Man, I’m with you on enjoying pike fishing. We don’t have them in the south (do have a smaller one most call jack fish), but I have been to Canada about 25 times and had great luck with not only northern but walley and smallmouth. Northern are my favorite.

The fish in your pics look to be fatter than those I have caught in Ontario. Have gotten several in the 40 - 42 inch range but not as fat. Nothing better on the end of a line. Last time out I caught a 39 inch pike on a ultralight while fishing for walleye. Fight was on.

Still wouldn’t be funny until it WAS a lamp.

Come on. If you post something and call it funny, then post something FUNNY.

We do a fake tree about 7 feet tall. Wife also positions about twenty other small and smaller trees around the house. To get that Christmas tree smell, she uses fir branches throughout the house for decoration.

Much daughter is married to a Coast Guardsman and are stationed in Kodiak, Alaska. We were there last year for Thanksgiving. Day after we went to a cut your own tree farm. Snow on the ground (a treat for wife and me being from South Alabama), hundreds of trees to look at and trying to keep up with 8 & 5 year old granddaughters with hot cocoa after made a great afternoon.

The simple answer for those that do not like the content or format is to leave The Stage and find something that fits into their life and wishes better. I think the diversity- experience, age, location, gender and much more - is what makes this space special.

We had one in a corner of every class room (4) in the junior high school I went too. They were coal burning. The boys all took turns stoking ‘um and if you sat next to it you were hot all class and on the other side of the room cold.

My grandmother had a gas cook store but heated her kitchen with a wood burning stove. In the winter she mostly cooked on the wood burning stove. As a product of the Depression she had to save the gas.

That angle got me through a lot of, “Hey y’all watch this” episodes in my early life.

I say yes. I like everything in individually and mixed up they are great. Good with coffee in the morning.

Congratulations on your recovery. There is advice all over this site and around the internet, but there is only one way get experience. Talk to local fishermen, pay attention to the weather, and go out there and fish. Remember, what works today may not work tomorrow. Just keep experimenting.

Catching is not the reward; the whole experience of being out there - in the outdoors - is the payoff.

Good luck!

God bless America. Thanks to all that have served.

My son-in-law is a lifer in the Coast Guard stationed in Kodiak, AK. I know and understand the sacrifices our American military make. Good news: they are returning - with my two granddaughters- to the lower 48 in June.

He is the height of disrespect of everyone else and extreme selfishness. I would bet he blames others for his problems. He is the kind that is not sorry for his transgressions, just sorry he got caught.

However you catch ‘um, nothing beats a cold beer, a few friends and and picking crabs. Hard not to eat it all when trying to pick enough for West Indies salad or a omelette.

Be sure the entrance is just large enough to let them in. Any larger and they will find a way out. I wasn’t catching in the spring and adjusted the trap entrances and started getting four or five over night in each trap.

Have used mullet for years for bait, but my neighbor convinced me to try chicken thighs. Got them at Piggly Wiggly for about $5.00 for ten pounds. They worked great, and I got two nights out of each thigh.

Finally, I have always used black traps until about two years ago. Two went bad so I got red. Caught more in red traps than black. Third black trap went south and when I went to net shop for a new red trap the owner convinced me to get yellow. I think it catches two to one over the red traps. Go figure.

Good luck.

Went to Soldotna the year hurricane Katrina hit. My group of eight included two - a good friend and myself - from the Mobile Gulf Coast. Katrina was still out in the Atlantic and not much of a storm when we left, but got stronger and closer to the coast daily after we left for Alaska.

New Orleans took the brunt of the storm, but Mobile got rocked pretty well. We returned home the day the storm hit. Couldn’t fly into Mobile so Montgomery was as close as we could get. Rented a car and drove down I-65 all by ourselves. The storm was raging when we got to Mobile with traffic lights down and debris strewn all around. A tree blew down across my driveway just as we drove up to my house. My wife was fit to be tied.

Since late August, September and October are the prime months for hurricanes I had to promise my wife not to take an out of state fishing trip after August 15. I have held to that promise, keeping the peace.

Anyway, the fishing is really good around Soldotna. We caught halibut (I landed a 137 pounder), several types of salmon and trout in the Kenai River. The outfitter’s name was Chick - don’t recall the name of his company - and he worked out of the bar (can’t remember the name of bar either) he owned. We met every evening at the bar to meet our guide for the next day and tell fishing stories over a beer or two. Don’t recall the house buying any of those beers either.

He worked as a lobbyist to the Maine legislature for a while representing the fishing guide industry.