing i felt was heart break and dissapointment as the huge weight i had initially felt swam away cause i had set the hook to hard :( all that waiting and i choked at the moment of truth lol not the first time and certainly not the last, it happens to the best of us and im not embarrassed to say that sometimes i just downright forget how to fish when the pressure mounts haha. so we get that hook baited and back in the water but saw no more carp action the rest of the time . BUT what happened next was like a wet dream come true, you know when you throw a big bait out someplace and wait and say to yourself "if i only get one bite all day please god let it be that one" well my heart stopped as we watched in awe at the 30 lb mono spooled on my 25 year old penn jigmaster dancing around in the water as if something was knocking on the other end asking if i was home. again i here "brooksy your on" as muskie scrambled to get our carp lines out of the water in perparation for the fight to come! surely this must be big if its going for a sucker tail that is more than half the length of my foot ! (i wear size 12) so i gently pick up my giant boat rod that is on freespool with the bait clicker on so the second my bait starts to run we would hear that oh so wonderful clicking sound then buzzing once it picked up speed ! but ... it only twitched then lunged forward a few times rather than make the crazy run that we were expecting to see so i wait... and wait some more... and im being as patient as i can possibly be because last thing i want to do is jump the gun and risk pulling my bait out of the mouth of what ever is on the other end... then finally i saw f*** it ! flick the lever to engage the reel , pull in a little slack , lean back in my fighting seat ( a big boulder i was leaned against for leverage lol) and set that goddamn hook like ive never set anything previously! rod bends like crazy and i feel immense weight! but then the weight stays stationary, so i give it a little slack to run but it dosent.. i stand up and pull some more and thats when i feel it, it was stuck behind a rock and i was fighting an inanimate object :( dohhh!!! how dissapointing. so reel it in and check the bait to see that it is all chewed up and half eaten to the opint where i just tossed it out and put on a fresh large hunk of sucker meat and tossed it back in the same spot. now i could go on and on about how the same thing happened almost minutes after my bait hit the water (which it did) and my line got so tight this time that i swear that clicker was going to start sounding any second so i wait... but then it goes slack again and noones home... at this point it was getting later ,around 9 ish and we were tired and muskie had to head home so we packed it in and left our (mostly my) shattered dreams of catching a couple monsters in the lake until the next outing. all said and done i had one big bite on the carp rod then a whole buttload of movement on my dead bait line and even a mutilated tail that something was chowing on but we will never truly know exactly what, snapping turtle? or light biting essox? either way i had a blast fishing and drinking with an old friend and my heart was pumping and adrenaline was coursing threw my veins the rest of the night. does it really get any better than this??? no sir i think not :) til next time


Muskie:

Not much to add after that, hahahahaha

is more carp!!!

so i decided to try and catch my second ever carp tonight after work and i am very happy i did! i had chummed a spot on the lake pretty heavily earlier today in a place where ive never seen carp in daylight but late at night they show up en mass. i got to thespot and shined my head lamp down and voilla! carp everywhere! so bait up my hook and throw it in the pile of corn i had chummed with earlier in the day and wham! the sound of 6 carp spooking off like a beached killer whale.lol i scared the crap out of them all with the hook hitting the water, so now im discouraged that i just scared off all my potential quarry but i decided to wait it out anyways and see what happens. bout a half hour passes before i see them start piling up on the corn again and my hook is right in the middle of this orgy of feeding fish. a couple minutes goes by with my light turned off and there it is, that old familiar sound of a clicking drag. i dont leave my bail open when fishing like this because often where i see them is very close quarters and the 2 ive cought so far have both bit my hook within 4 feet of me so i just watch ,feel then start retrieving line to set the hook! i am close enough to actually see which one picked up my hook! so i gotta say that im addicted to carp now cause ive never had anything that fights like that on the end of my line, man do these fish fight. i would estimate about 5 minutes went by before i was able to pick this fish up, every time i got her back to inches of water she would start up again and run with another 60 feet of line and this is how the whole fight continued with me gaining ten feet and her running with yet another 60. finally i get her to shore and we are both tired and my arm is flexed. i tryed to get some decent pictures but it was dark and i was using my phone and a head lamp lol so then luckily there is no shortage of sketchy people wandering the streets of worcester late at night this guy comes walking by and i said hey bud would you be so kind as to take a picture of me with my fish ? he stops and looks creeped out at this weird white dude coming out of the water with a head lamp asking to take my picture hahah. but once i picked up the fish and walked towards him he saw it and was like ok yeah. hes got my phone and my headlamp aiming at me taking multiple pictures to make sure i get atleast 1 thats worth keeping and then hands me my phone says wow i didnt think this s***ty ass lake had big fish like that in it! lmao!! so i hop back down the bank and hold my fish in the water and she instantly swam away with almost no recovery time. i was fishing lastnight after work until 3 am when i called it quits and headed home but i went home tonight with an ear to ear grin on my face and a story to tell so hope its a decent read.

