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Applebees Appetizer posted:We've been kicking around the idea to get some people together to hire a captain to go out and load up on snapper and freeze it, it would be worth splitting the cost with about six to eight people otherwise it's too expensive. Are there any party boats near you? My son and I would always limit on vermilion snappers plus a smattering of trigger fish, sea bass and sometimes an exotic like cobia for $90 for the day.
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May 9, 2024 01:38
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King of Bees posted:Are there any party boats near you? My son and I would always limit on vermilion snappers plus a smattering of trigger fish, sea bass and sometimes an exotic like cobia for $90 for the day. Yeah there's a few but they don't go out far enough for the big fish, you just end up with a bunch of barely legal keepers. My son went on one a few weeks ago with his buddies and the size of all the fillets they ended up with were comically small. It's pretty much a fishing boat for tourists. They have a boat that goes out for a few days that you sleep in but from what i've heard it's a miserable experience 
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May 9, 2024 02:42
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 this lure is like $1.50 @ walmart and I have been grabbing lil crappies and bluegills and bass with em in the ~3 ft deep ponds at a park along my commute this is the first time in my life that I have reliably caught fish regularly and this is after like years of catching nothing on occasional outings to freshwater spots. it was sad. I cut off 2 of the hooks and put a "bb" split shot like 5 inches ahead of it on some bright rear end neon Mr crappie brand 6lb line, spooled on a Shimano sienna 500 reel attached to an equally bright green Lew's ultralight 5'6 rod and it is the shittttt
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May 9, 2024 03:50
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that just looks like a bfs bait for like a tenth of the money lol i've definitely had a lot of times where a cheap old school version of the bait works just as well, if not better, than the new hotness. i should get some of the og creme worms, currently messing with dropshot and roboworms but tbh they kind of just look like the cremes do.
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May 9, 2024 03:58
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Southern Cassowary posted:so i'm seriously looking into fish finders for the kayak now. i've got a center pod that goes through the hull that i can rig up a self-contained system that holds the fish finder, battery, and transducer on the pod. or i could have the fish finder next to me on a rail and have wires going to the center pod for the battery/transducer, haven't decided yet. I've had issues with Lowrance sounders on the kayak, they haven't been too waterproof. If you're just on a lake where it's not too choppy you might be fine though. I've used Garmin Strikers and an EchoMap and they've both performed pretty well, depending on where the transducer is mounted you will get a bunch of bubbles and interference on the side scan from your paddle stroke (obviously this won't be an issue if it's a pedal yak). Touch screens can be a bit fucky to use when you've got wet fingers, something that happens a lot on the yak. It's not an issue if you tend to just pick a setting and leave it that way but if you like playing around with it a lot while on the water it'll probably give you the shits.
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May 9, 2024 10:12
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gay picnic defence posted:I've had issues with Lowrance sounders on the kayak, they haven't been too waterproof. If you're just on a lake where it's not too choppy you might be fine though. this is useful, ty. i've narrowed it down to two units: the garmin striker vivid 7 and the humminbird helix 7 mega si gps g4. i ruled lowrance out because their side scan transducers are 10-11 inches long and i need it to fit into a hole that's 9.25x3.25. the striker is 520, but its gt52 transducer is two generations old at this point, and even the newest garmin transducers don't look as nice as humminbird mega sidescan. meanwhile humminbird is offering a 100 dollar rebate for father's day which brings the non-networked helix 7 down to 650, and i think i'm willing to pay 130 bucks more for an image quality upgrade. main hangup right now is the helix units are a little bigger and i want to make sure that won't be annoying, and i need to figure out how big the humminbird transducer is (couldn't find that info on their website). going to print out a template to check this, and apparently humminbird phone service is really good so i'm going to call them and see if i can get the dimensions for the transducer. Southern Cassowary fucked around with this message at 10:55 on May 9, 2024 |
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May 9, 2024 10:51
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I know some people who fish tuna but don't eat fish. Imagine taking a 350lb bluefin and not eating it :|
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May 9, 2024 17:19
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Southern Cassowary posted:this is useful, ty. i've narrowed it down to two units: the garmin striker vivid 7 and the humminbird helix 7 mega si gps g4. I've got a Helix 7 on my Old Town AP120. No major complaints, really. I moved up from a Garmin Striker 4CV so I don't have anything else in that ~$600 price range to compare to. Note that you'll have to buy a "Autochart Zero lines" map card or I guess one of their other lake map cards. I do a fair amount of fishing on smaller / private water that doesn't have map coverage so I had to drop the ~$100 for the Zero lines. I have the head unit mounted on a YakAttack mount which I like because it's got a good quick release, but the trade off versus something like the Ram mount is that it's not quite as sturdy when it's mounted. Doesn't bother me, though.
