Pike and Camping Cont.

The night at Yuba was perfect. It was the perfect temperature and very peaceful.

Kadin caught the first fish of the morning. It took him several minutes to real it in.

 

 Kerby's attempting to grab it with the fish grippers because he knows it's a pike and that they have really sharp teeth. He never did get them on it though.

 Still trying to get it in.

 Kerby finally got a hold of it.

 Measuring with a piece of ribbon because we didn't have a tape measure with us.

 That thing is heavy and huge!

 What a monster!! Way to go Kadin! 40 inch pike, between 18 & 23 lbs (according to some calculations Kerby found online, going by his size). Awesome fish!

 Time to release it.

 A huge crowd has gathered around.

Here is Kerby's story he typed up for Big Fish Tackle...he's a much better writer than me, and says a lot more.
 

We caught several small but fat carp in the evening and all morning.  But early in the morning Kadin's rod gets a hard bite, he's not around so Fisher grabs the rod and makes a nice big hook set.  He reeled it for a minute til his brother came back and took over.  When we saw the beast getting close to shore we couldn't believe he would just eat a shrimp off the bottom.  We weren't prepared, had no measuring tape so we laid a ribbon Kristi had down him and cut it off.  We didn't want to debate too long whether to keep him, we had no where to put him and it was hot so we decided to release him.  Later we measured the ribbon, right at 39 1/4", that was from the tip of the snout to the tail along his back, we noticed later in the pics that his bottom jaw comes out further.  I had digital scale but no net and we didn't want to stick that up in his gills so we didn't try weighing him.  We thought at the time he would be 35 or 36" maybe, didn't know quite how big he was.  What a great surprise he was, some people spend years trying to catch a pike that big using all types of advanced angling methods, and we got lucky enough to catch him on a piece of shrimp.

Fisher's turn to catch a fish.

 And it's another carp.

 Kerby caught a pike that was 20 inches.

 Catching yet another carp. Everything else we caught was carp, which was fine because they were still fun to catch.

 Time to swim again. Fisher wanted to show me he could put his face under the water.

 Then Skylar wanted to show me she could too.

 Playing ball again.

 Back to fishing.

 Lizard catching time.

 Swimming again.

 They kept this tiny lizard.

 Mia loved the water but wouldn't go out much deeper than this.

 Kadin also caught a craw-dad.

 Swimming yet again. Trying to swim away from the big wave that's coming.

 Fisher riding the wave.

 Another carp.

It was a really fun trip and we plan on doing it again...hopefully soon. Then we'll start fishing early in the morning and hopefully catch some more big pike.