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Sylvain wrote:
"Struggling with difficult fishing, almost no bites, I fished hard anyway as the conditions were promising (15°C water and windy weather). It was also for me the opportunity to test a new shad I developed, the tests on zanders were more than good but the ones on pike were not complete.
I was spending my time spotting a drop off between 5 and 15m on my GPS, when I saw a big detection on my Humminbird fishfinder. I retrieved the line as fast as I could and let my shad fall 10m behind the boat in order to present the bait in the right place. When I hit the bottom I knew that I was very close to the fish but I had no bite, so I tried an “extreme” movement by shaking my lure very hard (as to get rid of weed), this kind of animation lead sometimes to reaction bite…and that’s what happened. I felt a big strike and set the hook firmly…In my mind, it was a one meter fish, nice fish but not huge, so I started to reel and to “pump” the fish very quickly (I always use hard drag settings), and even get my long fluorocarbon leader into the rings. When I bent forward over the boat I saw this massive fish, maybe I stopped reeling during half a second! He took this opportunity to rush and took easily 10m of braid out of the reel. Then he came a second time to the boat, and crushed the surface…closed mouth, no way to use the fish grip. At this moment I realized that my short fluorocarbone leader in 0.61 has been completely swallowed, the teeth were rubbing the 0.30 leader, my god! I started to engage my right arm in his left gill, but the fish had a quick reaction and rushed again. He took another10m of line in a few seconds; I dipped the complete arm in the water to absorb the rush. At this time I knew that a single side-to-side movement of his head could cut my thin line, so I just took a mad decision: I set the drag to the max and started to steady winch…The pike came straight to the boat and half-opened the mouth to shake the head, but I was quicker than him and slid my fish grip on his huge claw. I hoisted this lifetime fish into the boat and gave a howl!!
The following seconds are a bit confused, I was alone on board and torn between taking tons of pictures and releasing him as soon as possible. I engaged my camera’s retarding and started to make a few pictures. Then I laid the fish over the rule, and saw an amazing 137cm!! My former record of 114cm was exploded…I took cautiously the fish and put it into the water, his tail on the right hand, my camera on the left one. After a very short fight (around 3min max and a quick picture/measuring session (2min max), he had absolutely no trouble to recover and to get back home in the deep blue waters of the lake.
The rest was just about enjoying this moment, laid on my boat’s foredeck, I drift 500m before wake up! I had much more difficulties to come back to life that he had…"

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