When you think of a predatory fish, what are the first few species that come to mind? For many anglers, Northern Pike is among the most thrilling predators to catch. If fishing for northern pike is on your radar, today’s episode is a must-listen.

In this episode, we will break down sight fishing for Northern Pike with Matt Martin of Smooth River Guide. Find out his secrets to targeting big Northern Pike by sight. Here’s what you’ll learn:

  • Muskie vs Pike
  • Best time to target Northern Pike
  • Sight Fishing Northern Pike
    • How to Find Pike in Shallow Bays
    • Best Flies (and color) for Northern Pike Fishing
    • The perfect strip, and when the fish strike

Show Notes with Matt Martin on Sight Fishing for Northern Pike. Hit play below! 👇🏻

 

 

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(The full episode transcript is at the bottom of this blogpost) 👇🏻

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Fishing for Northern Pike
Photo credit: Nicolas Roman @salmographer on Instagram

Episode Chapters with Matt Martin on Sight Fishing for Northern Pike

Matt Martin grew up in Barrie, Ontario, and now lives in Midland, a town on the shores of Georgian Bay. Georgian Bay is known as the 30,000 Islands region. It’s the world’s largest freshwater archipelago.

Matt guides on over 50 lakes and a dozen rivers, targeting 14 different species. Northern Pike is definitely a top species to target, but it can still vary depending on where you are in the province.

Here’s a breakdown of the species you can fish in the area:

  • Smallmouth and Largemouth Bass
  • Northern Pike – Pike season runs from May to June and then again in September.
  • Walleye
  • Muskie
  • Chinook Salmon
  • Coho
  • Rainbow Trout
  • Steelhead
  • Brown Trout
Fishing for Northern Pike
Photo credit: Nicolas Roman @salmographer on Instagram

Muskie vs Pike

Unlike pike, which are easier to catch, muskies are tough. You might not even see one all day, and the chances of getting a hit are low. Muskies are more challenging to catch because they have a lower population and a bigger home range.

For those who want to target muskie, Matt recommends booking more than one day to increase your chances.

Best Time to Go Fishing for Northern Pike

The best time for northern pike fishing is in the spring. The season opens on May 1st in Ontario, and that’s when pike are easiest to catch. Here’s why:

  1. In the first week of May, pike can be found in less than two feet of water, sunbathing in sandy bottom bays.
  2. The main lake water is still cold (around 42-43°F), but the back bays warm up to the 50s. Pike use the warmer water to increase their metabolism.

According to Matt, sight fishing for pike is a whole new level of fun.

Fishing for Northern Pike
Photo credit: Nicolas Roman @salmographer on Instagram

Sight Fishing for Northern Pike

Matt uses an 18-foot Lund Deep V fishing boat for sight fishing. He says it’s perfect for the larger lakes, especially when the waves get rough. Matt uses advanced gear like a Minn Kota motor and Garmin LiveScope to spot pike before casting.

Fishing for Northern Pike in Shallow Bays

In the spring, focus on large, warm bays, especially those near river mouths. These areas draw pike because they offer the perfect hiding spots in weeds or along logs, where pike can ambush prey. Pike are ambush predators, so they wait below the surface to attack.

When fishing for pike, Matt says to keep your fly around 2 to 4 feet above the fish because pike strike from below.

Best Flies for Fishing Northern Pike

Fishing for Northern Pike

Matt prefers using bright, easy-to-see flies when fishing for pike, especially in spring. He avoids natural tones and uses colors like white, yellow, or bright pink.

The key is using flies that mimic the white belly of baitfish. Pike are drawn to movement, so keep that fly above them and use a strip to get their attention.

Stripping Your Fly for Pike

Fishing for Northern Pike
Photo credit: Nicolas Roman @salmographer on Instagram

The way you strip your fly is crucial for catching pike. Most strikes happen during the pause between strips, not while you’re actively moving the fly.

  • For some flies, like the Game Changer, Matt recommends a quick, short strip with a half-second pause to let the fly sink a bit.
  • Other flies like the Yard Sale need a longer strip with a hard kick at the end to make the fly wobble like an injured fish.

Essential Gear for Catching Big Northern Pike

Pike can be super aggressive, so it’s key to be prepared with the right gear to protect you and the fish. Here are some things to remember when fishing for Northern Pike:

  • Use a large, deep net to keep the fish in the water while you unhook it.
  • Have multiple sets of tools like jaw spreaders and pliers for safe handling.
  • Protect the fish to make sure they’re safely released after catching them.
         

Pike can live up to 20–25 years in the wild. Matt says it’s okay to keep smaller ones (around 27 inches), but those big 40-inch fish should go back in the water. If you keep one, make sure it’s injured and can’t survive being released.

Fishing for Northern Pike
Photo credit: Nicolas Roman @salmographer on Instagram

Matt’s Go-to Tips for Fishing for Northern Pike

  1. Start in Shallow Bays
  2. Bring Multiple Rods and Lines
    • Use 8-10 weight rods and carry lines with different sinking rates: floating, intermediate, type 3, and type 5.
  3. Add a 12-inch section of 20-25 lb bite wire to your leader.
  4. Short Leaders Work Best
  5. Use Durable Pike Lines
  6. Focus on bays with creeks, green weeds, and the right structure.

Matt’s final advice? Stick with it and have faith—pike are out there!


Follow Matt on Instagram 👉🏻 @smooth.river.guiding

Visit their website at SmoothRiver.ca.

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Read the Full Podcast Transcript Below

