MONSTER PIKE BOATED IN ALLEGHENY RESERVOIR

Jim Sprankle pike. Grizzly Gary Bait and Tackle photo.

Although he set out to boat a big muskie on the Allegheny Reservoir, Jim Sprankle caught what was, inch for inch, a more spectacular fish---a 49 ¼-inch northern pike.
The 42 year old Indiana County lure maker caught the 26-pound 12-ounce behemoth with 22 ¼-inch girth around 7:30 pm, Aug. 25. He was trolling one of his own 11-inch jointed plugs---a red and white Sprankle’s Pile Diver---21 feet down in 22 feet of water at about 3.2 miles an hour, he said.“I thought I had a nice muskie on,” said Sprankle, who didn’t get much of a fight on 100-pound test. “It gave a couple of good tugs and came right to the boat. When it came to the surface and turned sideways, I kind of flipped out. I was like, ‘Holy *#@, it’s a pike! I can’t believe it!’”
His buddy Chris Costello, also of Indiana, netted the fish. Sprankle knew instantly he would keep it. “I’ve been muskie fishing 12 years and I’ve let 50 pike go in my lifetime, but this was a quick decision,” he said. “I don’t like killing fish, but I know I’ll never catch another one that big again. It will help out our business.”Sprankle makes solid plastic floating lures marketed wholesale under the brand name Sprankle’s Bait. The Allegheny River watershed is known for yielding monster pike, including the state record---a 35-pounder iced New Year’s Day in 2000. The reservoir and river also produced four of the five largest pike caught anywhere in the state last year. Sprankle’s fish was bigger than all but one----a 30-pounder Rex E. Moretti caught in the Allegheny River watershed in Warren.“This is a giant pike even by Canadian standards,” Sprankle said of his trophy. “The really neat part is most people don’t even catch a muskie this size.”Sprankle thinks the Allegheny Reservoir’s pike fishery has gotten even better in recent years, an observation backed by the Pennsylvania Fish and Boat Commission. “The number of pike does appear to be improving. We’ve surveyed some good year classes,” said agency biologist Tim Wilson. “Pike like cool, deep water, which the Allegheny Reservoir has. Not many pike grow to the size of (Sprankle’s) fish because pike are aggressive and easily caught. They just aren’t left to live long enough to get that big.”Sprankle took his pike into Grizzly Gary Outdoors, a Warren County tackle shop owned by radio personality Gary Wert, who also maintains a website, where Sprankle’s feat soon became the topic of the day. It generated kudos as well as a debate about whether Sprankle should have harvested his catch. In an informal website poll, respondents favored catch and release. Someone named Buckhorn posted the following: “I would take pics, measure, and get a reproduction made up. That way, someone else can get enjoyment out of catching a trophy fish, too, and hopefully they would do the same and release it. To me, there is no sense in killing a trophy fish just for the sake of mounting it.”
In contrast, Big Buck posted: “I release many, many fish. But if I got what I figured to be a true trophy, like a 50-plus musky, it would go to the taxidermist. They make those complete fakes now, but, hey, it's fake. A true trophy fish has lived many years and spawned many times; its job is done.”Wert and his shop partner Tim Kolstee differed in their opinions, too, with Kolstee defending harvest of a trophy and Wert leaning toward release. “I understand you get it mounted and tell stories for years and years and have something to show your kids and grandkids, but I’d have let it go to live and fight another day, and in a couple of months it might have become the new state record,” Wert said.