Broken rod evidence of small lure-big fish

Kinsey Baughman with Little Cleo that caught rod-breaking northern pike

If you look closely at the small spoon my great-niece Kinsey Baughman is holding, you will see it is a 2/5-ounce Little Cleo in silver and blue with a hammered finish. This photo was taken right after a big northern pike snapped her rod in half. She still landed the fish, the size of which I now forget.
When it comes to catching northern pike in the summer, no one does it better than my family who comes each year during our Family Week, the first week of July.
It isn't unusual for each boat to catch and release 50-100 fish in a day. How do we do it? We cast small spoons, spinners and jigs. The spoons are 2/5 to 1/3 ounce, favourite spinners are the #4 and #5 Mepps and Blue Fox, the jigs are 1/4-ounce with 3-4-inch twister tails. Sometimes these are in the form of Beetle Spins which is basically just a jig with a hair-pin spinner attached to the eye.
The small lures catch big pike and small pike. They also catch a bunch of walleye. We even get quite a few perch.
The key is that we make thousands of casts per day each. It isn't difficult when the lures are so light.
Incidentally, we have a great many people who break rods on fish each summer. In fact, we had three broken rods in one day last fall. In the latter three cases, the individuals were fishing alone and were trying to net the fish with one hand. The big pike made lightning-quick lunges beneath the boat and the rods struck the boat's gunwales.
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