Big Pike At North Haven Resort, Manitoba

Travel

Jun 30

Northern pike were the marque fish when I was a kid in South Dakota. Catching one over 25 pounds was the ultimate angling trophy. I've never caught the ultimate angling trophy, despite trying many times in many places, including famous wilderness fly-out lakes in Canada. But my wife has. Betsy loves to fish, but prior to last week had never laid eyes on a pike, let alone tried to catch one. Now, after just four days effort, she's become the family big pike champ, thanks to fly-in North Haven Resort and 36-year-old guide Paul Jamie Canada (yup, his last name is his native country and vice versa.) With Jamie at the helm, big pike can run, but they can't hide. He knows where they live. While I flailed the waters of Utik Lake from the same boat as Betsy, often casting the same lures to the same spots, I merely cleared out all the hammer handles (small, male pike) so she had a clear field for hooking and wrestling the big Mammas from their weedy lairs. Big pike are all females, and I'm beginning to think it takes a female to catch one. Except our friend Dean Shaver also caught a monster, the biggest fish of the week in all the camp. It stretched 47.5 inches. Betsy's three biggest measured "only" 46-inches, 43-inches and 38-inches. My biggest just broke the three-foot mark, which is nothing to complain about until you see those 43-inch and bigger specimens. The north country has always been famous for giant pike, but in the bad old days anglers took them home to eat or mount. Today we know a 40-inch pike is probably 40 years old and the goose that lays the golden eggs. Removing them from lakes soon depletes the supply. So fly-out lakes and camps like North Haven on Utik have gone to strict catch-and-release fishing, insuring a steady supply of big, old females. Each year the size and numbers of such trophy catches goes up. But giant pike don't just throw themselves into your boat. These are still fish, and like all fish they're finicky, eagerly chasing anything you throw in the water one minute, ignoring the juiciest looking lures the next. The advantage in these fly out lakes is less angling pressure. While a popular lake with highway access might host 500 anglers a week, a big fly-out lake might see just two dozen. And when that lake is 50 miles long and studded with hundreds of islands and bays, there is more shoreline than those few fishermen can sample. We fished long and hard for those Utik pike, casting plugs, spoons and spinners under less-than-optimum conditions. It rained, blew, rained again and then rained and blew. The barometer had to be diving deeply into negative fish territory, yet we still caught fish. I hooked and landed dozens of 24- to 32-inch pike and 2- to 3-pound walleyes every day. Betsy hooked and landed the big ones. If you've never treated yourself to to fly-out giant pike hunt, consider it. North Haven Resort (http://www.northhavenresort.ca/) is a five-star lodge with all the trimmings north of Winnipeg. It's a short flight from the U.S. into friendly Manitoba (says so right on their license plates.) # # #

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