Well, I leave tomorrow for our 18th annual fishing trip
We always go to Minnesota but this year we are changing lakes. We used to go to Winni, but Im tired of Walleye fishing all day. The Muskie is my hearts desire, so we are onto Leech Lake.
Oh baby I can feel that 50"er already!!!
Good friends, great beer and even better stories!
Wish me luck.
Maybe I can pick up a fish this size!

Go get 'em!

walleye pike, my favorite fishing , eating...!
just dont stick your thumb in its mouth! (speaking from experience!)

Good luck Joe. Oh man that's a nice fish! We catch em like that in a few lakes in the upper peninsula of Michigan. I use a 6 inch Perch for bait and a bobber the size of a baseball. Talk about excitement! And mosquitoes. Oh, and the freshwater shark thing, we find tons of shark's teeth on the shores of the Great Lakes. Some as big as your thumb.

Have a good trip Joe. I really love fishing the Boundary Waters up on the border there. I still can't really tell the difference between a muskie and a northern pike. They say the only real way is to count the holes under the jaw? 6+ is the muskie? And Bjorn, if you think a walleye has teeth (and they do have sharp ones), you should see a northern. It is sometimes called the fresh water barracuda.

A walleye is actually in the perch family and not a pike, as typically referred to.

Jim, I am not excactly familiar with the Walleye or the Northern Pike, only really the Swedish Pike , not sure which it is closer to...but it has SHARP teeth... I know! learned as a 13 yr old catching my first!

the Swedish Pike looks a lot like an Alligator Gar too...

Ok Jim ,looked up them all online with pics...the Swedish Pike looks most like the Northern , if its the 'relative', yes it DOES have sharp teeth!

Yep, I looked up the Swedish pike and it looks like a northern. It is a great fighter and lots of bones (for those who eat fish).

The Muskies eat the Pike, that's how you can tell the difference.

Best way to cook/eat the Swedish pike is to gut it ,fill the cavity with onions and tomatoes (if you like) , cut head off, wrap it in alum. foil, throw it in the fire (assuming your still outside! lol), cook for 10-15 minutes, take it out of the fire, unwrap the foil, the skin wil stick to the foil, th bones willshow up as one nice row , take that out ,you got two nice filets!
open your beer (your second or third, the first should have already been consumed!), enjoy!!
best served with 'fresh'boiled small potatoes and dill and butter...yum!

Getting ready to head out for Sockeye and Spring salmon fishing here and maybe the odd ling cod or halibut if lucky!

Good luck!
Any day of catch'n no fish, is a better then a good day of work.

Better watch that sucker so that he doesn't swing around and bite your nose off.

As with the other type of sharks, I don't shark fish, and I don't promote it because you'll end up killing 20 non meat sharks to get a meat shark. (Cut me a break on catch and release sharking. When you hook'em, it kills quite a lot of them, so there is no such thing as catch and relase with shark fishing.)

Here's a couple that were caught as bycatch,a nd they went on the grill. The hammerhead @ a buck-twenty-two was a fluke because they don't take trolled bait, a 12" ballyhoo with a skirt. We had a tuna on and had a bait hanging in the water off an outrigger, and the hammerhead took it. It seems that the boat rule is that I'm desiginated cranker on the larger fish becuse the captain knows that I would rather eat them than reel them in.



The baby mako @ 81 lbs, a most agressive fish, attacking anything that moves, was also a nontargeted fish that took a trolled bait. We have had a lot of sharks but we use 80 pound flourocarbon leaders, so 99.9% of don't have trouble biteing thourh the fiimsy plastic.



I'd like to drop a line up north, but I have heard that even in the summer, it can be pretty chilly, and I don't fish when the temperature is below 70' no matter how good the bite is.

Cutting a hole in the ice and sitting on a bucket isn't for you huh?

</font><blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">quote:</font><hr /><font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif"> Cutting a hole in the ice and sitting on a bucket isn't for you huh? </font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">been there ,done that...da*n cold on your feet!

Thanks all, I plan on getting a 50" this year but I will be happy just catching a few.

Jim,
The difference between Muskie and Norhtern is the pores under the jawline. Muskie with have 6+ and Northern with have no more than 4. Also the coloring is a bit different but you can tell them apart from just looking at them.

Here are a couple shots of the teeth of a Walleye and a Northern. The Walleye has teeth in various spots in the mouth. The Norther/Muskie has rows of teeth angled back toward the throat like a shark. Food goes in and doesnt come out.

Here is a 9LBS Walleye I got in 97"
http://pg.photos.yahoo.com/ph/cimmer77/detail?.dir=/287bre2&.dnm=4ae3re2.jpg&.src=ph

Here is a 36" Northern I got in 91"
http://pg.photos.yahoo.com/ph/cimmer77/detail?.dir=/287bre2&.dnm=e4fbre2.jpg&.src=ph

Yah Joe, I've seen the difference up close and personal. Imagine this: As a 14 year old I used to follow the local ditches out to the nearby bay on Lake Huron. The ditches vary from three to six feet wide and they are great for spearing Pike in the spring when they come up to spawn. One time I was about half way through my three mile treck along my favorite ditch and I saw a log that looked sort of like a pike. Only difference was it was about 6 feet long and about 12 inches diameter which was bigger than any Pike. As I climbed down the ditchbank to take a closer look the monster came to life and did a turn-around. Imagine a 6 foot fish doing a turn-around in a three foot wide stream in a ditch! I was so amazed that my spear went forgotten in my hand. The fish headed, full steam, back to the Bay. It would be hard to miss the difference between a Pike and a Muskie.
I fish the ponds that line the I-75 expressway. They dug these ponds in the 60's to get dirt for the overpasses. The ponds are full of Pike. My brother built his house near one. One day, while fishing his pond, I had what felt like the usual Pike on the line. Pike have a lot of nerves in their mouths and sometimes they come in like a log because they become parylized when the hook gets in a nerve. This fish came in like a log. About half way to shore the fish woke up and headed back out like it was a whale. Then it went dead again. When I got the fish to shore it was your normal 3 foot Pike. What was different was the huge teeth gashes in it's sides where a larger fish had grabbed it on retreival and pulled it back out and then let go. My bro has some really big fish in that pond!

Sounds like a good time Joe... I was born near there (just East of there in Hibbing) But haven't been back in the area for years... beautiful country... Hope it's a great trip - Brett!