Friday, February 29, 2008

Ok..let's put that bull**** story to bed!

<*))Click here to go home))><~~~

It's one of the most famous pikes of all time. It's often accompanied with a picture of a larger pike chomping down on a smaller pike. Mind you, those two pictures are totally unrelated and the "chomp down" pike is not nearly as long as people often claim. It was about 40".
Ok..so back to this one. If you're a midwestern fisherman you've seen this picture along with some bull**** story that just about every Canadian lodge owner uses about how this fish is from his lake. I've heard it came from LOTW, Rainy, Rowan and a few others.

I'm going to lift this story directly from the PIke Anglers' Club of Great Britain fishing site:

MONSTER SNOEK!
by
Ewout Blom

My name is Ewout Blom, I'm 27 years old and was born in Rotterdam. At the moment I live in Ijmuiden (close to Amsterdam) and am lucky to be hatchery manager of a Dover sole farm in the Netherlands.

You could say my life is dominated by fish, because during my spare time I can be found on the big lakes and rivers in the Netherlands fishing for pike, zander and asp.

I like to fish for big pike! It is not that I don't enjoy catching small pike, but for practical reasons you have to use heavier tackle. Catching smaller pike on light tackle can be fun but I prefer to catch the bigger fish. I like the thrill when a big pike takes the lure or just follows it. Sometimes seeing a (big) pike chasing the lure can be so much fun, okay you will not always catch it, but that's fishing.

In the Netherlands we are blessed with a huge variety of fishing waters. From big rivers and lakes to the smaller lakes and canals. You can catch plenty of pike (if the visibility is OK) everywhere. For the best chance to hook a big pike we spent most of our time on the big lakes and rivers.

For that reason we started fishing a big lake at the end of 2004. From fishing mates we knew that it was quite hard to catch pike there. Imagine our surprise when Michel hooked a nice pike after just 20 minutes of fishing. It was a beautiful fish of 116 cm and 14kg. I still remember that we said to each other, "Difficult water? No way, it is the easiest water to catch big pike!!!"

Ten fishing days later the spirit was a little lower! I hadn't hooked a single pike and Michel had only managed to land two small jacks. It had been fairly cold that week, on the shores you could still see the remains of the snow, we had a couple of days earlier. The water temperature was still fairly low, a little over 2 degrees but the weather was nice and clear.

When trailering the boat we saw that the only other pikers were some fishing mates of ours. On the water we discussed where to fish, we decided to go to the part where Michel caught the pike on the first day. Five hours of trolling and casting later we hadn't seen any action and we decided to go back to the part were most fish are caught. When we were enjoying a nice warm cup of soup we saw our friends motoring towards us. It turned out that they'd had a super morning. They had caught 4 pike, two smaller ones and two big ones, 112cm an 123, the last one weighed 16 kg 35.2lb.

Of course we were happy for them but when they sailed away in search of even more pike I looked at Michel and said, "Today something must happen otherwise I will go nuts". Around four our friends headed home and we were the only ones left, except one boat fishing for zander. That morning I had noticed quite a lot of baitfish in a certain area, we talked it over and decided to fish it before we would leave. Yeah, some success. Michel landed a pike of 75 cm. We put it back quickly and continued.

Somehow everything felt right; it was nice and quiet on the water, almost no wind, just the two of us in a boat. I was looking at my second rod when I saw it bend a little, then it came straight before it bent completely. Something had taken the perch pattern Super Shad Rap. "Yes. Fish." I yelled, and took the rod from its support. I could immediately feel that it was a good fish, the heavy weight and the way a big pike can shake its head are so typical.

Because we were going with the wind Michel could easily reel in the other three rods. Some thirty meters from the boat the fish shook its head on the surface, before it went down again. "That's a good fish" I told Michel. "I already know", he said! The next 5 minutes I had to really pull hard to get the thing next to the boat.

When Michel managed to get the fish on board, we could both see that it was a fairly big fish, but maybe from the cold and long day on the water we were both surprised to see it had a length of 127 cm, unbelievable!!! Quickly we weighed the fish, almost 20 kg, 19.5 (42.9lb) to be precise.

