4-25 SS Josh Bass and Pike

 Spring means a lot of things not the least of which can be bass fishing… But also, don’t forget pike.

 Who would have thunk it. I called up our regular correspondent, Josh Mills, who we rely on very heavily for his fishing knowledge, particularly as it relates to flyfishing. But Josh is not a one trick pony. In this  conversation, he’s going to be talking to us all about bass and pike fishing. “As spring progresses and the water starts to warm up we are going to start to get to a high level of pre-spawn activity, for smallmouth, large mouth, and especially pike. In Northeast Washington, there is quite a fishery going on with this pike and that is up by us on the Pend Oreille River. From what I understand, I think the magic number is somewhere around 45 to 50° in that water temperature, that is when they start to heat up and get the bite on. Fly anglers and gear anglers alike have been doing  extremely well up there. They’re going to manage that fishery for trophy pike fishery so they are lifting a lot of the bag limits. Go on up there and catch a mess of pike because they are up there, the numbers are good, but they are a little bit stunted in their size. Therefore you might catch a few what they call hammer handles, those are 5 to 10 pound fish, but then you might catch one that’s 30 pounds as well.”