Episode Transcript
Dave (2s): When you think of a predatory fish, what are the first few species that come to your mind and what is it that makes those species so special? Today we are going to break down Northern Pike from one of the best guides in Ontario, and today you’re gonna find out how he does it and how to find Big Pike by site. This is the Wet Fly Swing podcast where I show you the best places to travel to for fly fishing, how to find the best resources and tools to prepare for that big trip, And what you can do to give back to the fish species we all love. How’s it going? I’m Dave host of the We Fly Swing podcast. I’ve been fly fishing since I was a little kid. I grew up around a little fly shop and have created one of the largest fly fishing podcasts in this country. I’ve also interviewed more of the greatest fly anglers and guides than just about anyone out there. Dave (45s): Matt Martin, smooth River Guide and an expert on targeting big Northern Pike by sight is gonna share all of his best secrets today. If you’re gonna find out where to find the best bays and why you should be starting from the deep water and fishing in towards the shallow, we’re gonna get into that today. You’re gonna find out what the perfect strip is and when the fish will strike. We’re gonna talk about that today, the exact strip you need to do, and also what the perfect color is that you’re gonna be needing to have success out there. We’re gonna get into all today, a bunch of tips and tricks, plus you’re gonna find out how Matt site fishes for Big Pike and how you can do the same. We’re gonna get into it. Seeing the fish, seeing the fly, seeing the take. It’s all here today. Dave (1m 24s): Ontario at its finest. Here he is. Matt Martin from Smooth River ca. How are you doing, Matt? Matt (1m 33s): I’m doing fantastic, Dave. How are you today? Dave (1m 35s): Great, great. Yeah, this is gonna be a fun conversation Today. We are gonna get into Northern Pike. We’ve talked some more Northern Pike over the years. We’ve talked Muskie and really up where you are. Ontario, you know, I think is a hotspot. We’ve heard a lot about it and I think we talked off air though. You got the so fly crew coming on. We just did a podcast with them and there’s a bunch of great people and we’ve actually, it feels like we’ve been hitting Ontario hard recently because we’ve been connecting with the New Fly Fisher and I’ve had a bunch of episodes with them that are coming up here, so it’s been fun, but, but gimme an update. What’s going on now? It’s almost, when this goes out, it’s gonna be kind of early February as it, it’s kind of crazy right now. It’s pretty cold up there, right? Matt (2m 13s): Yeah. Ex extremely cold. You know, our, this year we’ve actually had our first, what feels like real winter in the last like five years. We’ve had snow and ice right from the beginning of December. And typically, you know, the last five years, some of our lakes haven’t even froze over. So now I, I even went out on the ice just yesterday and, and we had like 14 inches of ice in one spot that last year didn’t freeze over, so pretty crazy. Wow. Yeah, so we’re middle of winter right now. It’s perfect time for me to be, you know, getting all the prep done for the air, tying a lot of flies, you know, going on podcasts like yours and yeah, hosting conversations with local live fishing groups and just, you know, working on marketing and getting myself out there pumping up trips for next year. Matt (2m 55s): And I’m seeing bookings roll in faster than ever, which is fantastic. So yeah, it’s that prep time of year that I always look forward to. Dave (3m 2s): Yeah, this is the time when you live, right? The cold, whatever, wherever you’re at, I guess, unless you’re in San Diego or something like that where it’s a little different. Matt (3m 9s): Exactly. Now, now the, now the real work begins this time of year. The the guiding is the fun work. Dave (3m 16s): Yeah, exactly. Did you, did you grow up in Ontario? Matt (3m 19s): Yeah, yeah. I grew up in a town called Berry about an hour north of Toronto. You know, it’s kind of now been absorbed by what we call the GTA, the greater Toronto area. Sure. You know, people live in Berry and commute to Toronto for work, but I, I live just north of Barry now. I live in the town called Midland on the shores of Georgian Bay, known as the 30,000 Islander region. It’s the, the world’s largest freshwater archipelago. It’s like over a million acres of, you know, of bay. It’s off of Lake Huron. So people will probably have heard of Lake Huron. Georgian Bay is just the other side of the peninsula there in Ontario between, I guess it’d be Michigan and Ontario. Yeah, it’s huge. Matt (3m 60s): It’s a fantastic spot if you’re an angler. You know, I’m fortunate enough as a guide that I, I get to guide for, I think it’s 14 species and on, I think I’m, at this point I have like 50 lakes that I’m comfortable on and about a dozen rivers. So like we’ve got so many options for anglers up in this area and you know, even though it’s close to, you know, major population, Toronto’s not small, that vta a is like 8 million people an hour north. You’re, you’re on bodies of water where maybe you don’t see anyone all day. It’s crazy. Dave (4m 29s): That is cool. Yeah, that’s always the, I think that’s why, you know, Ontario and really just Canada in general is a little bit better in a lot of ways. You can get out and away from the city, away from the pressure. I mean, how does that look for Northern Pike? Is it like if you say if you look at the species up in Ontario, you’ve got a number of big ones. Is that a top species? Is that number one? Or what, what do you think is the biggest species you’re out chasing? Matt (4m 50s): Well, you know, for me, yeah, so what am I chasing you at? It’s hard to say across the whole province ’cause it’s huge, right? Ontario. Yeah, it’s like bigger, as bigger, slightly bigger than Texas. So the, what do you call it? The, the species like population demographic. It, it changes is where you are in the province. But where I am, I would say some of the most popular fish would be, you know, in the river or in the lake, sorry, is is definitely the Basque species. So like small mouth and large mouth, closely followed by pike, walleye muskie. And then we also have a huge population of, you know, inland like inland anadromous fish or patrius fish like Chinook salmon coho and rainbows. But in the rivers, yeah, our ANGs are really chasing, you know, rainbows or people call, you know, the, the great lake steelhead. Matt (5m 34s): And then we do have some fantastic brown trail fishing on a couple different rivers here as well. So it’s really diverse. But yeah, I think for me may and most of June is, is Pike time and then again back into September. So I probably do a, if I do a, about 200 trips a year, probably about 40 of them or so are, are pike focused. And then a, a large percentage, probably 80 plus are bass, and then the rest is steelhead and trout with some other cool stuff mixed in there as well. So yeah, pike are popular. Yeah. You know what, you know, you mentioned Muskie and, and I love muskie. I I think they’re a very addicting fish. Yeah. Because Dave (6m 12s): Of the pain. Is it more painful to, it’s more painful to chase a Musky then a steelhead, right? Matt (6m 17s): Oh my gosh, I, you know what, maybe steelhead on the swing is very similar, you know, just the fact that that one opportunity a day might be your only shot with Muskie it’s the same, but the difference is like, you might not even see one, you know, you might not see one porus or, or swirl in a tail out, it just might be zero signs of life, but with all that pain comes massive highs when you get one. You know, even just seeing one, I’ve been fortunate enough to catch a lot of muskie on fly and conventional gear over my life, but I never get bored of it. You know, everyone’s just so exciting. But the thing is with Muskie is it is such a grind, you know, if people book a muskie day with them, I highly recommend to book two or three if they’re really dead set on catching a fish, Dave (7m 0s): Right? That’s the way to do it. Yeah. Book multiple Matt (7m 3s): These. Yeah, you they wanna find the ultimate optimal weather, optimal wind, moon phase, all that kind of stuff. But with Pike, they’re fly rodders fish, you know, like I take a lot of people out that are, you know, long-term fly anglers and they bring a friend along that maybe doesn’t know how to double haul and you know, we give ’em the spinning rod and fly will, I mean 90% of the time out fish spinning gear for spring. No kidding. It is so effective. And the numbers that we get up here are incredible. While we do still have shots at fish in that upper 30 to 40 inch range, we get insane numbers of fish in that, you know, 30 to 34 inch range. An average day I, I would say has gotta be, you know, close to 30 interactions with pike. Matt (7m 44s): You know, whether they’re hits or fish on or fish lost with muskie a good day seeing one, you know, so you know, these pike, they’re a great way to dive into warm water, fly fishing, but also just fishing for predator fish in general. Dave (7m 58s): Yeah. And that’s always the question always seems like from somebody in the outside, and I’m hoping to, to get up and do more, you know, fishing in your neck of the woods, but you know, you got pike, you got muskie, it seems like pike would be the obvious choice, you know? Oh yeah. Like, like why is the, is the musky just because we, we like the pain and, and it’s like how, how are they different? What is the biggest difference other than one’s harder to catch? Matt (8m 19s): Yeah, that’s the biggest thing is, is they’re harder to catch because of their population’s lower. They have a larger home range even in lakes that don’t get much pressure. Like I cut my teeth guiding for Musky on Lake of the Woods in northwestern Ontario when I was in college. And that lake between there and another lake up there called La Sewell or Eagle Lake. Those lakes are absolutely full of Musky, but like a good day is still one in the boat. Right. And they’re as full as possible. Those lakes don’t receive the pressure and those fish are still spread out pike. They seem to be a little bit more comfortable with competition, which is also a problem when pike get into lakes that are predominantly dominated by Muskie Pike can overt or outcompete muskie and actually drive the population to be non-existent. Matt (9m 6s): We’re seeing that on some of our inland bodies of water that never traditionally had pike, which since our lakes have been connected with like lock systems, pike have migrated into some of them. And the downfall is, you know, we’re seeing less muskie, but now we’re also seeing the hybrids, the tiger muskie, which is kind of cool. So it’s tough, but yeah. Why, why are they different? Who knows? Yeah. Dave (9m 28s): Wow. So you’re seeing Tiger Muskie, like just na naturally they’re spawning in the wild. Matt (9m 33s): Yeah, yeah. We don’t stalk ’em here. They’re natural reproducing tigers. Oh wow. And we got two of them last year, which was cool. Dave (9m 40s): What do they look like? It’s a mix between a straight mix between a muskie and a, and a pike and Matt (9m 45s): A northern. Yeah. So think of, it’s very similar, but think of the markings on a tiger trout, but on a muskie, those wiggly, you know, those wiggly lines down the side, the muskie are green with like a dark green barring. They have