I lifted the fish from the weighing mat and Michel started to take pictures. After some pictures it got harder and harder to lift the fish. What a weight! After the pictures I quickly put her back in the water and as if nothing happened she almost immediately swam away, leaving a very happy angler behind.

"This is the pike of a lifetime" I said, after releasing a shout of happiness over the water. When Michel positioned the boat back on the drop off, we both sat in the boat still fishing but not believing what had just happened.

At half past five we called it a day, but not before we made a call to our fishing mates. They were also shocked and told us that they could not wait before they would see the pictures that night. I still remember their remarks, "I already new you had caught a big fish but when I saw the pictures I knew enough"…. My first pike on the lake, immediately a good one!! Since that day in March a lot of fishing days went by, bringing new experiences and a lot of pleasure.

I still think it is all about that, having fun. I don't care if you use this or that technique or if you catch big or small fish, as long as you enjoy the thing you are doing.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

The false stories are usually accompanied by this photo.


OK, so there ya have it. The emails with photo attachment and the heading "Look what some guy caught in Rainy Lake" can now stop.....please.
Feel free to tag this and send it to anyone you know who has sent out said email; which should be about 10,000 people. :)

Thursday, February 28, 2008

Cue my music!

Anyone got the theme song for "2001 A Space Odyssey"?? If so, hit it.

We are on the board for 2008. I went fishing on sunday feb.24,2008 with Ken Schumacher of www.smallifishing.com .
Got a couple largemouth. 1 on a white MicroDawg and 1 on a 1/16oz Slider head jig with a 4" Berkley PowerLizard (black ofcourse). Also 2 smallmouth bass on a Husky Jerk while doing the Crazy-Kauchak retrieve ( 2 or 3 fast rips followed by a short I second pause. Nothing finesse about it.) Water temp 49 degrees.
The score for 2008 stands at 4.
Oh..then we got hit with yet another snow storm and the warm fuzzy feeling was interupted by a feeling of doom. Nice,eh?
It gets even more depressing if you go back in the archives (bottom of this page) and look at the carnage we piled up during March 05,06 & 07'. It's just sick.

Thursday, February 21, 2008

Lunar Eclipse 2008.

Hey, there's no fishing going on right now. So I had to spend time doing something. Lunar eclipse shots from last night.








Saturday, February 16, 2008

Frankenstein...move over!

The first Customfish Customuskie lures (TM) have been made.
These are the prototypes featuring images of exotic fish.
Drop us an email and let me know what you think.
These baits will take their first swim June 1st on Great Slave Lake, NWT, Canada when Nemo and his buddies go up against several hundred pike in the 36-50" range.
And yes...it'll all be on video right here at customfish.
Stay tuned.


GO BACK TO THE MAIN SITE AND SEE WHAT FISH PRINTING WE DO HUGE!!! CLICK HERE!

Monday, February 11, 2008

Fairwell and adieu to ya fair Chief Brody...


Customfish.com obsevres a moment of silence for The Chief. He was 75.
He may not have been the best fisherman ever, but we ARE going to use that rifle/air tank trick in memorium this spring. Stay tuned.
Fairwell Chief.

Mrs Brody "What do I tell the kids?"
Chief " Tell them I went fishing."

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Friday, February 08, 2008

112/154.

I'll be here in 112 days.


I'll be here in 154 days.


Until then I'm here.


And there's something very unfair about that.
112 and 154 days never seemed so far away.

*In other news: I have officially challenged Charlie Moore.
Will he accept?
C'mon. You're kidding me right? Charlie Moore is gonna go up against the likes of ME around here? Or on Delavan? Or god forbid on Great Slave??
Listen, the man has a TV show named after him. Sure it's called "Beat Charlie Moore", but seriously, who is gonna come all this way to get their a$$ handed to them and have to produce a tv show showing themselves crying on a dock? That'd be insane.
So..sleep well O' Codfather. For I know that my victory comes in the form of your nonacceptance of my challenge. Unfortunately, there's a few thousand other people here who know that now too.


Charlie, You may be the man out east. But in Chicago, ya aint nothin' but chum wearing cement shoes, my friend.


NOW CLICK THIS AND GET YER A$$ BACK TO THE HOME PAGE!

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