What a night at Heards. Of course the first thing I noticed when I got in the boat was I forgot my digital camera! As usual, for me, things started very slow and didn't look good. I fished for nearly an hour without a major strike. Behind me, Andy was catching fish and within the first 10 minutes he landed a Pike (pictured). This immediately depressed me but only made me try harder. There was no need to get creative or change anything other than my thinking. I went out with steel leaders ready to go. My original intent was to fish for Pike and anything else I caught would only be a bonus. Using 2 rods, I ran a large black and silver willow blade spinner bait on a spin combo and my other bait casting rod, I ran a Mepps 5 silver with a buck tail on a steel leader. I ended up catching 2 small Largemouth on the Spinnerbait. Andy on the other hand was making his was to catching everything in the pond. He caught about 10 Crappie, a Bass, White Perch, a couple of Yellow Perch and believe it or not, he caught a small catfish trolling a jig spinner. It was shocking.
Casting my Mepps over and over into open water away from shore finally paid off. With a long cast around 7:30pm I had a very strong strike. A Northern Pike! Finally, a decent fish (pictured). After a few quick photos with my Treo phone the fish was released and very lively. Sorry, no high-res digital pics. To make things even better, just as we were finishing up I landed a nice Pickerel. Nice enough to make me think I had another Northern on.
