London Ontario Pike and Carp Fishing

Its blistering hot here in London today, but I decided to head down to the river hoping it was cooler near the water – it wasn’t. I’m glad I headed down today though, the fishing was great. I saw fish in the shallows as soon as I got to the river. I had my trusty Mepps Aglia #4 tied on (the same one that caught a white bass and walleye last week) and started covering the faster moving water, working my way to the slower deeper water under the Queens Avenue bridge.

I was approaching my usual carp spot and decided to make a cast to the area I usually cover with corn. Within a few cranks of the reel something hit the lure hard. I knew it was not a bass, and it was most definitely not a walleye. Five seconds later, a nice big pike was flying through the air. Being the first river pike I have ever caught, I wasn’t sure what type of fight to expect and I wasn’t going to be disappointed. The fish thrashed and jumped several times thought the fight, a vast difference to the bull dogging cold water pike of Little Vermilion. I got her to shore as quickly as I could on my light gear, and quickly snapped a photo and got her back in the water.

After several more casts with no excitement, I decided it was time to catch some carp. I through a couple handfuls of corn in the water and baited my hook and casted it out about ten feet and sat back from the edge of the water. After about five minutes, I heard some heavy feet stomping down the opposite shore, and looked up to see a police officer heading down the water with a large German shepard. He looked a around a while, and then called in my description over his walkie talkie. For a moment I thought I had done something wrong, but HQ radioed back that I wasn’t the guy they were looking for. Just then my reel started to scream and a nice size carp was running up and down the current. By the time I got the fish in, the officer was gone, but I could hear several sirens in the distance. I struggled to snap a photo with the fat little carp, but finally got a photo after about four attempts. She swam away strong, and I decided to pack it in for the day. As I headed back I ran into some more policemen who approached me and asked me a few questions. They then proceeded to put together an inflatable boat. I wanted to tell them they would be better off just walking though the water, since a boat wasn’t going to make it very far (the water VERY shallow where they were planning to launch (the ducks and geese were standing in the area) Hopefully they were looking for a criminal and not a body…