08-18-2012, 10:34 PM
Thanks to everyone for the information. We made it down in the evening Friday. North beach was full, so we went over on the west beach. We were fishing from shore with some raw shrimp just hoping to catch a carp or catfish if any are left in there. Also throwing spoons and spinners for a chance at a small pike. We caught several small but fat carp in the evening and all morning. But early in the morning my 11 year old boys rod gets a hard bite, he's not around so the 6 year old grabs the rod and makes a nice big hook set. He reeled it for a minute til his brother came back and took over. When we saw the beast getting close to shore we couldn't believe he would just eat a shrimp off the bottom. We weren't prepared, had no measuring tape so we laid a ribbon my wife had down him and cut it off. We didn't want t debate too long whether to keep him, we had no where to put him and it was hot so we decided to release him. Later we measured the ribbon, right at 39 1/4", that was from the tip of the snout to the tail along his back, we noticed later in the pics that his bottom jaw comes out further. I had digital scale but no net and we didn't want to stick that up in his gills so we didn't try weighing him. We thought at the time he would be 35 or 36" maybe, didn't know quite how big he was. I've attached a pick of me with both hands around him, my fingers are 9 1/2 inches tip to tip. So could one of you big time pike catchers give us a good idea on the girth and weight of this fish. I had my fish grippers out in some pics, but decided against using those.
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] I am not surprised that he atr shrimp because pike have a great sense of smell.personally i would have ate the shrimp .[:p] Its not hard catching them they seem to be everywhere especially in the shallows .They are great eating so know but you have to take the y bones out .Glad you caught a big one .
