When I was a kid I used to stay up at the Thousand Islands with my extended family and fish, fish, fish. Fishing was almost too easy up there as a kid, but now the river is overrun with invasive critters and it is not the same...

Anyhow one of my pike stories was when I was fishing in a swampy area watching the pike cruse under my non-anchored canoe to hunt the swamp. I was only using a worm, shooting for bass and smaller fish, when *WHAM* something large nailed my hook! Then I was on with a major battle with a very large pike dragging my canoe around the swamp with my 8 pound test line. Those things have endurance!

I finally lost him about a half hour later when he went under a large log right in front of the boat so I got a good look at him just before my line snapped. As far as pike go, he was the largest I almost caught by a good shot, at least a yard. I didn't have a large enough net to get him aboard, and I did not have my uncle's mini baseball bat to club him once in the boat. I was not about to reach over the edge of the boat and gab him by the eyes and toss that thing into my boat.

My uncle had an uncanny way of catching some monster pike and getting them into his boat. He would then give them a good clubbing, and pick them up by the eye sockets. No risk of being bitten then.

He also hated catching eels, which he did frequently, and would get them in just close enough to cut the line. So slimy they would trash the inside of the boat. He did catch a monster eel once, I distinctly remember thinking he got caught on a power cable running to an island... and then it slithered like eels do. An eerie critter to be swimming with.

-Mark