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May 9, 2024 18:18
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Easychair Bootson posted:I've got a Helix 7 on my Old Town AP120. No major complaints, really. I moved up from a Garmin Striker 4CV so I don't have anything else in that ~$600 price range to compare to. Note that you'll have to buy a "Autochart Zero lines" map card or I guess one of their other lake map cards. I do a fair amount of fishing on smaller / private water that doesn't have map coverage so I had to drop the ~$100 for the Zero lines. I have the head unit mounted on a YakAttack mount which I like because it's got a good quick release, but the trade off versus something like the Ram mount is that it's not quite as sturdy when it's mounted. Doesn't bother me, though. just got off the phone with humminbird support, transducer is 8.4x2.8, so i'm between humminbird and garmin still it's supposed to store 8 hours of mapping on the unit itself without the card, what was your experience with that? the humminbird map cards being regional and the autochart storage card being a proprietary 100 dollar sd card sucks, garmin apparently stores their automatic charts on a regular sd card
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May 9, 2024 18:42
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Southern Cassowary posted:just got off the phone with humminbird support, transducer is 8.4x2.8, so i'm between humminbird and garmin still I didn't even consider trying to get by with the built-in storage. I'd just factor that extra cost in to your decision.
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May 9, 2024 18:49
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Easychair Bootson posted:I didn't even consider trying to get by with the built-in storage. I'd just factor that extra cost in to your decision. i am mainly interested in mapping one 150 acre lake and i do not think that will take anywhere near eight hours, hence my question. that is a good shout though.
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May 9, 2024 18:51
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If I wanted to fish for pike, what is a "pike only" lure besides a red and white daredevil spoon? The reason I ask is because pike is open here but bass isn't till the end of June. And typically where I find pike, like weed beds etc.. I find (largemouth ) bass. I typically catch bith on the same lures, top waters and weedless type stuff. I know of course that if I drag anything in front of a bass and it's hungry or angry enough it might bite at it anyways but i want to try to avoid incidental bites if I can help it because they're spawning right around now. I'd probably be fishing around the Toronto islands and western lake Ontario but not Hamilton Harbour E: musky isn't open yet that I recall. But there are supposed to be some in the islands. Will try to avoid, but they seem to like the same stuff as pike..
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May 9, 2024 19:06
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wesleywillis posted:If I wanted to fish for pike, what is a "pike only" lure besides a red and white daredevil spoon? I can't think of any lure that will entice pike but not any other large predatory fish in the area. Like pike and bass generally eat the same stuff. You might increase your chances by using a really big lure though. Like one of those rubber trout lures that are a good like 10" long. But if you're trying to avoid bass it might matter more where you fish versus what you fish with. Like if the bass are spawning you might want to avoid the shallower areas where they make their spawning beds.
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May 9, 2024 23:22
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For sonar chat, anybody had any experience with the castable smartphone-linked sonars, like https://deepersonar.com/en-us ? What kind of difference am I looking at in terms of detail, aperture size, etc.? I'm attracted to this idea not just for shore fishing, but also because one lake in particular I like to go to insists on only allowing their fleet of electric rental boats. I'm also planning on getting an inflatable boat that will be rolled up and stored while not in use, but it seems like there are options for mounting traditional transducers even in that scenario.
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May 9, 2024 23:23
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Charliegrs posted:I'm one of those weirdos that never keeps a fish no matter how big it is. I fish for the fight. Apparently I'm in kind of a minority? That's me also. I just do not like eating fish.
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May 10, 2024 12:11
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after the humminbird chat yesterday i decided to really dig into the featuresets of the units i was eyeballing to make sure i wasn't caught off guard by anything. the striker vivids don't have maps built-in, you map yourself and it has about 1500 hours of internal storage. think this would be perfect for a loving around kayak but i want to fish more tournaments in the future and i want the existing charts for bigger bodies of water. even though the proprietary mapping card annoyed me i was still leaning humminbird until i looked at bass pro's website and saw they've got a 9 inch garmin echomap uhd with the gt54 transducer for 700 bucks. this gets me all the scanning i want, navionics maps, future livescope/networking compatibility for when i upgrade boats, and a two inch bigger screen for a 50 dollar upcharge over the humminbird. they also just let you save your custom contour maps to a 10 dollar sd card. the scan quality is a little worse but i think i can live with that. probably ordering tomorrow. https://www.basspro.com/shop/en/gar...gt54-transducer
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May 10, 2024 15:50
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wesleywillis posted:If I wanted to fish for pike, what is a "pike only" lure besides a red and white daredevil spoon? My old man swore by a big rubber rat for pike/musky, you could try that. Or wait until winter and spear them if ice-fishing is ever a thing again 
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May 10, 2024 18:06
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Car Hater posted:My old man swore by a big rubber rat for pike/musky, you could try that. Or wait until winter and spear them if ice-fishing is ever a thing again Lol this makes me so sad. I grew up in the northeast and like 20-25 years ago the water would freeze solid every winter and ice fishing was something I really looked forward to as a way to fight the cabin fever. I left to go out west for 20 years and recently moved back here and I haven't even bothered to buy ice fishing stuff because the water literally doesn't even freeze anymore. But yeah climate change isn't real.