so my whole family (except for my stepson harry) has been violently sick with some godforsaken stomach bug all week and im very late posting this trip but better late then never i guess. so the leicester little league derby on sargent pond this past saturday was hmmmm where do i start?? well i went for bait the day before and stcuk them in my basement attached to the air pump from my fish tank to make sure my shiners were nice and lively for the derby, well i decided after 10 hours of oxygen pumping into a tiny bait bucket they must be going mad from all the commotion and decided to give them a break overnight. 5 am and both my alarm clocks are blazing next to my head and im still out like a light, in typical fashion my old lady smacks me on the back of the head and says jon its 5 turn those f***in alarms off before that baby wakes up! yes maam! im awake! i go to the other room to wake my stepson harry who ive taken fishing alot with me over the summer to wachusett for smallies and late night at my spot at indian lake for horn pouts and midnight bucket heads but never ice fishing, hell the only reason i think he agreed to go on the ice all day was cause i told him hed have his own 5 tip ups and if he was lucky enough to catch a prize winning fish that he could keep the money (what 12 year old kid dosent jump at the thought of free money) so anyways he gets outta bed like the walking dead and we both start to scramble to get outta the house, i go to the basement for my bait and had my first "doh! " moment of the day half of them are dead and mostly the bigger ones, goddamnit i guess i should have left the aerator on overnight afterall... oh well no time to cry lets get moving. 5:15 am and were on the road, stop at dunkies for breakfast and get to the pond by 5:30,unload gear ,explain some safety rules as well as ice fishing eticut to harry and then its on to the ice to start drilling. now sargent pond is relatively hard to find any solid fishing info for online and after days of searching for depth info or anything that i could use to base my pick for a spot off of i resorted to staring at a satelite picture from google earth to try and spot any shallow points under the water from space lol. we get on the ice and the primary area i wanted to fish was already taken and although the derby had yet another 45 minutes til start these guys already had a couple baits in the water and were getting flags (rather disheartening seeing as how had we skipped dunkins that spot would have been mine) so we kept walking and i decided to go to my secondary choice which was right around the corner . we stop and set up camp , i start drilling my first hole with a hand auger and after i finally got threw what ended up being atleast a foot of ice i was kicking myself in the ass for leaving the gas auger at home, it was such a mild winter i figured id travel light cause we'd only have maybe 3 or 4 inches... nope! big mistake! so i give harry my jig rod and told him start jigging that first hole and see if we are on a good spot while i go drill the rest of the 9 holes we would need just to get started for the day :( 5 minutes later hes got a little sunfish hooked amazingly in the gill cover on a treble that couldnt have possibly fit in his mouth so i said cool that means we are on top of a bass buffett now keep jiggin! i got all my holes drilled and baited my tip ups then asked harry where exactly he wanted his holes and we got him all set up also. by this point it was about quarter past 7 and i quickly ran back to the parking lot to register us so i could get back to my traps and try n win some money ;) at around 7:30 i got my first flag out of the same hole that the sunfish was jigged out of but he ended up being a tiny little guy weighing in at .90 on my scale so i just got a picture of my first bass since october (i know its pitiful) and threw him back. some time passed and i see one of harrys flags up in the far distance, " harry! flag! " we start duck walking to get to the flag (anyone that ice fishes knows about the duck walk lol) we get there and i start coaching him in real time " ok your spool is spinning, now gently pull your trap outta the hole,grab onto the line lightly. you feel a fish on the other end? yeah? ok now gently tighten up with your fingers, now set the hook! start pullin and dont stop boy keep the fight on!" all i see is what looks like a gargantuan bucket mouth wide open, violently head shaking from side to side and i start to scream and swear and generally just overreact (like any good dad would do lol) i grabbed the beast by the lip and yanked him outta the hole and handed him to harry and we both flipped out and made fools of ourselves because by this point what felt like the whole damn pond had dropped what they were doing to see this giant fish beast that we were going so ape s*** over(anyone that was there i am sure will confirm how loudly we ,well mostly me , were screaming) and my boy had a huge smile on his face. i pulled my digital scale and weighed him at 2.90 and although