the tail of a pike. So the tips of the tails and all the fins are rounded instead of a sharp oh, like sharp angle, like a sharp 90 or 45 degree. They’re all rounded over, they’re supposed to be sterile. I’ve heard mixed reviews on that, that they, they, the, the wild ones can also continue to spawn depending on who you talk to, I’m not sure. But they’re just, they’re cool fish. And there are lakes like, you know, where I live on Georgian Bay, like Musky fishing is, is a major part of our local like attraction. Matt (10m 28s): Especially in the fall. They get people up here coming from Musky when they they’re, but they’re like, it’s a huge lake. So the muske and pike have tons of room and they occupy different niches. That’s something I should say why they’re different too is is Pike are, you know, in the fly fishing world known as a warm water fish, but technically like they’re cold water fish. My optimal temperature range in Fahrenheit for these fish is 50 like to 60 degrees. So cold water. And that’s when they’re shallow. We’re talking like one to three feet of water. As it gets warmer, they’re going deep like they can, we’ve caught, we’ve caught pike out, you know, lake trout fishing in the summer, like jigging in like 80, 90 feet of water and you’re not targeting them, but like, it, it, they’re down there muskie, those fish have a much larger temperature range. Matt (11m 12s): And in the summer, like the upper limit I would say to ethically target them is in that upper 70 degree window and then shut it off once you get really close to 80 or or above 80, like, you know, leave Malone or go find colder water. The great thing about Ontario is a lot of our lakes and rivers don’t break 80 so you can fish for ’em all summer. When I’ve got friends that guide down the states and Virginia that have to, you know, cut off their season once June rolls around till end of September, they don’t fish for Musky ’cause water temperas are too high. We’ve got a season here that opens up either 1st of June or the third week in June and runs all the way till December. And you can pretty much ethically target them anytime year in that time range, which is cool. Matt (11m 54s): So those muskie will be right up in the shallow weeds all summer. The big mamas, those big females, they might be out and depending on the lake and the forage base out deep chasing white fish and Ciscos with the pike. But the, you know, there are a large portion of those fish that do love to live up in the cattails, in the reeds eating, muskrats, eating, you know, eating ducklings, stuff like that. So it’s, they’re really, they’re really cool fish. But pike are definitely more user friendly for any angler. Like, yeah, I’ve cut lots of muskie on gear and, and on and on fly, but pikes still get me so excited because you can go out pike fishing and have fun, like you’re gonna get awesome eats at the boat side. Matt (12m 37s): You’re gonna have explosive hard hits far out on a cast. They can get big, they can get 20 pounds or more and you never know, like, one thing I always try to tell my guests is a pike doesn’t know if it’s 28 inches or 40 inches, it’s gonna hit your fly so hard and it’s gonna take your fly deep every time. It just, it doesn’t know how big it is or how small it is, it’s just aggressive and it’s gonna leave you having a great time. So I highly recommend Pike for anybody that’s looking to get into, like if you love streamer fishing for brown trout, there’s no way you’re not gonna love stream or fishing for Pike. It’s just so addicting. Dave (13m 11s): That’s perfect. And, and you had mentioned a co a little bit on the timing, so if somebody was looking out to, you know, book some time with you, you’re saying it, it kinda starts in the spring or what is the best time on on this? Matt (13m 21s): Sure, yeah, yeah. Spring is optimal. So I’m looking, most of our areas here that eye guides open up on May 1st. We have very strict fishing seasons in, in Ontario or a lot in Canada in general. Yeah. So we can’t fish for them. Basically our ice fishing season stops March 1st on Georgian Bay. It starts again on May 1st and then May 1st until the end of March I can fish for them. But that time of year where they’re gonna be most accessible to a fly angler is gonna be May and then maybe the first week or 2nd of June if the temperatures stay Dave (13m 54s): Low. And is that just because the temperatures, because eventually the summer gets a little too warm, they go deeper. Matt (13m 59s): You got it. Yeah. So they, they typically spawn at the ice out or just while there’s still ice on the lake and they’re running up like the local, like estuaries, river mills, weedy bays and doing their spawn. So by May 1st they’re completely done their spawn and they’re back feeding. So our areas when, when you see fishing seasons in Ontario, it’s they’re, they’re trying to close them down during spawns. So we just don’t have the ability. There are some lakes where they’re considered invasive and they’re open all year, like I was talking about with Muskie. But the bigger, more successful bodies of water I guide are, are open on May 1st and they’re up shallow, like we’re first week of May, it’s not uncommon to catch some of our biggest fish of the year in less than two feet of water. Matt (14m 43s): You know, sitting out on sandy bottom bays sunbathing, just trying to warm up the main lake. Water temperature might be 42, 43 degrees and then the back bays could be in those fifties and those fish are just in their sunbathing and they’re not in their feeding. Like a lot of people think they’re gonna go up shallow and feed. If you go into these bays, very rarely are you gonna see a lot of bait fish and a lot of fish in there for them to eat. But what they’re doing is increasing their metabolism to head back out and feed. So as they warm up cold-blooded creature, right, they’re gonna sun warm up and when that fly comes across their nose, they just can’t say no. Right. It’s right. It’s like, oh cool, there is food here and they tank it and pike fishing on the fly is fun, but sight fishing for pike on the fly, that’s just a whole other level. Matt (15m 28s): Seeing your fish, making your cast, watching them explode on it, it’s wow, it just gets, I’m talking about it right now and I’m just like, can I fast forward through the next two months? Dave (15m 37s): Yeah, so that’s gonna be, so sight fishing is the, and that happens may, June. Matt (15m 41s): Yeah, and it’s, yeah, definitely may. And then as the month progresses through May and those water temperatures, there’s a magic number I find, and that’s 60 degrees. They move out of the shallows and they go into those first drop offs and weed lines. So they might be in like seven to 10 feet of water and holding right on the edges of those bays near, you know, some main lake structure. So where like a, a rocky point comes out and, and basically they’re just sitting on those weed lines waiting for food and it all comes down to where they’re comfortable water temperature wise. So they’re gonna try and find that cold water where there’s still food available. So they start moving out. That’s when we start switching from, you know, early spring in, in May we’re we’re using floating lines, maybe intermediate lines, but by mid to end of May, we’re already down fishing type three lines, type five lines, just getting a little deeper and also increasing the size of our flies. Matt (16m 30s): A lot of people see pipe flies and they think, oh, I gotta use these, you know, 10 inch flies with like wiggle tails and all these kind of cool stuff. While those do work in the early season, these fish are cold, metabolism is low. Also the bait fish that are around are also slightly smaller as it’s beginning of the year. Like the ba the young perch might only be three or four inches long. So we’re typically fishing flies that are four to five inches that first week and every week we almost add like an inch. Oh, okay. As we go towards June and then, and then they get really hard on the fly once, you know, early to mid-June hits, they go out into 20 plus feet of water and it’s, it’s time to target other fish For me. Matt (17m 11s): Really, it’s muskie opens and I, I got like all the cool prehistoric fish like boan and guard that we do. Oh, huge season on and then muskie and then bass opens and it’s just like, it just continuously rolls until September. Dave (17m 23s): It’s a free for all. Matt (17m 24s): Oh yeah. And then the fish come right back, the pipe come right back up in September and do the same thing all over again. So it’s super addictive. Dave (17m 31s): Wow. So in September, once the water’s cool again, then they come back to the shop for the same reason, just to warm up again. Yeah, kind Matt (17m 38s): Of. Yeah. That they’d be like in those late may spots. So weed lines, near rocks, maybe not right up in two feet of water, but adjacent to spawning locations. And they’ll spend their winter in those bays or close to those bays feeding up for the spawn when they, again spawn at ice out when they’re right up in the shallows, you know, a foot of water or less. Wow. It’s pretty cool. It’s a, it’s a, the great thing about Ontario, no matter when you come here, there’s always some cool fish to fish for. And as you go further north in Ontario, like I, I take a week off every year to go on a fishing trip with my dad and one of my best friends. And we go pike fishing up in an area called Lake Ngan, which is like Thunder Bay, like it’s way up Dave (18m 18s): There. Is that like an hour from the Georgian Bay? Matt (18m 22s): No, it’s like, so from where I live, it’s 14 hours north. Oh, Dave (18m 26s): Way Matt (18m 26s): Up there. Yeah, it’s a drive, but it’s on Lake North end of Lake Superior. Okay. So way up there. Anyways, it’s, it’s incredible. But we go in the summer and the water’s still cold, water’s still in the fifties, so ideal temperature. And those fish are still in like five to seven feet of water. Right. Those big pi, we’re talking like huge pike at that point. Like these fish are averaging 35 to 36 inches and our biggest one this past year was 45 inches. And you know, I think we broke 20 over 40 inches in like four days of fishing this year. It was crazy for the rest year ever. But yeah, just, you know, even if you come up in the middle of summer, whether, you know, if you’re, if it’s too warm for where I am, you can always head north. And there’s so many lodges in Ontario where like pike are available all year. Matt (19m 10s): We have like an insane amount of fishing lodges in Ontario. It’s crazy just due to how many, how many bodies of water we have. So as you go north of let’s say likes St. Marie, that’s when you get what I would consider Northern Ontario. You can fish for big pike, shallow all year. Dave (19m 27s): Pescador on the fly offers a full range of fly fishing gear for any angler and any budget with premium rods delivered directly to you. This saves you money by eliminating the middleman markup. The L ray G six is the most packable high performance fly rod on the market, performing like a four section rod. But with unmatched portability, never fly without your G six. Discover the l ray series and more at pescador on the fly.com. Trout Routes is the most comprehensive mapping app for trout anglers with over 50,000 trout streams, 350,000 access points, public land maps and more trout routes is the number one resource for navigating, researching and exploring trout streams. Dave (20m 9s): You