2/26/12- no fish until last cast of the day and Surprise!!!

[flyboy1]

Today (2/26) I hit Pia Costa from 1pm -3:45pm and was skunked... So I decided to hit the Passaic River at 2 bridges... I fished for another 40minutes or so with no luck... Believe it or not I said out loud to myself "Last Cast" and I hurled my firetiger jointed rapala out about 90feet and began reeling in.......... I was about 10 feet from shore when my line just stopped and my rod bent like Ive never seen before and then the line just started rippin out ( I knew right away it was a PIKE).. Its fish on, here we go... It took me no lie about 10 minutes to reel this thing in. Stupid me, I left my net in my truck (because I didnt feel like lugging it out again after carrying it around pia costa earlier) and the bank has a muddy deep slope so I had pull this thing up and over the bank (luckily im using 30lb braid w/ 30lb steel leader cuz this thing would of snapped any kind of mono line easily ). The Pike was 33" easily 14 or 15lbs (the head and girth on this pike was unbelievable.. Ive never seen anything so disproportionate girth wise compared to the length... ) I had this Pike hooked what I call "trapped jawed".. trapped jawed is when both the top and bottom mouth is hooked together on the single treble hook. Because this Pike was trapped jawed hooked it took me a long time while being delicate to unhook this pike safely. When I finally got this Pike unhooked, I took out my Iphone to snap a quick pic and my damn iphone froze on the camera screen and I was unable to take a pic without risking injury to the fish because I would of had to wait for my Iphone to reboot (and you all know how long that takes.) Because the Pikes head/body was too big/girthy I couldnt grab it by the back of the head so I carefully grabbed the Pike by the bottom jaw/gill plate (which I dont like to do because you can easily injure a pike this way) and lifted the pike by the tail/belly and leaned over the muddy bank and safely released the pike and he/she swam away. I however was completely muddy, pissed off because of no pic but at the same time excited/shocked that I caught which was easily the best pike I have ever caught...