Wes, I thought I would be the only one up there throwing flies at pike over the first few days of the season. Very cool, good luck as myself and my wife will be doing this for 3 days also.

I am staying at Pikedale lodge, never been there before but it was my Christmas present from my wife. Maybe see you around with the long rods.

Brandon

Lead core is figured to get 5 feet of depth for every 10 yards (one color) of lead core in the water at 2 mph. Your suffix leadcore is actually supposed to do a little better (I run the same stuff). Keep in mind with leadcore, the faster you go the higher it actually pulls the line up. For instance, 4 colors will get you close to 20 feet at 2 mph but maybe only 15 feet at 2.5-2.7. Also, in the river I run a pretty short leader of superline, the fish don’t seem to be skittish and I like the extra abrasion resistance of a superline. Say something like 20 feet of 14 pound suffix. In clear water I have actually ran leaders as long as 50 feet of mono.

I am with you 100%, I could care less to ice fish and can’t wait for spring. I see you do pretty well chasing early season pike, do you ever catch them while spawning? I have taken two trips to the Dakota’s chasing pike as the ice was coming off and a good chunk of the pike were spawning and we had a real rough time getting biters on both trips. I do have some really cool pictures of pike spawning so it was not a lost effort.

Looks like we got a little off topic here, I agree 100% with Ralph on this one. I was wearing the $20 specials for quite a while but now I could not go back. Plus, if you are like me you will wear them everyday. Good luck, keep your stick on the ice.

All I can tell you is to buy them off of sierratradingpost.com. A lady at work turned me on to this, I bought my Fiance a set of Costa’s so she quits wearing mine and after signing up for the newsletter I was able to pick them up for $70 (something like a $180 msrp). I will say having worn a couple nice sets of Costa sunglasses that they are nice, but my buddies Smith glasses with real glass are my favorite and would be my next set if I needed another.

Thank you, just ordered three reels and a new sinking line for $60 dollars. Might be the best deal I have ever seen outside of Sierra trading post.

I know that the resorts on the lake and the people who enjoy pike spearing are really happy about this but I guess I feel pretty sad to hear of people lining up to spear a bunch of big pike. I know it is legal and to each there own but man, it took years to get the Mille Lacs pike population in this sort of shape and now it seems like it can all be thrown away in the hope that this will lead to more walleyes. I have always had a lot of respect for spear fisherman as they are continuing a pretty cool tradition, but I am also a huge fan of CPR of big fish and pretty hard to do that with a big spear in their back.

It was a state side pike, it had a weird “ball” on the inside of it’s mouth and seemed to be kind of flabby bellied because of it. I would be curious what caused that.

Also, it was pretty cool because she hooked and lost this fish right at the boat the day before (assuming the same fish, exact same spot) so it was great for her to end up catching it the next and last day because she was very upset it slipped off.

I found a great resource today. I work at a community bank and the President is very involved in community projects, he brought up some good points of trying to find a group to branch off of so that they have the non profit status, insurance/liability all covered. I am thinking of looking at the local Jaycee’s group (he sits on the board) and see if they will help either with covering the group as a division of their chapter or helping to lead me through the process of setting all of this up. I appreciate the ideas and look forward to seeing what I can come up with this winter.

Brandon

You may be able to rent a nice thrower from the Caribou Gun Club, I know Randy (owner) is a pro matic dealer and sets up competitions but I he may rent them out also. We have purchased a couple of do all units from Cabelas but have had mixed results as they tend to break down fairly often. This winter we are planning on purchasing some nicer units as a group. Best of luck.