can download trout routes for free in the app store today. Just search for trout routes on your phone and take your exploration to the next level. That’s trout routes. T-R-O-U-T-R-O-U-T-E-S. So when you’re on, let’s just take it early in the season, you’re talk about that site fishing. What, first of all, how are you getting there? What, what’s the, you know, boat you’re using? Yeah, Matt (20m 33s): So I guide out of an 18 foot Lund Deep, the fishing boat. It’s kind of perfect for the bigger lakes that I got on just due to the size of the swell and waves that can kick up. So it’s not like a, you know, a low sided john boat or bass boat. It’s not flat sided, it’s still got pretty low draft. I think I can get into, you know, a foot of water without hitting bottom, you know, and at that point, if we’re going shallower, I’ve been known to get out and just drag the boat slowly instead of kicking up weeds with the trolling motor or, or use my push pull. Like I’ve, I’ve got a push pull as well to pull you through the, the, the flats. But yeah, it’s, it’s got all the updated electronics. So you know, the, the min coda motor with like spot lock, it’s all GPS connected. Matt (21m 14s): I have like the, the Garmin live scope, so we’re like Dave (21m 17s): Fishing. So this is like the game, this is like the gamify. This is, is this the sort of thing, we’ve talked a little bit about this, I’ve never seen it, but we you’re, it’s almost like you’re on a video game, you can just see the fish. It Matt (21m 25s): Can, yeah, it can be, yeah. It’s for like, for deeper water fish. Like if we’re targeting piped later in the season, so talking like that June timeframe, we can go off of weed edges and drop down the, you know, the transducer on the live scope and look forward comfortably 60 to 70 feet in front of the boat in our lake. Just due to the amount of sediment in the water. It, it, it starts to get a lot of interference if we go try to go further than that, but we can kind of scan weed lines and actually spot fish before we even make casts. Dave (21m 51s): And how, well when you look at those, can you do, what does the fish look like when you’re on the Matt (21m 55s): Endoscope? It looks, it looks like a pike really. It is literally the shape. Dave (21m 59s): It’s not just a blurry, it’s a, it’s real clear. Matt (22m 2s): Yeah. The technology has come so far in such a short period of time. You know, I can tell, you know, most of the time I can tell species or at least like body types apart, so like pike and Muskie, they look the same. I can tell, you know, a walleye looks different than a small mouth and a small mouth and a carp kind of look the same. It’s pretty neat. But yeah, so I have all, you know, coming from like, you know, the traditional fishing guide here was a conventional guide with all the electronics. You can’t be, I don’t want holding yourself back by not acknowledging what’s out there. So even for fly fishing, like it’s so useful. We’ve had, you know, guide days for Muskie where I’ve watched someone cast a Buford and I find it with the live scope and, and we’re watching that fly from 60 feet away and all of a sudden we see a muskie following it at 60 feet away and we can see it on the screen, you know, and we’ve been able to turn those fish into biters before they even get back to the boat just due to now being able to sight fish. Dave (22m 58s): And so you can see your fly as well, you can see your fly on as Matt (23m 1s): Well. Yeah. Yeah. It’s pretty wild. Some flies better than others, but like musky fly show up perfectly fine if you’re using like a wooly bugger will not show up. But if you use like a clouser with lead eyes, it shows up no problem. So it’s pretty cool, cool technology and it, it’s incredibly useful for the small mouth fishery that I have here. Often our small mouth, I mean we’re talking pike, but often our small mouth are, are suspended over deep water. There’s been some really cool learnings that I’ve had this year where, you know, I’m pounding a shoreline with some guests and we’re catching some bass off, some rock piles and I just sweep out behind the boat looking out into the mid lake, let’s say 70 or 80 feet of water and there’s bass schooled up 10 feet below the surface just behind us chasing bait and we never would’ve seen them. Matt (23m 45s): And you throw your clouder over there and you know, you’re getting double headers. It’s so crazy. Like those fish have never seen a presentation just throwing out into the middle of a lake. You know, it’s pretty unique or not unique, it’s just, it’s it’s really cool what we’ve learned from it from fish behavior. So yeah, that’s kind of the outfit that I run. I got room for two fly anglers. I can get three flying anglers on there if people are comfortable taking turns, you know, just switching out every fish type thing. And it’s a, it’s a blast because we can get into these shallow back bays. It’s an aluminum boat. I’m not worried about, you know, dragging it off of a rock slowly or bumping it off shore lines. Yeah. Dave (24m 21s): How do you get into the back bays? How do you get into the really shallow stuff? Yeah, Matt (24m 25s): That’s where, that’s where like, you know, we got across open expanses of water. Like Georgian bay’s huge. It’s, it’s hard to fathom until you’ve been here. It can be a sea. Like at times if I’m looking at weather and I see winds that are like 15 miles an hour or more, I’m like telling people it’s getting kind of windy and that’s not even that windy. Right, right. It’s just so big that it gets a serious swell, it gets a ground swell almost coming in. So you’re getting four or five foot, you know, rollers coming through the bay. So that’s where having a boat like I’ve got with the high sides, you can go slow, you know, you’re not gonna be going 40 miles an hour but you, you can comfortably clip around it like 10 miles an hour and get through those waves and get over to where it’s sheltered. And the great thing about these, about Georgian base, esp, especially where I guide in in the 30,000 island region, is the amount of back days, like I say, 30,000 islands. Matt (25m 13s): And that’s legitimate. That’s a estimate. And if the water drops a foot, you probably got another 30,000 more the amount of protection that you have by looking at wind direction. And that’s, we’re hiring someone that’s on the water all the time. We’ll be able to like, you know, adjust day of and be like, actually, you know, meet me at this boat launch because we can, you know, we’re protected on this side of the bay the whole time and you know, it might be windy, it might be blowing 20, but this side of the bay is gonna be completely sheltered and we’ll be, we’ll be fine all day. It’s, yeah, you just, you’re, you take your boat, you rip over to them. It’s, I’m not afraid of burning gas. Like there’s times on our days where I’m running an hour at 40 miles plus an hour to start the day. Matt (25m 54s): Like it’s big, you know, and we’ll, we’ll fish our butts off for seven or eight hours and then run that hour back. Dave (25m 59s): Huh? Is that what it takes to drive? If you were go lengthwise across Geor and Bay, what does that take at 40, 40 miles? Matt (26m 6s): I couldn’t do it. It’s over a million acres. Like I would need multiple stops. Dave (26m 9s): Oh no kidding. You couldn’t, you wouldn’t have enough gas to make it across Geor and Bay. Matt (26m 14s): Yeah, I can like where I literally, if you look on a map, it’s on the southeast corner called Severn Sound and you can go across, like I can go across, it’s probably if I’m at full speed, I can go from where I launch in Midland over to a town called Honey Harbor in about 25 minutes at full speed. Oh Dave (26m 30s): Okay. Yeah you can, Matt (26m 30s): Yeah but like that’s a small portion of the bay. Like Georgian Bay itself is as wide as Lake Ontario, like as wide as Lake Ontario is from Toronto to New York. Like it’s huge. So yeah, I I, you know, I wouldn’t do it. It it’s wide open. It’d be dangerous. There’d be no way. I mean if you get the right day, I guess you could and you brought extra gas. But you know, you just, the great thing is you just adjust your launch location. I have so many launches and if I, I show people my map at the beginning of the day with like even just on my phone on my, you know, my Google Maps pins and I’m like, well where do you wanna go? And they just have a laugh ’cause there’s just literally thousands of proven bays where I’ve caught pike. Dave (27m 10s): Can you go from Georgia and Bay and in the boat cross out into Lake Huron and go over to to Detroit? Sure, Matt (27m 16s): Yeah. If you wanted to, you could. A lot of people do. We get a lot of people that you come from the states come up for the summer, you know, take their bigger, you know, sailboats or mini yachts and come up and spend time and just drive they the whole Great Lakes network. They do. Yeah. And then we even have something called the Trent s Waterway, which connects Georgian Bay to Lake Ontario. Dave (27m 36s): Oh no kidding. Like Matt (27m 37s): Through inland. Okay. Inland ways and smaller lakes. And that takes a lot of people like eight or nine days to complete. It’s pretty cool. A lot of our lakes are interconnected. They Dave (27m 45s): Are like Lake isn’t, is Lake Michigan connected to Lake Huron to, could you go? Matt (27m 49s): Oh yeah. The Great Lakes are all connected. Yeah. Every one of them, right? They’re, they’re basically one big river system basically. Yeah. Yeah. It all flows down to, you know, lake Ontario and out of the St. Lawrence, right. Yeah. So yeah, it’s a big system. Dave (28m 2s): So yeah. So let’s take it back to, you know, a shallow bay and you’ve got, you know, early it’s in may talk about that. So you got the boat pulled in there. Maybe describe what it looks like to, you know, how are you getting into these fish? Sure. Is it easy, is it hard? What’s that look like? Matt (28m 16s): Sure. Yeah. So if we’re gonna start right from the kind of the beginning, you’re saying like getting into these bays, it all starts with a bit of prep, right? So you’re gonna wanna utilize the tools that are available to you in, in today’s world, not only do we have, you know, bathymetric charts like paper maps that you can use to find these bays. You also have it right in the palm of your hand, right? With like Google maps, I mentioned that earlier. It’s one of my biggest tools for locating new Spring Pike spots. You know, this time of year I’m just cruising maps and I’m just dropping potential way points just to check out. In the spring what I’m looking for is a, is a, is either one of two bays, one, if it’s a regular year where it’s really cold winter and we’ve got lots of water in the spring, I’m looking for those big bays. Matt (28m 59s): They might be a hundred acres, right? They’re huge and you could spend a whole day fishing those bays. But what that’s gonna do is draw the largest population of fish into those bays. More spawning room, more food, more cover, just perfect. And the way to make that even better is if it’s a shallow bay that’s quite warm with a river mouth or two that’s coming in. So whether it’s, it doesn’t have to be a big river, I’m talking rivers that might be five, six feet wide, just some current and some flow that will encourage these fish to come into, ’cause a lot of ’em spawn in river modes. So we’re gonna look for those areas. Bays that are facing south are a great option. A little bit more sun that time of year