very happy for harry that he had not only just basically successfully pulled his first tip up fish from start to finish but it was actually a nice fish too but it was not the 4 to 5 pound mammoth i had originally thought because although the fish had a nice length she was rather skinny so whatever its cool we got one on the board. i put the fish i my live well cooler and told harry to go up to the lot and have his fish weighed to see where he was at, he comes back and says that hes on top of the bass category by half a pound and i was very happy for him so we did the "harry cought a nice fish ritual" followed by the secret "harry cought a nice fish handshake" then i told him that if he won money with that fish id be taxing him for bait, breakfast,gas money,and a finders fee for putting him in the zone and he wasnt amused ;) the next 4 and a half hours were agonizing and painful not only because we got 2 flags each with about a hundred feet of line taken but no fish on the other end but also because he was in the lead and every time i saw someone running for a flag my heart dropped and i started sweating! as much as i wished all around me good luck and i meant it i was excited for my kid to be on top of the board and wanted him to go home with money so as i see all these flags i literally got heartburn and anxiety attacks just waiting for him to get bumped outta top position. at one opint i hear a large group of people behind us oohing and ahhing and wow what a fish-ing at this one guy so i told harry to man the post while i go see what we were up against. i get there only to feel sick when i see a huge monster bucket mouth that had to be 20 something inches long and was weighed on my scale as well as another guys scale at 5.88, my heart sank as i told the guy congratulations my kid was top in the bass spot but i guess your fish blows his away but the reply i got outta this guy was not anything what i was expecting " dont worry about it, im not even in the derby" wait... your not in the derby? "nope i didnt even know there was a derby today i just came to fish and get drunk with friends so if your kids in the lead then he still is " as he got a picture with his beautiful fish and threw it back into the depths. i ran back to harry like a prancing school girl on coke and with my rapid heart beat could barely spit the words out " he... was.. not ... in... the ... derby.." the smile instantly came back on harrys face and we were back in the money baby! so anyways to get this story on the road at about 1:40ish a guy asks me how he gets his fish weighed, does he bring it to the lot or will someone come to him , so i says well we just took ours up there in the cooler but i think the pretty chick on the quad is the one going around weighing fish why what you got? he says arrogantly "ehh 3 and ahalf ,4 pounds? " again anxiety kicks in mixes with anger knowing that we had 15 minutes left and after well over 4 hours of holding the top spot that harry may possibly now get blown away by this guys fish. so anyways he walks all the way up and gets the lady to come weigh his fish as i start to pack up our gear so we can get to the country club to get results all the while harry and i were stressing about the potential bending over we just took. the country club is a whole nother beast in the fact that after a day of feeling like a ufc champion fighter just waiting for the next up in comer to rise threw ranks and destroy us we then waited yet another 3+ hours in a small room with annoying little kids running face first into walls and talking all kinds of s*** to the event organizers who all in all i believe had done a great job keeping this whole thing from falling into chaos. the board finally goes up and the results shown as first place bass 2.75lbs some guy (sorry cant remember his name) second place bass harry hendriguez (supposed to be henriquez but he dosent speak decisivley enough to judges lol) 2.5 lbs . harry gets his name called and he walks up to collect his envelope full of cash as the room cheered and the smile on his face almost made up for the near hundred dollars i paid for us to go fish that day (lmao hahahaha) honorable mention chris b (muskiesbrother) had un beknowns to him won second prize pickerel and got himself a nice envelope full of pirates booty to take home (woop woop) so all in all it was a great day, nice weather and fun was had by all. harry went home and walked threw the door to a big "congratulations!" from his mom and a phone call with bragging rights to his grampa ( an oldschool fisherman full of fishtales now being told a true fishtale by his grandson with a fist ful of cash and cellphone pics to prove it!) the only sad thing about the day was not hearing the loud obnoxious voice of my good bald friend paul b (muskiebigfish) who had sadly gone out for drinks the night before and fell on an ice patch on the sidewalk and broke his ankle instantly ending his ice season, pauly you were there in spirit but you were missed brother, bein on the ice without you just aint the same.

