A great trip up at Dogtooth this year! Our big walleye catch was a little off this year. I think we bagged about the normal number of fish but the walleye sizes were a bit down and the big smallie numbers were way up. I personally caught eight 16"+ bass and most of those were of the the 17-18 inch variety which put them in the 5-7 pound class. I'll tell you this: those pigs don't budge too awful much when you've got them hooked up. In fact it's a toss-up as to who has who most of the time. Speaking of getting my ass kicked by a fish, I caught the second biggest northern pike on my lifetime list. My best was a 41" 15 pound spawned out female on Lake of the Woods in 1988. This one this year was 39" 14 pound fat girl and man did she put an ever loving chopsocky beatdown on me when I got her to the boat. Those fish can spin like there's no tomorrow and while in the net she spun about 12 feet of line around her and managed to break the rear trebs off of my lure. Got her boga'd and thought she'd submitted but then when I lifted her out she slapped me in the face a few times, put some pike-foo blows to the body and by this time I have more slime on me than there is on her. Hell, I still smell like a pike. the ankle biter flies loved me the rest of that day.
Biggest walleye of the week was a 28 incher and my big walleye for the week was 26". 23" seemed to be the most represented year class which is a little off for Dogtooth. The mayfly hatch was very late and only ended about a week before we got there so all of the fish were fat and sleek and friggin' beautiful. Saw a ton of eagles and took a few pics. I'll post some in Fishing when I get caught up a bit.
Thanks for the Happy Birthdays! Spending a week in beautiful Canada took a bit of the sting out of turning the big 6-0.
Here's a pic as a tribute to our dear friend Tee Dub who loved his northern pike fishing! You can see why we call 'em gators when they're that big.
BKB
barrygator.jpg
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Originally Posted by Bwana