warming up the back corners, which is nice. Matt (29m 41s): And then the biggest thing is finding the right kind of weed, the white right kind of cover. So it’s no secret that pike glove cover and like weeds, they’re a lion weight predator, an ambush predator, right? They don’t particularly like swimming open expanses of water and looking for schooling bait fish. They wanna sit next to some logs or into a weed bed and wait for an injured bait fish to swim over their head and attack. So pike and muskie are the fastest freshwater fish on the strike in the world, which is crazy but it’s for a short period of time it’s only for like, I can’t remember the exact, it’s insane amount of speed but it’s for like a meter or two, right? Like it’s just explosive energy where they come up from underneath and inhale, wow, inhale and, and they, they do a big, you know, they eat and they turn their body 180 degrees and you just see this big like circle in the water boil, right as we call it. Matt (30m 32s): So they live in their in and they’re waiting to attack from the bottom. And that’s really important in your fly line selection and your fly selection. You do not want to fish underneath these fish with like small mouth. You know, you’re dragging crayfish off the rocks, you’re dragging goby flies off the rocks ’cause they’re down there picking apart. The bottom pike are if they’re, if you look at them the way their eyes are oriented similar to a trout, they’re on that upper portion of their head and they’re looking up just like you wouldn’t, you know, euro nph underneath fish, you want to get above them. Same thing with pike. Keep those flies above them, 2, 3, 4 feet above them, they’re gonna close that distance no time. So we’re looking for those big bays. A lot of people and and myself even, even then probably 10 years ago I was so attracted to those back sections of the bays right away at the early season like oh that’s the warmest water, that’s where they’re gonna be. Matt (31m 20s): And you know what, probably 80 to 90% of the fish will be there, but the average size will be quite a bit smaller. Those will a lot of the time on opening day, if you go right into the back, you’re probably gonna have those 20, 30 fish days or more. But a lot of them might be 24 to 30 inches or less. Like they’re those male fish that are leftover, that are hungry. There’s the odd big one up in there still. But don’t ignore the mouths of the base. Find that first drop off and fish your way from the mouth to the back. Don’t start at the back and work your way to the mouth, which is what I used to do. I find if I want to get into bigger fish, like it depends on my, on my guests. Like if they’re stoked on just catching a lot of fish, we’re gonna go right into those back corners and we’re just gonna fish, you know, three, four feet of water with unweighted flies, unw and maybe a intermediate line and and just catch a lot of fish. Matt (32m 10s): But if people are like, yeah I’ve caught pike, I really enjoy pike but I really want to try to catch my first 40 here. We’re gonna be fishing that deeper water, not super deep, seven to 10 feet and we’re gonna fish type three lines, type five lines just to get the fly gown a little bit. And the fly still might only be two or three feet below the surface. One of my, I don’t wanna say that it’s a rule but it’s kind of my goal is in the spring I always wanna see the fly. I wanna see that fly coming back to the boat. You know, you don’t wanna be dredge and bottom like I said. So if we can keep that fly two to three feet below the surface and the water here is really clear, you know, and use a fly that you can see. So that’s really important too. I don’t use a lot of natural tones. Matt (32m 50s): I use a lot of whites and yellows or funny enough bright pink. Yeah pink flies that I can see. It seems to work better. It’s almost like it looks a little different. And one thing you always have to remember in in, in fly design, especially for pike and muskie when you’re fishing above their heads, every fish, every bait fish or predator fish even in our area has a white belly. So using something that’s a light colored fly, it’s above their heads. They don’t see the back of it, they don’t care. My best fly last year was a five inch white polar changer, all white made with polar fiber and chocolates, filler flash, really easy fly to see and it absolutely crushed and it’s just white. There’s no bait fish here that’s completely white. Matt (33m 32s): But the great thing is with a white belly or a white fly, it could be a perch, it could be a baby pike, it could be a smelt, it could be a Cisco, gotcha, it could be a bass and the pike just see movement and it comes down to the strip as well. So you know, we’re starting on the outside, we’ve got the fly, we’ve got the right line, we’re working our way back. What’s really important is how you strip your fly. I think that’s really what I work on the most throughout the day is how to show the fish the fly properly. And I would say 90% of our fish come on the paws. They don’t come on the actual strip. Very rarely you’re mid strip and you get a strike. It’s you know, whether we’re site fishing for these fish or we’re in deeper water and we can see our fly, we’re looking for the strike like we’re gonna see the strike every time, which is so addictive. Matt (34m 17s): Every time you see a swirl, every time you see a flash it’s awesome. Jeez. We’re gonna be stripping with like depending on the fly, if it’s a game changer, shorter wrap, more quick strips that have like a half second pause between strips and that fly. It’ll give it that one second to just kind of hang up and kind of just start to sink a little bit. Looking like that injured bait fish, if we’re using a fly, like a yard sale, which is another one of my best flies for pike, it’s gonna be a bit of a longer strip but with like a strip to a kick, you know you’ll have that last three or four inches of your strip be like a harder quicker kick and that’ll cause the fly to walk left and right and that fly design, a lot of pipe flies have like large heads, same with musky flies to push a lot of water but to cause the fly to kick out left and right and look more like an injured bait fish instead of just coming straight through the water. Matt (35m 4s): These fisher really dialed into hitting injured bait fish. They’re not looking for a hard meal, they don’t wanna chase something down, they wanna like pounce on something that’s barely getting by. In fact, my flies do better after they’ve caught about a hundred pike, you know, they start getting shredded. How Dave (35m 21s): Do you make that original fly? How do you make it look? Are you tying it to make it look wounded and the way you strip or how do you make it look wounded? Matt (35m 28s): It’s definitely, yeah it’s a combination, right? So like those large heads that push a lot of water and then the strip where you have those like, well depending on the fly design area it really comes down. But like a game changer, like a more rapid one foot strip seems to work better but with like a half second pause between strips and 90% of the fish will come on that half second pause. The great thing about it is they eat flies really well. So pike or muskie, even bass to a degree are are like suction feeders. So like they come up behind something or beside it and open their mouth and that rapid opening of the mouth creates negative pressure and pulls the fly or lure into their face. The benefit of a fly is it’s so supple, right? Matt (36m 9s): It’s neutrally buoyant most of the time I don’t use weighted flies ’cause we use a weighted line to get them down and when they open their mouth that fly just goes way back. Like it’s very positive eats most of the time you hook up. The big thing is though is to ensure that, or the great thing about that stripping technique is everything’s a strip set. So if you, you know, try to coax yourself into reducing trout sets, which is definitely something you want to do. If you make your strip hard enough that every strip to action your fly is also powerful enough to set the hook. Oh cool. So it doesn’t have to be like long to do a strip set, it just has to be fast and shark. So that, and then that pause is when they’ll eat and then you’ll just go into another strip instinctively thinking you’re moving your fly and you’ve got a fish on. Matt (36m 50s): The big thing with that though is ’cause they take the fly so well and pike come in all sizes, right Muskie they do as well but they seem to start at like 30 inches or or bigger like 35 and go up Pike can be like, you know, 20 inches and taking a six or seven inch fly. Like they’re, and while that’s, while that’s fun, it, it is also you’ve gotta be ready to remove hooks that are deep. Like they’ll take an eight inch fly, a 20 inch fish down the throat. So the biggest thing with pipe flies is typically I don’t run tandem hooks, I just run one hook in the head. If I miss a few fish a day because of it, it’s totally worth it. And then a lot of the time we run Barbless ’cause it’s easier to remove them and like we talked about Lake GaN briefly, it’s entirely barbless hook, fishery, single hook and like we’re targeting these large pike and we don’t miss them. Matt (37m 40s): Like we, we might lose a couple of fish a week because of Barbs, but that’s probably more ’cause of a bad, bad hook set, right? Like that’s really bad hook set and low pressure. That’s really what it comes down to. Barbs, you know, don’t hook the fish, they hold the fish when you make a mistake, right? Yeah exactly. Keep ’em tight and you’re good to go. The big thing with anything that I have to make sure everybody’s like I get a lot of messages like maybe they don’t live near me and they want to know what we’re doing to catch pike. I try to reiterate how important it’s to have the right release tools and be prepared for large fish. Like don’t go out with your bass net or your trout net thinking that that’s gonna be enough. If you for you know, for Pike and for your average 30 inch pike, you know a steelhead net that we use here would probably enough, but there are possibilities that you hook into 40 plus inch fish when you want to have a net that’s big enough to hold that fish comfortably in the water, right? Matt (38m 29s): These are big fish, they’re very aggressive but they’re big babies, right? Yeah. Like you hook ’em, ’em wrong, you keep ’em outta the water for a little too long, they don’t release well. So you gotta make sure you do everything you can to keep ’em wet. Dave (38m 42s): Well what’s the net you use? Do you have like a name, a type of net or what? Matt (38m 45s): What’s the name? I’ve got a couple of them. Dave (38m 47s): How big is it bigger than a steelhead net? Matt (38m 49s): Oh yeah, my net’s much bigger than a steelhead net. Yeah, my pike net is 34 inches across and like 36 inches long and the bag depth like my 4-year-old can stand in it and it’s like way over his head, right? Like it’s a, that’s big a deep bag so that when you net them you can leave ’em in the water, right? Because you’re in a boat, keep in mind like you’re not in a river where you’re just gonna put the net between your legs and keep ’em wet, the frame of the net’s gonna go on the gunnel and the fish is gonna sit in the water while you take the hook out. Yeah. So, and then my muskie net’s bigger than that. It’s, it’s one I have is from Fred Bill, it’s called the Big Kahuna. I think it’s like 38 inches long or 40 