so i went to my lake this morning (indian lake) to try and fish strictly for a pike or if i was really really lucky maybe a tiger muskie left over from last stocking in 98, well day didnt start right at all when i woke up at 7 with my alarm that i had set for 430 the night prior still chiming loud and clear next to my head... man im sick of working nights.. so i fall outta bed and get ready to leave in a hurry to get on the ice, by 730 i was drilling my first hole and making good time all things considering. i had planned on fishing only for pike this meant no live bait only big dead shiners ... oh and some experimental hotdogs that i was tinkering with the day before, so i started setting up my tip ups 2 with 1 shiner each, one with 2 shiners and 2 with a stinky dog. i call them stinky dogs cause they were soaking in a bag of sardine oil filled with salt and chopped garlic over night and god damn were they ripe! sitting around for an hour with no action i decided to venture out farther onto the ice and make some new holes, first new hole i drilled uncovered black ice! wow pretty cool i was thinking it would be great to be able to see my fish before i get him to the hole not thinking that they too could probably also see my fat ass standin there . so anyways baited the new holes sat around another hour or two and moved again even farther out this time. sat around for another hour and decided to bust out the jigging rod and try my luck while waiting for a mammoth beast to eat one of my hotdogs! so i got a text from the wife asking when i was coming home i use the talk to text feature on my phone so i can continue jigging with my right hand while replying back to her that id be packing up in a half hour to head home. message done i hit send and at that exact moment something starts running with the spoon on my jig rod, it felt to be decent sized and it was a rather large spoon so i know it at very least was probably a larry, after such a slow day i got a bit over excited and remember yelling something in a feminine shrilly voice along the lines of " oh my god! a fish! a f***in fish! " well in my girlish glee and excitement i suddenly forgot how to fish and rather than use my hard earned fish catching skills i just randombly yanked up on the rod and out comes.... my spoon with no fish attached... " s***! f***! whore!" were the next 3 words to leave my mouth , so i quickly dropped the spoon back in and started fluttering but he was gone and i was pissed and dissapointed. the time came to start packing up so im taking down my first 2 tip ups with my back turned to the other 3, its really cold and windy out so i was a bit numb and moving sluggishly so after about 10 minutes i turn around to head over to the last 3 tip ups and after what felt like 5 minutes but was probably closer to 5 seconds before i reacted and screamed " wholy s*** 2 flags up!! and one of em is the f***in hot dog!!" (i frequently talk to myself when im alone to pass the bordem lol) i run to the hot dog flag expecting to hook into moby friggin dick and i pull the line out with no resistance at all... hmmm... no hot dog? its gone? ok well quickly over to the next flag which happened to be 15 feet next to the previous flag and was baited with 2 big ded shiners. surely this white whale must be hooked on this rig i thought. i start pulling again no resistance, get the line out of the water to find that my shiners are totally shredded and i mean shredded! one was dam near cut in half the other getting away with just a few small rips and tears but no fish on the hook.. instant sadness and dissapointment hits as i realized what i had just missed while my back was turned packing up my other tip ups, there are no pickerel in indian lake and even without the mutilated fish corpses at my feet i could have ruled out all other fish in the lake based off the fact that 1: im using dead baits and 2: they are big dead baits so its not a perch, not a bass, not a catfish.... must have been the pike i was hunting for :( more shocking then the realization that i had missed a possible decent sized pike was the fact that one of those nasty smelling hot dogs got hit! i dont know if it got bitten off the hook and dropped or totally inhaled but it was gone none the less! looks like ill be waking up early again tomorrow to give it another try