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May 10, 2024 19:41
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First Snook of the year and a big guy too
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May 10, 2024 19:52
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Applebees Appetizer posted:First Snook of the year and a big guy too Beautiful! Snook are one of my favorite fish. I'd love to have an aquarium big enough to keep a Swordspine. They only get to 12" and are true FW.
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May 10, 2024 20:07
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i've read about people fly fishing for snook on the beach and think about trying that sometimes
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May 10, 2024 20:08
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Southern Cassowary posted:i've read about people fly fishing for snook on the beach and think about trying that sometimes Sight fishing snook on the beach is awesome and the best way to catch them imo. I have a fat tire electric bike that I ride up and down the beach early in the morning looking for snook, it's getting to that time of year where they're patrolling the beaches a lot so i should be catching some beach snook soon. I have a fly rod too but I can't carry it on the bike very well. This is my beach setup 
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May 11, 2024 01:31
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Applebees Appetizer posted:Sight fishing snook on the beach is awesome and the best way to catch them imo. I have a fat tire electric bike that I ride up and down the beach early in the morning looking for snook, it's getting to that time of year where they're patrolling the beaches a lot so i should be catching some beach snook soon. I have a fly rod too but I can't carry it on the bike very well. That's awesome I should get one of those for finding Bluefish or Stripers. How does it ride on the sand? Can you only really ride it right on the waterline where the sand is wet and more compact or can you ride it on any sand?
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May 11, 2024 18:51
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wesleywillis posted:If I wanted to fish for pike, what is a "pike only" lure besides a red and white daredevil spoon? Pike really go everywhere so size up the bait a bit and try to avoid the bass. The biggest pike and musky I've caught have been trolling about 10ft deep in 14-17ft of water.. when targeting walleye, lol.. but that'd keep you away from largemouth for sure. Honestly I feel the same way about it and often delay fishing bass lakes until the season opens. On that note I just returned from two nights camping on a back country lake with only Brook Trout and Lake Trout in it (for game fish). First time doing a spring trout trip and it was pretty cool fishing for trout without tons of weights. Got super bored though, and didn't feel like persisting with it when the weather kicked up. Next time I'll need to bring someone with me.
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May 11, 2024 22:55
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Whoever suggested putting braided line on my spinning reel, thank you. I got to practice using it on the water today and it’s amazing how much easier it is to use when the line isn’t flying off into ringlets just from touching it. Didn’t catch anything because it was hot as gently caress and I forgot a hat but it was nice to be able to enjoy using the new rod instead of dreading it.
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May 11, 2024 23:12
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Charliegrs posted:That's awesome I should get one of those for finding Bluefish or Stripers. How does it ride on the sand? Can you only really ride it right on the waterline where the sand is wet and more compact or can you ride it on any sand? I try to ride where the sand is more compact and wet, and high as possible so as not to spook the fish, usually it's not a problem but if it's high tide and the water is up to the soft sand it can be a pain. We have the powder sugar sand here too, so that makes it way more difficult if it's deep and dry. I usually get through it, but I can get stuck sometimes if it's a long stretch and it's deep so I just walk out of it. It would be way easier on almost any other type of normal sand lol, the fat tires make all the difference and the motor has enough torque to get past the dry sand most of the time.
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May 12, 2024 00:29
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are polarized glasses really a huge difference? well I guess this would be more about polarized clip-ons for my prescription glasses, but... where I live you pretty much can't see anything under the surface unless you're at a pond on a perfect day, and then you can see like a foot down. the rest of the time the water is dark or murky looking. would polarized lenses even be worth it or should I just try to get used to having faith that there are fish in the water? lol
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May 12, 2024 14:33
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if your water's muddy i wouldn't worry about it
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May 12, 2024 15:06
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I just read a very offensive article about Flathead Catfish: https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/a...5e58f83db&ei=20 I never thought of flatties as an invasive species. I guess they're not supposed to go so far north? But this article is talking about removing them from rivers in Georgia. I didn't know they were from Mexico, but this article goes out of its way to point out the invaders are from Mexico. Then they go on and on about noodling like that's the preferred method to catch flatheads and the only people interested in catching them are hillbilly handfishers. Just a totally biased article. In-Fisherman has written articles about angling for flatheads for decades. They're not evil invading river monsters targeted exclusively by deranged noodlers, damnit.
