Friday afternoon I hit the Pike River about 3:30 after a day of tying flies and a visit to BPS. Many areas of the river were iced over pretty thoroughly.

Managed to find a couple fish still in the river. This female coho hit a great new pattern I tied up (a small Antron Bug variation). This is arguably the largest Coho Salmon I took all season, probably about 7 lbs. She was just starting to get "crusted up".

Another shot on the Pike, just upstream of 13th Street.

12-27-02 - The First of a 3 Day Weekend of Fishing!

Rivers Fished: Pike River
Fish Caught: 1
Outing Date: 12-27-02
Weather: cloudy
Air Temp: 30's
Water Temp: cold
Water Level: low
Water Color: Pike = Clear
Fish Species: Coho
Pattern Fished: various
Pattern Color: various
Fishing Quality: poor

12-27-02 - Dropped my bro at Ohare in the am and immediately my thoughts turned to fishing. I spent the early morning and afternoon tying flies, left Chicago about 1:30 and made a quick pit-stop at Bass Pro Shops to pick up some extra tying material.

Got to the Pike River around 3:30 and wasted no time getting on the river. Much was iced over but it was thin; you'd fall right through on just about all of it. I walked the area between the footbridge upstream from 13th down to the split below the A bridge 3 times. On one of my passes I spooked out a coho that was hiding; presumably underneath the ice. I repositioned downstream and let the fish settle, then started tossing. I used a mixture of my "coho killer" wolley bugger pattern with a new pattern; a variation of the antron bug (it'll be my pattern in my next FLY SWAP folks), as a dropper on a 5X tippet tied to the eye of the wolley. So this fish had its choice, and it NAILED the tiny size 12 Antron bug. And I mean NAILED it. This coho was thrashing, jumping, then running deep under the ice, then back out, and finally just sat in 2' water right in front of me. I very SLOWLY worked the fish in close and with a swoop of the net she was on shore. After checking this hen against all the other Coho pics, she indeed seems to be the largest I've caught this season, I'm guessing about 7 lbs. Definitely without a doubt a fair hook on the Antron pattern; right in the TONGUE. After a few glamor shots I set her back in the river, and she recovered quite quickly. Not bad at all for a 1 hour outing on the Pike. I took a quick look at the mouth, just to see; it was really frozen and barely flowing at all. Normally I'll sight at least one fish down there; this time there were none.

  MP