Pike and Musky advice for Grindstone Island late June

[esn6]

My buddies and I are approaching on our anual fishing trip on the St. Lawrence. I have the tackle and gear, but was wondering if anyone has been in that area recently and what is hitting, on what? As always any advice and/or tips are appreciated.

I usually have good luck on a deep diving fire tiger rapala, buck-tale jig tipped with an inverted frozen minnow (works well on weed edge) or the old-faithfull spinner with a plastic tip of choice.

[Commodore64]

We'll be up in that area as well, last week in June (next week!). We'll be at Cal's Cottages. We always do pretty well on smallies, but I would like to get into some pike this year. One evening at dusk, 3 years ago we pulled 3 pike between Maple and Long Rock Island, there's a big trench there.

I caught a pike up near the 3 little islands east of Rusho Bay, and I also nabbed 2 drifting the channel between Maple and Picton. I've heard eel bay can be great too, but thus far we've not had luck there. I followed out some folks (they invited me) 3 years ago to Eel Bay, I watched them nab several pike, but I had nothing to show. They used bucktail jugs tipped with a rubber worm. They caught over 80 pike the same week we were there.

For the past 2 years though, I have caught no pike. I'm primarily a walleye fisherman on Lake Erie, I've tried trolling a bit in the area but nothing to show for it. This year we have a terrova on the front of our boat, so I'm hoping that I can work points, weed edges and dropoffs much more efficiently. I hope this year is the year I figure them out. They are great eating.