inches long. Like it’s just huge. But that’s ’cause these fish can get over 50 inches, right? Matt (39m 31s): You wanna make sure you’re ready to go with the big fish but the bag and then you have to have the right tools. So in my boat I have three sets of tools because things go wrong. I have three sets of jaw spreaders, three sets of cutters, whether they’re side cutters or bolt cutters and then three pairs of pliers on a minimum. These are fish they don’t wanna mess around with and unhook just with your fingers, like have a pair of long needle load pliers, they’ve got a lot of teeth, you know, you wanna make sure you’re avoiding injury to yourself as much as possible. You know I’ve got lots of scars on my hands and from pike and Muskie and while I wear them with a badge of honor, I do try to reduce the amount of injuries I get. They can get kind of nasty quick. So jaw spreaders are a big, big important tool because I mentioned how deep they can take the flies. Matt (40m 16s): Lures, they don’t seem to take as deep, you know, if you’re conventional fishing just because they’re hard, right? They open their mouth and they go to suck ’em in and like if it’s a jerk bait it just hits them in the mouth A fly just crumples, right? It’s all bucktail and craft fur and hackles. So it just crumples and goes right into the darkest part of their throat. Ah, which makes for positive hook sets, but a little harder to get out. So make sure you got the right tools for releasing as well. You gotta protect these big fish. You know there’s, we catch probably, you know, approaching a thousand pike in a month and of that maybe 20 or 30 of them are those big fish that are those 40, you know, upper mid thirties to upper to 40 inch fish, right? Yeah. So we don’t wanna be killing those fish, you know, they’re, no, they’re important. Dave (40m 59s): Trout routes is the most comprehensive mapping app for trout anglers. With over 50,000 trout streams, 350,000 access points, public land maps and more trout routes is the number one resource for navigating, researching and exploring trout streams. And it deserves a place in every anglers toolkit. I was in New York fishing recently, my first time in New York fishing. I had the trout routes app and I was able to check out and access public access points through the maze of private property on the rivers we were fishing. And after I got into the stream and was fishing down through a run, I wasn’t quite sure I saw a house down below. I wasn’t quite sure where the property lines ended, but given that I had trout routes, I was confident where I was fishing and I was able to assure that I wasn’t trespassing. Dave (41m 47s): You’ll be fully prepared with offline maps. You can get driving directions to points of interest, drop pins, add your notes in the app all while keeping all of your data private to your account. Only you can visit trout routes.com right now to learn more and download the Trout routes app for free in the app store today. That’s trout routes. T-R-O-U-T-R-O-U-T-E-S start exploring today. How old are those fish? The say the bigger 30, 40 inch pike? Matt (42m 20s): The, what I’ve heard from doing a little bit of research myself is they can, you know, in the wild reach ages of like 20 to 25 years old, so quite old, you know, similar in age to what our, our small mouth can get even older. Small mouth can get a little bit older, but they’re not like a trout that, you know, an old brown trout is like eight, nine years old, right? Yeah. They live a long time, you know, and, and it’s, you wanna get, you know, do best buy them. And don’t get me wrong, like people fish for pike because they also taste good. So like there’s a lot of oh they do catch, there’s a lot of catch and keep and if you’re ethical around how you, but there’s no shortage of Pike gear. Like we’ve got a great, great pike fishery and if you’re catching fish in that like 27 inch range, they’re fantastic eating. Matt (43m 0s): Like I’m not gonna, you know, very rarely do we talk about that in fly fishing, but they are fantastic evening. Just make sure you’re not taking home those big mamas, like the big females that are 40 inches. Those are fish you wanna see. Go back. Dave (43m 11s): Yeah. Well what’s your limit? What would be the best, if you’re gonna take a pike, what would be the best length? Matt (43m 16s): The very oh the, the very few people that want to take one with me, I try to limit the maximum is like 28 to 30 inches. That’s as big as we’re gonna go. My lake. So Georgian Bay, there’s a limit. It, I don’t ever keep a limit so I’ve gotta bear with me here while I try to yeah. Remember it. It’s right, I think it’s one over 27 inches and three under. I think that’s the rule. I think you’re allowed four, but three of them have to be less than 27 inches and one of them can be bigger. I think that’s, or it’s like zero between 27 and 35, something like that. Yeah, there’s zero between 27 and 35, you’re allowed to have one over 35 and three under or four under fish, four fish under 27 inches. Gotcha. I never keep a limit if people want to keep one, the rule with it is it’s gotta be injured, like it’s gotta be bleeding. Matt (44m 1s): We’re not keeping a healthy fish that we’re gonna be able to release. I think last year we kept four fish and I mean I, I guided for them like 40 times. So it’s like, okay, that one’s really bleeding, like it’s not gonna live. Let’s you know, have you ever eaten pike? I’ll show you how to clean it, right? Dave (44m 15s): Like right. Wow. So that’s it. So that’s, so, and you mentioned the bay, so going back to that a little bit on the bay. So you just go to go, you could go to Google map and just look at an inlet like what are the bays look like on Google Maps? What are you looking for? Matt (44m 28s): Yeah, yeah, great question. So you’re looking for, and especially on Georgia Bay, the water’s so clear that you can actually see under the water quite a bit just with satellite imagery. So you’re just looking for those bays that are, you know, large bays with the river flowing in adjacent to deep water. You know, maybe there’s 70, 80 feet of water close by and that’s gonna be kind of their home range. Like they’ll spend the summers out in that deep water, move back up into the shallows. Combine that with, if you, if you, if you want to get the most up-to-date, like detailed bathymetric charts, you can download the, I think it’s the Garmin active captain or the Navi system on your phone and you can actually overlay the data. So like you can look at both when it’s on your computer or whatever. Matt (45m 10s): And you can see a depth chart while looking at an aerial image. And you’re gonna wanna look for bays that have a large, if you get a, put it this way, if you get a summer image of that bay, which is hard to do, sometimes you get stuck with winter images and it’s frozen, you can’t really see. But if you get a summer image, you should be able to see a large amount of like pencil reeds or wild rice that grows out into the bay. And in May that stuff’s not there. It’s just emergent grass. But that’s where they spawn. So like you wanna Okay. Try to find those. I’m Dave (45m 37s): Looking at one and just, just to look, I’m looking at Georgia Bay and on the north side there’s this one called Bullhead Bay. Yeah. And it’s, there’s a little, looks like there’s a little creek coming in, a little bay that, so that, that would be one example. Matt (45m 48s): Yeah, totally. Yeah, exactly. You know, you can look at any of those bays and if you look closer to the town of Midland, like Midland, Ontario, and look over into like Sturgeon Bay, for instance, by Wab machine, it’s a huge bay. It’s like a hundred acres and it’s like five to seven feet deep, the whole bay. And that’s what we’re looking for. And we’re looking for like that, there’s a very specific weed we, we often call cabbage weed. It’s broad leafed, it’s grows sparse. Like that’s important too for big fish. Like we don’t want to have such dense weed that those big fish can’t move around comfortably. If you get into the, the thick stuff, often hydrilla is a common weed, like coontail is the common name. Matt (46m 28s): Or you get into the, the, there’s a bunch of invasive weeds too that we’re currently dealing with here. It gets so thick, that small pike, you know, those 20 to 30 inch fish can still totally, you know, move around in it. But those big fish like to be able to hide and move freely and attack. And cabbage is gonna be your best friend. So it often grows sparse, like maybe one weed every 10 feet, or in clumps where there might be a dense clump of cabbage and then nothing else around it. And those pike will just sit on those edges and wait. And, and if you come up with me, like, well I’ll, you know, I’ll be able to point it out and show you what you’re looking for. Yeah. You see it. But the one that we always look for often nicknamed tobacco, cabbage, it looks like tobacco leaf. Matt (47m 9s): It’s big, broad, it’s kind of browny red and it grows in dense clumps. And that’s like spring big fish territory. Like you could find those clumps fish around them. It comes up pretty early here. ’cause we’re pretty far south, right? Like Yeah. People think of Canada as north, but like just north of Toronto. We’re, we’re south of a lot of the states, right? Like Yeah, we’re, the peninsula comes way down in Ontario and it, we’re quite a bit further south I think, actually. I don’t know exactly where we’d be level with, but yeah, we’re like Michigan, like southern Michigan kinda level. Dave (47m 40s): Yeah. You’re level with Exactly. You got your Michigan, Vermont. Yes. Yes. Yeah, you’re below, like I look, I look across upper states. You’re below Montana, you’re lower than Montana, right? Oh Matt (47m 51s): Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Definitely North Dakota and Montana. Yeah, we’re lower than that. Yeah. Yeah. But yeah, it’s, it’s so, it’s, it’s quite, you know, quite pleasant temperature wise. When you come here in the spring gets warm, you know, come here in May. Like it’s, unless you’re getting rain, you’re, you’re often fishing in just like long sleeves. Like it’s not cold, cold. Maybe when we’re ripping the boat around at 35 or 40 miles an hour, you might wanna put on a jacket. But other than that it’s very enjoyable fishing and, and full of action. You know, that’s the one thing I can, you know, I reiterate to people is I, I started out as a trout guide in the area and I quickly learned that Ontario’s not the most optimal trout fishing destination. Like we have great trout fishing, but it’s not Montana, right? It’s not, no, it’s not Montana right’s for me, there’s like two rivers that I feel an, let’s say, an ethical responsibility to guide. Matt (48m 35s): There’s a lot of other rivers that hold trout, but they’re so small that I would hate to like blow them up. And like, I would hate to be that guy. So there’s a couple bigger rivers, like the Grand River. I think you just had a show with Rob Hill, you were probably talking about the grand. Yeah, the, the upper credit river. Awesome rivers for Browns. But it’s busy. So like you get out there and you’re always behind someone and there’s another guide working up and there’s a lot of fly fishing guides in Ontario. But you know, you’re trying to give each other space When I’m up here on the Georgian Bay, like I come up to the parking lot at 7:00 AM and if there’s four or five other trailers, I’m not worried. ’cause the bay’s