St Helens

[shwatec]

Any information on St helens lake would be great

Is there any pike with size?

I caught 20pike this weekend none of them over 21 inches

tips on bass and pike fishing in st helens

[walleyechaser]

There are a few decent pike in St Helen but there's an obvious reason for the lake having no minimum size limit. Its over crowded with hammer handles and smaller.
St Helen is a real breeding ground for pike and even without a minimum size limit too few of the small fish are being kept. What you have is a worse case scenario of the negative side of catch and release and over population.
What would benefit St Helen in my opinion would be to have a couple of pike tournaments a year in which all fish were kept and donated to some local charity. You'd need a pretty large turnout to have any impact on the pike population though.
You might try fishing the North end of first lake along the drop off weedline with large body baits like Rattlin Rogues to pick up the better fish.
JMO

[kbkrause]

What you have is a worse case scenario of the negative side of catch and release and over population.


Had the large pike been released, there might not be a problem... :)

[walleyechaser]

Maybe I should have been a little clearer regarding catch and release.
In this particular lake a lot of small pike need to be kept and not
released.
There never really was a huge population of big pike and the small
fish population exploded. Are the pike in St Helens stunted? I don't
have the answer to that but the survival rate of fingerlings has to
be phenominal due to minimum predation and other possible factors.

[shwatec]

There are so many pike why are there none with any size.???

The bass population seems in better shape. We caught 6 keepers on friday and have pulled out a few3-5 lbs over the past couple of yrs.

sean

[shwatec]

we fished st helens the past 2 weekends and caught:

7 largmouths over 14" 2 of them exceeded 3 lbs.
the bass were caught on black spinners with gold and black and purple rubber worms

Also landed a bunch of pike 2 of them around 24" on spinners