2016 Sept 6 - Last day at Bear Spring Camps

Today is our last day at Bear Spring Camps and we are stuffed and tired. They serve 3 huge home cooked meals for guests - much more than we normally eat at home. We spent so many hours in the boat, we feel like we are rocking when we are on land now. Time to get back to our normal routine!

Last day was cloudy and we also got caught in some downpours in the morning.  Late morning it was still cloudy but the rain had stopped and that is when I landed 2 nice fish back-to-back. First one was a Pickerel and the second was a Pike.

Esther with a Pickerel

Esther with a Pike

Later on that day, we had a Double-hook-up.  Frank had a hit and was busy landing his Pike when I had a hit at the same time. We love it when that happens! Frank's Pike was  a little bit bigger than mine so I snapped a picture of that one.

Frank with his "double-hook-up" Pike

In the late afternoon we were fishing the reeds hoping to catch one last monster Pike when Frank spotted a large bird at the top of a tree.  We think it might be an eagle but we were not sure.

Eagle maybe?

All in all we had a great time.  We caught at least 6 Pike in the 24 - 29 inch range and ate a lot of good food.  I guess that is why we keep coming back to Bear Spring Camps!

2016 Sept 5 - More Pike

Today the fishing was slower. We didn't catch any really big Pike. The biggest one I caught today is shown below. I did catch a nice largemouth bass using my spinnerbait above a weedbed.

Esther with a Pike

Esther with a 3-1/4 lb Largemouth Bass

When we are not catching fish we always enjoy seeing other wildlife and it always amazes us.  On this day we saw a large snapping turtle swim under our boat. Then we saw what I think was an otter.  It stood up like a prairie dog watching us and then swam back to shore.

Maybe an Otter

Then we saw what looked like a Loon but the colors where more white than a normal loon.  It was not afraid of us at all and swam very close to the boat so I got a couple of nice pictures. The last picture is a normal loon that we see all of the time. I looked loons up on the internet and found out that juvenile loons have different coloring.

Juvenile Loon

Front view

 Adult Loon

2016 Sept 4 - Bear Spring Camps for Pike

We usually do not like to travel on holiday weekends, but on the spur of the moment we decided to go to one of our favorite fishing camps to fish for Pike.  Bear Spring Camps is right on Great Pond in Maine and we had fantastic weather for the 3 days we stayed there.  The water was very low because of the drought going on in most of New England right now. The staff at Bear Spring Camps said Great Pond was 1-1/2 ft. lower than normal. This made it harder to find the fish which were most likely in the deeper parts of the lake trying to stay cool.  We spent about 8 hrs each day on the water and were rewarded for the effort!
Frank started off the first day great and caught this nice Smallmouth bass and the 2 large Pike below along with several other fish.

Frank with 18 inch Smallmouth bass

Frank with 24 inch Pike

Frank with 27 inch Pike

Frank with a Pickerel

The day was almost over and I had not caught a Pike or much of anything. Frank said "They are going to start biting anytime now" and BAM! A big Pike hit my spinner bait. A whopping 29 inches!

Esther with a 29 inch Pike

After looking at these pictures I believe I must have measured Frank's Pike wrong. It was thrashing about so much it was really hard. But looking at these now, his must have been as large as mine. Sorry Frank ;-(