Sub bugs

With muskies on my mind I decided to try and learn a little more about one of their cousins the pike which I have better access to locally.  Pike aren't native to the Maine waters close by but they have been spreading like crazy. The first and only pike I've ever seen caught in Maine was on Belgrade Stream when I was in high school.  The Belgrade lakes along with Sabattus Pond to the south have been the main territory for pike. People have started to catch them consistently in Sebago Lake which has a long history of salmon fishing and they have started popping up all over the state.  There are rumors of pike in the Saco River and Mousam River watersheds.  Last summer fishing I was fishing with Yudi for smallmouths on the Saco below a dam and she had a ferocious strike on a rapala where the fish launched itself out of the water after it.  If that wasn't a pike then that was one monster pickerel but we'll never know.

In the past I tied up some of the standard pike bunny flies and divers.  Searching around for something different I came across a fly called a subbug that have gathered a following and even a website devoted to them http://www.spanglefish.com/subbuggin/  These flies look a lot like the ones with a deer hair head that I've tied in the past for bass and stripers although they have a somewhat uniquely shaped head that looks somewhat like a diver but with a more bullet shaped head.  I imagine they must dive but also bob and snake around a little more than the standard diver.  I tied a few up according to the instructions on the site on stainless 3/0 hooks so I can use them for stripers along with pike and bass.

I had a chance to try them out this weekend for pike but with the water so cold I stuck with the subsurface flies instead.  I was just too focused on actually catching a pike I didn't want to get caught up in changing flies and testing them out.  They will have to wait for another day.  Hopefully the water will warm up enough to get the pike a little more active.