huge. Yeah. Like it’s no big deal and nobody’s fly fishing. Like, it’s still so common. Matt (49m 16s): And when we’re out there targeting Bass or Pike or Gar or Boan, and you hear people in other boats, ’cause people always forget how well sound carries on water. And they’re like, are they fly fishing? Like, don’t they know there’s no trout here? You know? Like they, they don’t even consider that, you know, we’re probably doing better pike fishing on fly than they are conventionally. Dave (49m 34s): Man, this is amazing. I’m just looking at the map. It’s interesting because the border between Canada and the US it’s, they pretty much, it goes right through all the lakes, like right through the middle. Pretty much every lake is split by the countries, right? So Matt (49m 46s): Oh, on the Great Lakes. Yeah. Yeah. Lake Dave (49m 48s): On the Great Lakes. The lake. Yeah. Lake. Matt (49m 49s): Yeah. Yeah. There’s pretty much an even split. I think you guys have more because of like Michigan. Because Dave (49m 54s): Of Michigan. Matt (49m 55s): Yeah. It’s all on you. Dave (49m 56s): Do you know that history at all? This is going back to the history books. Are you a history buff? I don’t, Matt (50m 0s): No. Yeah, I mean, a little bit, but I, I don’t, I don’t know that history. Yeah, there’s probably something to do with the war of 1812 and how Canada beat you guys. Dave (50m 6s): And is that, is that what happened in 1812? Matt (50m 10s): Yeah. I love, I love to throw that one. Dave (50m 11s): I don’t remember. Yeah, I, I didn’t cover much of that. I don’t remember that in history, but yeah. Matt (50m 15s): War of 18, 12. Yeah. It was all over like the Brits versus I guess the Americans and Yeah, that’s where like, it separated. I think a lot of the lines were drawn. Dave (50m 25s): Oh, right. So that was it. Yeah. We’ll, we’ll get a I’ll, I’ll have to find a video, throw in the show notes on the war of 1812. This is good. Matt (50m 32s): I love to throw that one back to my American guests. Talk about it’s the only war you guys ever lost. Dave (50m 36s): Right? Right. There you go. That’s amazing. I’ll definitely bring it up at the dinner table with my kids, you know, for school. It’ll be fun to talk about that. Yeah, Matt (50m 46s): Good stuff. It’s all, it’s all in good fun. Oh Dave (50m 47s): Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, it’s all good. For sure. So, okay, so we, we got, well let’s, let’s take it outta here. We’re going to, I got a few more questions for you here on fishing. Sure. That I wanted to do our kind of our partner shout out trip, shout out segment and, and today Totally. It’s presented by a four wheel campers. So we’ve been four wheel camper. We’ve, we’re actually playing a trip. I think this would be a cool one to do a drive across. We just drove to Wisconsin last summer and, and we’re kind of heading up to Alaska, but I think this would be fun to actually drive across and head up your way. And the four wheel camper is cool because it’s a popup, right? So you got on the back of pick pick and then when you want to camp, it pops up a few feet and you’ve got a king-sized bed on top. So we’ve been doing this and it’s been really awesome. So I wanna give a shout out to Four Wheel Camper first as we get into this segment. Dave (51m 29s): But for you, what is your, if we’re talking partner brands that you’re working, you love, like what are some of those brands? Obviously, you know, you got all the fly gear. Give us three brands you like out there every day that you’re using for fishing. Can Matt (51m 40s): I give shout outs to like local, like businesses and Dave (51m 42s): Stuff? Anything? Yep. Cool. Anything you want? Yeah. Matt (51m 45s): Awesome. So I cannot speak highly enough about really Drift Outfitters in Toronto. There are our Ontario’s fly shop. Like they are literally the fly shop that does it. Right? They have everything you need. Awesome guys. I get a, I have a great working relationship with them. Like give ’em a call, check out drift outfitters.ca. Those guys are awesome. Yeah, they’re fantastic. There’s, I mean, I’m just fortunate enough, I have a lot of people that I work with, I I brands and stuff. There’s some, some good brands out there, you know, with, it’s like, you know, I work closely with like Redington and Sage for my rods and stuff in the boat. Sure. You know, good quality stuff, you know, Redington especially, it’s like nice price point for guide rods. Matt (52m 26s): Yeah, it is. Like, I’m not too worried if people are breaking rods and, and Redingtons great. Like, you can just buy a tip and it’s over. Get it quick. But yeah, those are kind of the big ones. I mean, it’s smaller scale. I have the best marine mechanic. If anybody’s listening from an Ontario and is looking for a marine mechanic, check out bear repair, this guy will drop like everything at the top, drop his hat to help me out. Nice. Like he can cancel everything on his schedule to get my boat back in the water. Like, he’s awesome and he knows it. He’s like, you’re doing this for work. These guys are cottagers. They can wait an extra couple days. Dave (52m 57s): That’s awesome. What, what, what’s a cottage here? Matt (52m 59s): So we have a, we have a massive area called the, like Ontario Cottage Country. About an hour and a half north of Toronto is this area called Muskoka. And it’s thousands of lakes and it’s people that have, you know, holiday homes. Dave (53m 12s): Yeah. Lots of Matt (53m 13s): Money lakes and Yeah, I guess, yeah, some of them, I mean a lot of them are family homes that were purchased. You know, these cottages purchased way back and they might have bought ’em for like five or six grand and they’ve just, you know, sat on this property forever. Now they’re worth millions. But, so the cottagers, they, we have a, like my town grows by like, it’s gotta be 20,000 people in the summer just ’cause of Cottagers, local Cottagers. So yeah, it’s, it’s exciting. Good spot. Dave (53m 36s): Awesome. So there, there’s, and what was your, what was your boat that you have there? What was the brand? Yeah, Matt (53m 40s): I have a Lund fishing boat. Pretty common boat in like northern states and, and southern Ontario. Probably the standard I would guess that you see out here for aluminum boats. Yeah. 18 foot Lund Classic. Yeah. Dave (53m 54s): Yeah. And do you see, I’m sure you see different types of boats. Like do you see everything, you see people in like paddleboards all sorts of crazy stuff out there? Oh yeah, Matt (54m 1s): Yeah, for sure. It’s a popular spot. So yeah, from paddle boards to the ever dreaded wake boat and Seadoos. Dave (54m 7s): Oh right, yeah. You guys get that too? Matt (54m 10s): Oh yeah. Don’t we ever, but the lake’s big enough for Wake Boat, so it’s not too big a deal. And then, yeah, you know, a lot of it is gonna, you come up here, you’re gonna see a lot of that, you know, semi-pro BassPro kind of mentality running the, the, as people like to call ’em the glitter rockets, you know. Dave (54m 25s): Oh right. Are you gonna see some stuff with lots of sponsors on the side of the boat and all that? Matt (54m 29s): Oh yeah. These, these like 21 foot boats with 350 horsepower on him that are going, you know, 80 miles an hour to go catch bass. It’s pretty wild. And that’s just me being jealous. Dave (54m 40s): Sure, right. Yeah, that’s good. Okay, so you got everything there. What about, let’s just take it back to on the water, give us a few tips. So again, somebody’s thinking about going northern pike, maybe they’re calling you, maybe they’re just sure new and they’re going up there. What are, what are a few things you’re telling them to have success? Maybe define, let’s talk finding some of those bigger northern PIs. Matt (55m 0s): Find the shallow bays and then start deep and work your way in. Carry multiple lines. So I typically fish eight or 10 weight rods, eight to 8, 2 10 weights, eight, nine tens. But more importantly have lime sinking rates. So have a floating, have an intermediate. And if you had to have three, have a type five. If you can throw a type three in there as well. It’s also a great line. Make sure that you have good bite wire these fish have teeth. Incorporate a 12 inch section of 20 pound, 25 pound bite wire into your liter. If you’re fishing, sinking lines, fish is short leader no longer than four feet, including your bite wire. So three feet of fluoro or mono, one foot of liter. All you need just like, kinda like swinging for steelhead. Matt (55m 42s): Get let the sinking line get you down and, and you know, get it down to, because there’s no weight on my fly. So get ’em down that way. Yeah. Dave (55m 49s): Is there a pike line? Is there a pike, a fly line? Well, Matt (55m 51s): There’s so many, lots of, so many. Yeah. A lot of brands have predator lines. I like a couple. I mean the Rio Predator lines are cool. The scientific angular lines are awesome. Like they’re super durable. I’ve had some of them for like two guide seasons. Like that’s incredible. Like you’re getting a hundred plus days on the line and it’s still holding strong. Yeah. The Titan taper, I think they call it, they’re like triple, triple density sinking line, intermediate running line type three, you know, head and then like a type five tip. So it’s kind of cool. Maintains contact throughout the strip. Yeah, that’s a good one. And then just cover water, like find the right structure and just have faith like piker around. If you find a bay with a creek coming in, good green live weeds and you’re fishing from the outside in, you’re gonna find ’em. Matt (56m 38s): The biggest thing is just have patience. I’ve got, like I said, thousands of spots on this bay or in the area probably. You look at my map, it’s stupid. People think I’m bragging, but it’s, no, it’s, it’s real. It’s, it’s kind of hard to read the map with how many pins I have. Dave (56m 50s): Yeah. Matt (56m 51s): But of all those pins, there’s probably like 30 or 40 that are like really, really good that are always producing fish. And that just takes time. Fish, Georgian Bay for over 20 years that I’ve kind of broken it down and, and full-time for five. Dave (57m 5s): Why are you doing the, the, you mentioned the deep to shallow, why starting the deep water and head to the shallow. Why is that the better way? Matt (57m 11s): Often the, the biggest fish will be already post spawned and pushed out. A lot of those big females will come up spawn for their day and leave. And then the males will be recuperating up in the shallows like spawning for pike and muskie is pretty nasty. Like you’ll, you’ll catch fish in the spring that are all cut up and torn up from spawning, like males grabbing each other. Similar if you watch like salmon run a river and how they’ll, like males will fight, right? Dave (57m 33s): Yeah. Biting each other. Is that, how it works on the spawn is it’s just like salmon where you got the one male pairing up with one female or they’re fighting over that female, Matt (57m 41s): They’re like orgy kind of style. Dave (57m 44s): Yeah, right. Matt (57m 45s): They, they’ve got like five to six males swimming with one female. Dave (57m 48s): Are they digging reds? Are they digging a depression? No, Matt (57m 52s): No. They’re, they’re like often called a broadcast spawner. So they just spray, spray and pray, you know. Right. Sticks to the weeds. You’ll catch weeds and you’ll see pike eggs on them. Piker musky eggs. Like they’re like stuck to the weeds and yeah. And, and they just swim