New State Record Pike caught by trout angler trolling a  Wedding Ring & Worm On 6-Pound Leader

 By Bobby Loomis




Fish just can’t leave the darn thing alone. 

You don’t have to tell experienced trout fishermen just how effective a lure called a Wedding Ring is for trout trollers.  It has put more trout and kokanee in the boat than darn near anything that’s ever been tied to the end of a fishing line.

But did you know it can also catch northern pike---and record size pike at that!

If you have doubts about that, you’ve not talked to Kim Fleming, an angler who hangs his fishing hat in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho.  On August 6 Kim was trolling a Wedding Ring for trout on Idaho’s lower Twin Lakes.  He’d rigged his Wedding Ring on 6-pound test leader and attached the piece of nightcrawler he used along with it on a #8 hook.

“I was trolling for trout,” Kim says, “and I hung up on the bottom.  Then the ‘bottom’ started swimming away.  I was using a lightweight spinning outfit.  I hung on and picked up line when I could.  When I got that fish up close enough so it could see the boat, it went plumb crazy”

Fleming was accompanied by his best friend and fishing partner Randy Whalen, of Post Falls, Idaho.  “Randy almost went into shock when he finally saw how big that fish was,” Kim says.   “Between the two of us we eventually managed to get it into boat.”

That fish, later weighed at the Fins & Feathers store in Coeur d’Alene, brought the scales down to 40-pounds, 2-ounces.  It measured 51 ½-inches in length.  Fleming says the weight was verified by a representative of the Idaho Fish & Game Department. 

The first question experienced anglers will ask when they learn of this catch is “How in the world could a huge pike with the mouthful of sharp teeth those fish have be brought to the boat on 6-pound test leader and a teensy #8 hook?”

Fleming has an answer.  “The fish was securely hooked at the very tip of its mouth,” he says.  “The leader wasn’t in far enough for the pike to chomp down on it.”

If his catch is certified, Fleming’s whopper will go into the record books as the all time largest pike ever boated in the State of Idaho.  The existing record of 39-pounds, 13-ounces was taken out of Lake Coeur d’Alene in 2007.

Fleming’s pending pike record has to be of special interest to the folks at Mack’s Lure, the tackle company from Wenatchee that markets the Wedding Ring along with a host of other fish-catching products.

“Nobody has to tell us how effective our Wedding Ring is for putting fish in the boat,” says Bob Schmidt, the company’s general manager.  “We’ve been hearing that for decades from anglers all over the globe.  But a pike of more than 40-pounds is in a class by itself.”

Actually, new size records caught on lures marketed by Mack’s Lure doesn’t really come as a surprise.  This year alone its lures have accounted for two new state records for kokanee, the good eating landlocked sockeye salmon, on Oregon’s Lake Wallowa.  

Mack’s Lure products have also registered new state size records for other favorite sports fish in recent years.  One of them is the Washington State record for walleye.  Mike Hepper, of Richland, set a new Washington State walleye record on the Columbia River in February, 2007.  His monstrous walleye, a 19-pound, 3-ounce fish, was caught while using a Mack’s Smile Blade ahead of a nightcrawler.  Smile Blades, a Mylar plastic smile shaped spinner blade that can be slid onto an angler’s line or leader, are enjoying increasing popularity for a variety of sports fish all over the world.

And as a little birthday gift we've even come up with a commercial focusing on this special lure.  Listen in and get a chuckle!