Yepp, huuge pike for my clients yesterday, could not be happier!
We had only 4 hours and the wind was really strong, so options were limited. They wanted to go for pike but Lake Mjörn is notoriously difficult when it comes to spinnfishing for pike. I explained that most bigger pikes are near plateaus and deep drop-offs and fishing for them demands a lot of time and effort. We tried some shallow fishing for 30 minutes but when it didn’t pay off I switched to spot for big zander and sometimes a bonus pike. The zander was really on this evening and we had a bite in every other cast or so. Mathes and Jonathan from Germany already knew how to fish so I only had to put them on the right spot, the rest they handled themselves. They caught three nice 60-70 cm zanders on this spot and a couple if smaller ones, two of them followed back home to the frying pan. And yes, I need to work on my happyface.
Since the wind was so strong with gusts up to 12 m/s I drove over the lake to the leeward side and told the guys that the only way to get a big pike in such a short amount of time is to target them with sonar. So that’s what we did for the remaining 1,5 hours, and it was a blast. They handled casting really well and we tried for about 30 minutes in open water and powerful winds. Plenty of big fish in the area and we hooked one up after about 15-20 minutes, but unfortunately lost it. I picked up the Lowrance Recon and decided to go even further towards land, away from the wind and waves. This spot is where I caught my second largest Mjörn pike many years ago. 117 cm and 11,7 kilos.
We eventually found a hungry zander that took our swimbait at 6 meters of depth. A while after this I saw a smaller pike very close to the surface, about 2 meters down at a depth of 35 meters. One if the guys threw a swimbait out in the general direction and immediately got a hard strike. This fish was about 80 cm and the guys were already happy with the day, but we still had 10 minutes to go. I went in a little bit shallower and found what looked like a much bigger pike. We tried several casts on it without any reaction, which I thought was strange. It started swimming hard and I gave one if the guys my vertical rod for the first time and said its the only way to get it to react. We tried a couple of drops on it but the wind, waves and the fact that it swam fast made it very difficult. I didn´t want to give up since it looked big and eventually we got the perfect drop. It noticed the lure, shot up and hammered it. The fight was intense and the first time I saw it near the surface I knew it was big. The adrenaline was pumping and the second time it surfaced I could secure it in the net. Emotions were very high at this point and the fact that it started to pour down didn´t matter. We measured it to a stunning 119 cm with a weight of 10,2 kilos. As can be seen in the image this old beast had lost one eye at some point and that´s probably the reason why we had a hard time getting it to react at all. I don´t see one of these big, old Mjörn pikes very often and that made this so much more special. A fish of a lifetime.
