The Adrenaline Rush of Top Water Fishing for Pike at Marsh Lake

August 23, 2006 at 8:57 am

The great thing about this blog and my “Been there Fished That…” column in Whats Up Yukon is that I get out and try different bodies of water at least once a week. This past week I fished for Pike at both Little Atlin and Marsh Lake. My trip to Little Atlin, while good fishing due to healthy populations of Pike was a bit hairy given the wind. In fact, I was concentrating so much on both steering my boat in the wind and reeling in Pike I did not even pull out the camera. My trip to Marsh Lake was another story. I took off at 5:30am to take advantage of low winds and great early light. My buddy Carl and I put in at the Yukon River bridge for the short jaunt to the nearby weed beds of Marsh Lake. Carl is originally from Hamilton Ontario where he grew up fishing for Pike. True to his Ontario roots, (in the picture below) Carl is sporting his new (old) Tim Hortons orginal mug that he picked up at a garage sale for 50 cents.

The other thing about Carl is that he is a topwater Pike purist. This means that he throws something really chunky like a frog, duckling, shoe with a hook in it, into a weed bed, and drags it back on top of the water making as much noise as possible. Being crazy predators, with rows of shark like teeth and gaping jaws, these Pike can attack. I tend to be more conservative and use underwater presentations like spoons and wet flies. I caught one fairly quickly on a hand tied wet fly Pike Predator pattern. It was only a matter of time until Carl’s “junkyard fishing” started producing Pike.

After a while I was so entertained watching Pike hammer his hula popper I had to try myself. I tied on a nice mouse pattern given to me by my friend the world angling adventurer Dan. We pulled into a nice calm weedbed to fish both side of the main channel and a little pond with no more than 2 feet of water. My first cast into the small pond i noticed some disturbance under the water. My next cast, as I pulled the mouse frantically across the water (like I am supposed to know what a mouse is thinking???)I saw a wake starting about six feet away, then four, then two, then…WHAMMO!!! I nearly fell out of the boat it hit so hard. Unfortunately, he took a liking to side-swiping it and not on the hook end. Definitely an adrenaline rush. We spent the next two hours purely top water fishing. I even tried my moss boss on my spin rod for some fun. I have to admit that I am hooked on “junkyard” top water fishing.

There are special regulations here as it is conservation waters, not to be confused with Little Atlin’s Special Management water..check your regs before you go.

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