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May 12, 2024 15:31
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Sarah Cenia posted:are polarized glasses really a huge difference? If you sight fish yes, if not it doesn't matter.
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May 12, 2024 15:35
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Mulaney Power Move posted:I just read a very offensive article about Flathead Catfish: https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/a...5e58f83db&ei=20 I didn't read this particular article on the subject, but uhhh invasive species are in fact very bad not because they are rapists and murderers or otherwise bad fishes but because they wholly gently caress the ecology of the waters they move to. Pike and smallmouth bass have almost completely destroyed Brook Trout populations in most of NA and it's shocking how quickly they can take over once introduced. There's a section of Algonquin Park where some rear end in a top hat brought Northern Pike to in the early 2000s. 20 years later there are no Brook Trout in the connected lakes. Luckily Pike don't move upstream or over dams easily or else that fishery would be gone by now. Lots of folks think this is all cool and good because bass are easier to catch than trout which is why the only remaining trout lakes are in remote areas mostly without car access. That said it'll certainly be cool to catch a huge rear end flathead sometime in the future.. it'll just suck for whatever species get displaced.
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May 12, 2024 16:09
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Yeah, most of the fish people like to fish for have become invasive somewhere... Our fisheries managers just went hog wild spreading poo poo around. Like the brook trout the previous poster was lamenting the loss of, they're wrecking the ecosystem in mountain streams of the West. Talking like they could ever successfully remove catfish from Georgia is crazy though... We have a hell of a time getting rid of invasive species that are just getting a foothold in places.
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May 12, 2024 16:23
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Sarah Cenia posted:are polarized glasses really a huge difference? Does it make a difference? Yes. Is it worth the hassle of replacing your current sunglasses or dealing with issues of wearing prescriptions, well that is up to each person. I wear a nice pair of costa's about anytime I go outside and its some of the best money I have ever spent.
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May 12, 2024 17:17
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Sickening posted:Does it make a difference? Yes. Is it worth the hassle of replacing your current sunglasses or dealing with issues of wearing prescriptions, well that is up to each person. I'd also say it really depends where you are going. I also live in an area with tea stained / murkier water but I never go out without my polarized lenses. Why? They let me see 1-3 feet into the water which while not enough to spot fish in most cases, is enough to see rocks and other hazards I might hit.. but again I'm usually in unmaintained bodies of water with no markers.
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May 12, 2024 17:34
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Math You posted:I'd also say it really depends where you are going. I also live in an area with tea stained / murkier water but I never go out without my polarized lenses. I personally think it greatly helps me operate a boat and makes it safer. There is also something to having simple eye protection when hooks are being slug about.
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May 12, 2024 17:55
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I find they help me spot reefs and weedbeds, I wear glasses normally so I just got a cheap set of prescription sunglasses.
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May 12, 2024 22:03
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Polarization just helps in general with cutting glare off the water. Even if it won’t help you see into the water it’ll help with eye strain immensely. it’s worth it for that if you’ll be staring at the water for a while. I consider mine mandatory for fishing on sunny days.
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May 12, 2024 22:16
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I would never even consider fishing without my polarized glasses.
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May 13, 2024 05:03
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I wore Hobies for almost a decade, then I decided it was time to treat myself to a nice pair of sunglasses. I ordered maybe 8 or 9 different pairs of Costa and Maui Jim's, ended up just getting a fresh pair of Hobies, lol. They're really great for the price. I like their Woody and Cove styles.
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May 13, 2024 07:32
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Thanks to all that replied Re: pike stuff. Y'all are right, some big rear end lures, plus staying away from the shallows would probably help me achieve my goal. I think I have a few bucktails I can drag around. I know from experience that pike are crazy and will attack poo poo thats at or near the same size as them. I once caught a pike that was like 4 inches long on a 3 inch torpedo topwater lure. Also saw pics in a fishing mag once of a pike that was about 40 inches long (according to the blurb in the mag) that had swallowed a 30 something inch pike head first and choked to death. There was a bunch of pike sticking out the mouth of the other pike.
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May 13, 2024 12:48
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