Livescope

[John Bales]

One of the true joys (for me), is to see how all the fish positions themselves on or off of a structure situation. I get to visualize fish as never before and this not only adds to my daily catches but also you get to see what a brutal world a fish lives in. We are in post spawn for the bass. They are still hanging around near the inside weedline but some have ventured to the outside edge in the 12-16 ft depth. The groups are not in their summer time spots but a few are. Most of the adult bass I could see were not on the bottom but suspended in 8-10 feet of water over 15 ft . I saw two fish, one 8 feet down and one near the bottom at 15 ft. The upper fish looked like a bass and the fish at the bottom was larger like a pike. I made a cast with a jig and the top fish swam up and ate my offering. I watched the fish come towards the surface and in the excitement of the fight, the fish on the bottom came up like a bolt of lightning and hit the fish I had on which came off. Both fish bolted back to the bottom. I still could see the bigger one and it was obvious that fish was still fired up because my next cast got about 5 feet above that fish and he bolted immediately to my jig and I landed a 36 inch pike. That fish was so fired up from going after the bass I had on that it was still looking for something to happen and when my jig came into it's view, it was another split second 1000 mph strike. It's really a rough life for a fish and I mean all species when you have the dragon (the pike or musky) , who dominates everything around them. John