Swamp Monsters: Sight Fishing Pike & Bowfin on the Fly

For the last three days, I've put some intensive time into one small area, seeking pike and bowfin. The results have been pretty good. The area in question in a small swamp off the big river. Some of the bottom is firm sand and gravel deposited by the seasonal stream that creates this little marsh, the rest is either soft mud or leaf litter. The hard bottom of the stream bed winds through the marsh, creating a great wadeable path to follow up and down it safely when the water is low enough. Reeds provide great habitat for virtually everything in the marsh, from macroinverterbates to wood turtles to large pike. And, best of all, this place is a real b*** to gain access to. The crap I've gone through these last few days getting in and out of that spot, from knee deep mud to clouds of biting flies, would even deter me if it weren't exactly the kind of fishing I am most excited by. Shallow water sight fishing for large predators. I knew my efforts would probably be worth in on my first visit when I spotted a massive pike cruising out before I'd even reached the water. The laurels were thick between my and the edge of the water and there was no way around them. They drew blood as I practically tumbled down the high bank trying to get at what had looked to be a fish every bit of 48 inches. I shuffled down a beaver slide in shoe-sucking mud and waded out to where the bottom was more firm. Not expecting to see a fish this monstrous on the first visit, and half expecting not to see any of my target species at all, I was armed only with a 5wt. I did have a wire leader to a red and white streamer with a grizzly saddle tail. I made my best attempt at a shot at the monster pike as it glided slowly with the current, heading out.... it turned ever so slightly. Then it kept doing what it had been and ignored me and the fly. Not to worry, I soon spotted another fish. I made a good cast and the second the fly was in the water the fish was on it. It wasn't at all a big pike (only half the weight of the fish I had just seen, I'd estimate) but I don't catch a lot of pike, let alone on a 5wt, so I was pretty stoked.

Esox lucius  

Wading semi-recklessly up the creek bed, I saw two more pike, both of which I spooked, and also one bowfin which I literally stepped on. Obviously he made himself scarce after that. I turned back around eventually and found three more pike along the same edge of the creek channel just after a hard turn. The were on the inside of the bend, not the outside, which didn't surprise me. More fish sit on the inside of a bend than the average trout angler would lead you to believe, even a bend that is merely a subsurface structure with more than a foot of water over what would otherwise be its banks. None of these three pike were having any of my nonsense, which surprised me as I had changed to a small fly to target bowfin and can usually expect a reaction strike from any Esox I dangle a fly in front of long enough. A fourth fish, further down the channel and in the middle, was an easy sell. I got him to hand and had him grasped behind the gill plates. I noticed how lightly he was hooked and decided not to try to hold him tight when it fell out. I wasn't in the mood to try to hold a slippery, toothy, angry pike, and try to pull my camera out of my pack in waste deep water... I'm never in the mood to do that.

Another 30 yards down the flat I spotted what looked like a decent sized bowfin cruising. I made a number of presentations to this fish but it just would not eat. Eventually a second much smaller bowfin joined it, and it ate first try. I railed that fish with everything the 5wt could muster and managed a decent hook set. I was then in for a bit of a shock, as I got that fish near and it started jumping I realized that it wasn't exactly a small bowfin. It wasn't large either, but next to the other one it had looked to me like it would be the smallest bowfin I'd caught. Well, the other one must have been an absolute monster. And indeed I'd come to learn that there are some proper monster bowfin here the next day.

Amia calva

Somewhat frustratingly, that was actually my first bowfin of the year. Being as late as it is there is little to no chance of getting a really colored up one. I adore the super-lit up emerald green bowfins. I adore a them through their other color phases as well, of course, they are just an all around bad ass fish species, but that green just makes me drool. 

From there I didn't really see much else, so I turned back up. Where the three pike had been previously on the inside of the bend there was one more, which obliged in eating my sparkle bugger... and was the same fish I'd caught earlier. The first one. He was unmistakable, had the same hook mark in the same spot on his maxillary. As soon as I knew it was the same fish, I just tried to shake him off. Pike aren't warmwater fish, really. They can handle more than trout can. But with water temperatures in the 70's I didn't want to over-stress these fish. I poked the fly out with my rod tip (barbless hooks are great for an awful lot of reasons).

I decided to let the fish be in this spot and headed over to the other side of the watershed, to a more rocky river, and looked for bowfin and bass there. I wasn't finding much but rock bass initially. Then I saw one of the few slowly dying sea lampreys that were around come up to the surface and start coming downstream towards me. Like Pacific salmon, sea lampreys slowly decay alive after they spawn, which provides a tremendous amount nutrients that the rivers need. It isn't uncommon to see dying lamprey doing strange things as they loose their senses and get disoriented as their brains begin to deteriorate. But this one didn't look in that bad a shape and was being really twitchy. Sure enough, there was a healthy sized bowfin right on it's tail. I waited for it to lose interest in the lamprey and dropped my fly in front of it. The fish took interest immediately, just glaring at the fly. I gave it a hard short strip to make it jump onto the next rock, and the bowfin darted after it, dorsal undulating intensely. I gave the fly another short jump and it nosed right up to it. One more twitch and the fish inhaled it violently, kicking up a cloud of silt. I gave it a few hard hooksets and then proceeded to put as much heat on it as I could with the 5wt as it thrashed violently at the surface. Oh yeah, I won again. Two bowfin and two pike on the 5 in one afternoon. Awesome.

And now I'm realizing that there is far too much content from the last three days to cram into one post. And I'm planning on doing much of the same type of fishing over the next few days, though some in different locales. So I'll give each day its due. That'll be good, I can have a bit of a backlog of written posts to let out over the next couple weeks. That's important because I'll be in Maine for a while seeking strange saltwater fish and very rare salmonids. I won't have the time to sit down and write up posts, much less the internet to upload photos. I'll post when I'm in cell service. If you suddenly don't hear from me for a spell towards the end of that trip, assume that Noah and I broke down somewhere 35 miles down a logging road and are just subsistence living in the north woods. 

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