Giant Pike Caught! Spring 2025 Recap!
Spring 2025 Trophy Pike Recap on Aarons Guide Service!
Number of Pike trips: 52
Largest Northern Pike: 45.5”
Pike over 43” 5
Pike Over 40”: 10
Pike Over 38”: 20
Pike over 35”: 34
Man where do I start?! Early May started out really slow and tough. As many of you know, compared to other Adirondack lakes, Great Sacandaga Lake does not have a high population of Pike. While there is a good sustainable population, the dominant sizes are large for the Pike. This makes it incredibly difficult when certain conditions aren’t prime such as Cold water temperatures, unstable weather (frequent cold fronts), weed growth, bait hatching and various other smaller factors. Compared to smaller Pike, large Northern Pike are hyper sensitive to these factors making it very difficult when these conditions aren’t right. We’d see many giant pike each day, but many of them would just follow lazily to the boat or wouldn’t even turn towards the lures. However, as May progressed and the water began to slowly warm up, the trophy Pike feeding increased. We watched them get fatter and fatter as May wore on and the strikes and number of fish increased each day. Our June season got extended as air and water temperatures stayed below 70 degrees. It really seems that any temps above 70 increases the mortality rates of Northern Pike drastically. Pike caught during the heat of the summer often die and we do not target them because of this in July and August. Since we cast for these Pike, our clients learned how to use baitcasting reels, work their lures in and around structure and the most important part; figure 8s at the side of the boat. These Northern Pike on Great Sacandaga love to follow like Musky and just as you would begin to take your lure out of the water, many times, boom, a strike by the side of the boat.
We only use artificial baits on our trips, therefore, lures like spoons, spinners, swimbaits, etc were all used on our boat.
A special thanks to Dardevle By Eppinger who came along and offered us an awesome partial sponsorship.
Additionally, Toothy Tuff Baits provided us with a great array of rubber tailed baits.
KastKing provided us with our 60lb SuperPower braid which never broke once on us. You can use 10% off discount code: CHAKBA10 on any of their products.
A huge thank you to Reets Boatworks & Bayside Marina for providing us with immediate repairs on our trailer when it went down as well as annual spring service on the 150hp Yamaha. We also used their Marina for all our trips which was a huge asset! Reets just launched their Freedom Boat Club program so definitely check that out if you desire to own a boat without the maintenance, storage or trailering.
Our Fall trips are booking really quickly with many weekends already booked, so if you haven’t booked a fall Northern Pike trip yet, please do so. We have a super easy booking system on our website now that you can pick your own date, pay your deposit and put yourself on my calendar. For the rest of the summer if you haven’t been on one of our walleye, bass or perch trips, they are a must do for the family or the avid angler as the number of fish we are catching on these trips is staggering.