along the back bays and you’ll see their fins outta the water and like they’re just up there doing their thing. And then the males are constantly fighting each other. Jocking for position. Right. Getting closer to the female. Like a big male pike’s, 30 inches. A big female is like mid forties. Oh wow. So it’s obvious which one’s the female, you can tell. And yeah, those females finish their spawn, they do their thing and then they dip out. They’re like, let me get outta here. So they’re usually at the mouth of those bays. Like they don’t wanna go too far away. Matt (58m 32s): ’cause the food’s often back there. So start at the mouth of the bays, work your way in, make sure you’re eliminating those big fish. ’cause if you drive your boat over them, you might spook ’em. Right. Oh right. So it’s kind of like fishing a river, like fish from your feet to the far side. Just make sure you, especially on a really good spot. And then you’ll find your spots on your spot where like some of these bays I fish, like I said, are a hundred acres. There might only be a, I don’t know, quarter mile shoreline that I fish. ’cause I know that’s the best spot. That’s the, the icing on the cake right there. So, but that’s just from trial. Trial and error. Yep. And then just have Dave (59m 3s): Fun. Perfect. So what would be, so before we get outta here, I just wanna check, do you have any other, you know, takeaways from Today? We talked about a lot on pike. Anything we missed? Anything you wanna leave people with with as we get outta here? Matt (59m 15s): Yeah, I mean, Ontario is a short drive for anybody in the northeast US or a short flight from anywhere in, in North America, to be honest. Like, you can get on a flight at any major airport flies into Toronto. It’s, I live an hour from Toronto. Like it’s a major metropolitan center. But you come up here, it’s endless lakes little pressure, you know, right in the middle of what we call the Canadian Shield. All the granite outcropping rocks. It’s gorgeous. And, and and lots of options. So, you know, if you’re looking at planning fishing trips or if you’re in Toronto for work, ’cause a lot of people like, you know, Google and that. I’ve had offices in Toronto and I have a lot of people that come up on corporate work and they take a weekend or they take a day during that week to come out fishing. Matt (59m 55s): Just, you know, send me a message every time a year. Like we start guiding in March and we don’t stop till January pretty much. There’s always something to fish for nearby, whether that’s trout or steelhead or Gar or Boin Bass, Muskie Pike. There’s so much cool stuff. And I take a different approach, like most of the guides you’re gonna reach out to in Ontario, I’d say 90 plus percent of them are gonna be conventional focused. So if you’re a fly guy and you actually wanna go fly fishing with a guy who fly fishes, hit me up. I’ve got all the gear. Don’t even bring your rods if you don’t want. I’ve got, you know, all the rods rigged up, ready to go, got all the waiters and boots, you know, we’re rigged, we’re ready to just, just kinda show up and I can make a memorable day for you during your work week or your fishing vacation. Matt (1h 0m 36s): And yeah, that’s, Ontario is an awesome place to visit, so check it Dave (1h 0m 39s): Out. It is, yeah. Toronto is a, I mean obviously a huge city. What’s the next biggest city in Canada? Do you know? Behind Toronto? Matt (1h 0m 48s): Either Vancouver or Montreal. Dave (1h 0m 50s): Or Montreal. Oh, right, Montreal, which is Matt (1h 0m 51s): Right. Vancouver or Montreal. One of the two. Yeah, Montreal. Montreal’s like a six hour drive, five hour drive. Oh, okay. Yeah. And then Vancouver obviously another side, but like, it’s just like this, the GTA is just massive. Like, it just, it takes you two hours to drive across Toronto. You know, it’s, it’s got the world’s largest highway, if you can believe it, in Toronto. Like widest. It’s stupid. Oh really? It’s like 20, 22 lanes. No kidding. Whole like in like, like 11 in each direction. And it’s backed up every day. It’s horrible design. It’s so busy. But you know what, get in, you know, land in Toronto, get outta Toronto, like literally 30 minutes less than that 20 minutes north and it’s like chill. Yeah, Dave (1h 1m 29s): Right. Well if I, if I was going there, which hopefully I will soon. Yeah. It would be kind of cool to hang out, you know, I mean, for a little bit Yeah. To obviously get out, but I mean, if you haven’t been to Toronto, you know what I mean? Oh, Matt (1h 1m 38s): Toronto’s. It’s a cool city. Yeah, yeah. Stop by, you know, go in, stop by Drift Outfitters in downtown. Tell them you’re going out with me. They’ll make sure to hook you up with anything you might need. Here. Dave (1h 1m 47s): Here’s a question for you. This is totally random. I love the random segment question, but Yeah. Yeah. So do you guys have, I’m guessing, ’cause it’s up there, is, is the homelessness something you see around Toronto at all? I’m curious because out where we live, we have a major issue with it. Yeah, Matt (1h 2m 2s): Yeah. It’s sad. We sure do. Yeah, you do. You know the Okay. Yeah. It’s, it’s our, even in the town I live in right, it’s not a big city. It’s 20,000 people and like you go down to downtown, you’re gonna find it. It’s unfortunate. I mean the, the so many reasons, but you know, the worldwide economy and stuff right now is not doing so hot. Right. And it’s, you know, has not forgotten about Canada. So there’s a lot of people that are hurting and yeah, it’s sad, but it’s definitely a thing. Dave (1h 2m 29s): No, I totally, yeah, it is kind of crazy with everything, you know, in the world going on. I mean, I just didn’t even realize it. My brother was telling me about it, but like the fires in, in Southern California, right? There’s, there’s crazy, crazy, you know what I mean? Yeah. It’s like, whoa, what the heck? But I mean, I guess there’s always something Matt (1h 2m 44s): 14,000 people displaced. Dave (1h 2m 45s): Totally, totally. Yeah. There’s al there’s always something going on, you know what I mean? Whether it’s big like the covid or whatever, but I think that’s where fly fishing and fishing in general comes in. Right. Matt (1h 2m 55s): I was just gonna say that. I was just gonna say that, you know, like a great way for anybody, like anybody I’ve taken out for the first time fly fishing or fishing in general, like it’s one of those activities that they finally awaken to that. Like, holy crap, I can find peace and solace and forget about the stress of my life. And, you know, nothing else matters when you’re throwing a fly at a 40 inch pike in the shallows, right? Like Right. You’re really focused, you’re dialed in, you don’t even care what’s going on in your emails or your, or your phone calls. Turn off your phone, don’t get serviced. I can, I can take you to spots where there’s no cell service. You know? Nice. You know, it’s, yeah. It’s the best. That’s good. And I don’t know what I would do without fishing in my life, that’s Dave (1h 3m 34s): For sure. Right. Totally. Well, well, before we get out, give us one. I’d love to get into the music or podcast a little bit on, you know, on a road trip. Are you listening to more music or podcasts? Matt (1h 3m 45s): Yeah, both for sure. Depending on the length. I eventually, you know, I love starting out podcasts, listening in a Phish podcasts, like I mentioned my friend Soly. Oh yeah, awesome. The local Ontario boys, they do a good thing. Yeah, there’s a couple good ones up here, but, you know, I’d be, I’d be a bad Canadian to not acknowledge one of our most famous bands in the Tragically Hip. Oh, okay. Those guys rocked it so hard from Dave (1h 4m 8s): Tragically Hip. Okay. Matt (1h 4m 9s): Nineties into the early two thousands, rest in peace. Gordon Downey, the lead singer, but you know, they, they are the Canadian anthem. I’ve got a bit, no kidding, I shouldn’t say it ’cause it might wreck my, my streak. But if I’m musky fishing and on the way to the lake listening to the radio, not on Spotify, a Tragically Hip song, come onto the radio while I’m going, we’re gonna catch a muskie Dave (1h 4m 32s): That day. No kidding. That’s what, that’s Matt (1h 4m 33s): What happens. Oh wow. It seems to be that way. Dave (1h 4m 36s): So, yeah. Well, what’s, do you have a song? What one? I mean, we could look ’em up. Oh my God, what’s it? Is there a bunch? Oh my Matt (1h 4m 41s): God, there’s, there’s so many good ones. Weak Kings or the hundred hundredth Meridian or, oh my God, there’s, there’s, so they’re all, they’re the Canadian national anthem more so than Ocana. Gotcha. If, if you came up here and like, if you’re a Canadian said you hadn’t heard of the hip, especially if you’re like a fly angler now, or angler it hadn’t heard of the Hip, people would look at you sideways. Okay. Yeah. So if you’re coming up here for the first time, get a little bit of, you know, Canadian, you know, knowledge through listening to the words of Gordon Downey. And you probably learn a lot about the country just listening to some Dave (1h 5m 17s): Music. This is great. Okay, well we’re gonna plug that in right now. We’ll put some Tragically Hip in the show notes and maybe Awesome. On the Instagram on a reel or something like that too. So there you Matt (1h 5m 25s): Go. Yeah. Dave (1h 5m 26s): Cool, Matt, well this has been great. We will definitely be in touch and I think we’re gonna be putting together some stuff around trips and everything too. So definitely appreciate all your time today and yeah, looking forward to getting on the water and staying in touch. Matt (1h 5m 36s): Yeah, I, I appreciate it so much. It was so nice talking to you Dave. Had a lot of fun with you as well. And anybody, you know, yourself included, if you have any questions about the area, just reach out. Always available. Dave (1h 5m 48s): All right, quick call to action for you today. Head over and check in with Matt smooth river.ca. Let him know you heard this podcast today and if you’re interested, check in with him and see if he has any openings. We talked a lot about May and June today. He might also have maybe something later in the year. But check in with Matt, let him know you heard the podcast. And then also if before you get out here, click and follow the show and you’ll get that next episode delivered right into your inbox. We’ve got a big Argentina trip going right now. If you want to find out more about that, send me an email, dave@wetlyswing.com. We’re setting that up right now. Argentina, golden Rado. It’s something I know a lot of people are thinking about, talking about. Dave (1h 6m 28s): It’s one of those destinations, trip of Lifetime. So check in with me if you have any questions and I’m gonna let you get outta here. I hope things are going well right now for you. And I hope you have a great morning, a great afternoon or evening, wherever you are in the world, regardless of where that is. Maybe you are out on the eastern part of the of North America and you’re listening to this one getting ready for some pike. Maybe you’re out there on Pike Water right now. I hope you found some good nuggets of information in this one, and if you did, let me know. I’d love to hear from you. Thanks again and we will talk to you on the next one.
Fishing for Northern Pike
Photo credit: Nicolas Roman @salmographer on Instagram

 

Conclusion with Matt Martin on Sight Fishing for Northern Pike

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