Some years ago, I used to be really heavy into muskie fishing and would make my annual pilgrimage with buddies up to Canada to look for the monster 'fresh water wolves.' We would typically catch a fair amount of big Northern Pike during the course of our trip. As mentioned already and I have never been able to figure out quite why, those Red and White Daredevil spoons where amazing.
We's heave-ho these big spoons on heavy muskie tackle (more like broom sticks than rods, really
) into the backs of shallow bays with submerged cabbage or coontail and watch the underwater clouds of silt form as the long, dark- shadowed torpedo images on the other side of polarized lenses would just hammer the snot out of those spoons. There were times that they would hit those spoons so hard that there would literally be flying spoons sailing through the air if a fish or you missed the hookset.
The only thing that I can figure out is that the fish up North aren't exposed to the same hammering (fishing pressure) as back home.
There were times that I was actually getting bored catching pike on spoons and began emptying out the bottom of my tackle boxes on my casting deck to the dismay of my buddy in back, just to see what lures that I never seemed to have any luck with-could catch pike in Canada. The majority did. The ones that did not were relegated to garage storage.
KT's story also reminded me just how viscious pike can be on topwater baits. The most devastating topwater strike that I ever witnessed never came from a muskie but a big pike (48") that hammered a floating glider bait in Georgian Bay. We had just finished cleaning fish before supper when my friend grabbed his pole from the boat and figured he'd chug a few casts off the deck of our lodge. On the fourth cast, I witnessed a northern come completely out of the water and pounce on top of my buddy's glider bait. As he set the hook, we both just high-fived each other and shouted excitedly at what we both witnessed.
I guess my point to my entire diatribe here is that big baits often do catch big fish so if you have a couple of large "muskie" baits like Suicks, Eddie Baits. or the like, pair em up with a heavy, stout rod and heave-ho!