Larry,
First off I like the new format.
I've encountered a situation recently that I just can't seem to remedy. I fish a river system here in MA, with an excellent population of pike. Right now is always the best time to put a fish over 15 in the boat, and the river receives the lest amount of pressure...with that said, i've been have a good amount of fish get up on the bait, but not commit...i've varied my retrieve speeds, bait style, colors...even figure 8ing...i can get the fish to come up, and even get them more agitated by speeding up the retrieve, but at the last moment they bail on the offer...
any ideas? In the summer time i've seen this, and what I did was as soon as the fish bailed, i would pick up a second rod, with a soft plastic swimbait and follow up with the fish...they bit about 90 percent of the time, but these were typcailly juvenile fish...
Confused in MA,
Matt