North of border, pike are voracious

Last week my wife and I were on our annual June fishing trip to Saskatchewan to get our fill of fish catching. Saskatchewan has over 100,000 lakes and most of them are full of hungry northern pike and good-tasting walleyes.

Northern pike are one of America's favorite sport fish because they are lots of fun to catch

Here's an example of just how aggressive they can bite:

As I was unhooking my lure from the toothy mouth of a 25-inch northern pike, I noticed something strange inside the mouth of the fish. After unhooking my spoon and before releasing the fish, I looked more closely at the strange thing inside the pike.

Sort of looked like a fish tail to me. So I took my pliers, grabbed on the tail and pulled out a 14-inch long eelpout.

For those of you that aren't familiar with eelpout or ling fish, they are a rough fish that live in large northern lakes. They are a favorite forage fish for predator fish such as northern pike.

What surprised me was how a 25-inch pike could swallow a 14-inch long prey fish. After killing the eelpout, the northern pike had turned the eelpout around and swallowed it head first. The head of the eelpout, inside the stomach, was mostly digested, but the tail, which was almost protruding outside the fish's mouth, was recognizable.

Here was a pike absolutely crammed full of food, yet it still went after my lure! That's what makes northern pike such a fun fish to catch.

One aspect of Canadian fishing that I love is that you can have a thousand-acre lake or bay to yourself. It's up to you to explore and find the fish.

This year JoAnn and I decided to start our trip on Waterhen Lake. We've been to Waterhen many times in the past and it always produces lots of pike. On a typical day you can plan on boating 50 to 100 fish.

We arrived at Waterhen late in the afternoon. As we looked over the campsites, we spotted two "7" Montana license plates. It was a Kalispell family who had read about one of my previous Canadian fishing trips in the Daily Inter Lake.

Even though it was late in the day, we still had time for a couple of hours of fishing. Our favorite spot to fish, the river outlet at the northeast end of the lake, produced only three or four fish. So we moved around until I spotted a boulder beach with large waves washing over the rocks.

I thought those waves might be washing food out to fish lying offshore. The first cast produced a pike. Then fishing got hot. We caught pike almost as fast as we could land and release them.

Then came a pleasant surprise - up came a fat 2 1/2-pound walleye. Then another walleye. Those were our dinner fish for the next night. After fishing for two hours, we headed back to camp and a late dinner. Over the past two hours, we had landed and released 20 to 30 pike and had three tasty dinner walleyes in the live well.

The next day, after catching 40 to 50 smaller pike in the morning, plus three more walleyes, we decided to search for larger fish. After dinner we located a large flat with about eight to 10 feet of water on the edge of a sharp drop-off into 40 feet of water.

This looked like big pike habitat. It was. Within an hour we caught several pike, including a couple of 6- to 7-pounders and one 33-inch fish that tipped the scale at nine pounds.

This ended our first 24 hours of great fishing at Waterhen Lake. Lots of pike were caught including some larger ones, plus some great eating walleyes. Beautiful lake country landscapes and lots of wildlife viewing added to the experience. Can life get any better?

Best of all, we still had two weeks and other lakes to fish. I hope your summer is going as well.