PIKE TRIP UPDATE: We missed the optimum time by about a week. (It's a guessing game when you have to commit to a weekend months ahead of time. Last year we went a bit too early.) The pike had begun to disperse from the shallows so we never found a hotspot where they stacked up. We caught a lot of small males, or "jack pike," but did manage to hook into a few gators every day. Fat smallmouth, though, proved to be the real day savers. They were in shallow and tremendously aggressive.
Here's the one that haunts me. I had my nephew in the boat, teaching him how to cast, when we tucked into a lee. I decided to check out this rocky shoal that never really held fish in the past. I made a cast into less than a foot of water, and the biggest smallmouth I have ever seen followed my fly right to the dropoff. I put another cast in there, and he whammed it but missed, then chased it all the way to the boat. I ran out of room and he took off. It's been running through my mind on a loop.
For an anti-climax, I caught a bullhead on fly, a first for me.