We were filming a segment for Alaska Outdoors television show when I accomplished three, “I’ve never done before” things on one pike in a Southwest Alaska lake. 

It was a windy day. Too windy to fly fish, too windy to film. I was prepared for big pike with a 9 foot, number 9 rod, and a piece of 50-pound monofilament line as leader. Pike were present, but it was far too gusty to throw a fly, and since pike was what we were there to film—we couldn’t. 

I had never caught a pike, and obviously had not taken one on a fly. In my fly box was a huge deer-hair mouse fly I had carried for several years without even a hint of a strike.

The filming crew and I tried to weather the storm by sitting out of the wind behind a high bank. The longer we stayed behind the bank, the stronger the gusts were and the more restless I became.

More to be doing something, than actually fishing, I set up my rod and put on the old deer-hair mouse. As I approached the lake’s edge I raised the rod as far as I could reach and let the fly act like a kite. The wind caught the bulky body of the mouse and carried it and my fly line for 30 yards. I played the line out as far as it would go until it touched the water. The moment it settled on the surface it was violently attacked by a mouse hating pike. 

I yelled, “fish on!” as loud as I could, but the wind grabbed my words and sent them sailing unheard across the lake. Battling the old Ice Age survivor to the lake’s edge, I continued yelling for an audience, but the filming crew could not hear me above the wind. 

My first pike lay in shallow water among some reeds. I bent over to remove the hook and remembered their sharp teeth. Not wanting to end up as a casualty case, I caught the leader 3 feet from the fish’s mouth and began to pull the fish to shore. As the line’s tension increased, the pike flipped its ugly head from side to side. The motion caused the fish’s teeth to act like a buss saw on my leader—it was severed—and the pike escaped with my deer-hair mouse.

I tried to explain to the filming crew what I’d done, but they wouldn’t believe me. They just made jokes and I couldn’t convince them that I had caught a pike on my big deer-hair mouse. 

I crossed my heart and hoped to die and received only a, “ya sure.” 

“I’m telling you I got my deer-hair mouse fly out in a 50 mile-an-hour gale, perhaps the world’s singular northern kite fishing event. 

“It was taken by a hungry pike and I brought him to shore where he escaped with my fly. 

“Honest!”