Those big pike are something else... We were fishing a backwater off a river in the Adirondacks some years back. The kids kept gut-hooking bream, so I'd cut the line off down by the hook and we'd turn 'em loose. Then I would re-rig their rods with a new hook. Well, I was re-rigging one of the boy's rods when the older one got another gut-hooked gill, a good one, maybe 7". I told him it was going to be a couple minutes, just let a little line out and keep it in the water until I could get to it. Well just as I got done with my younger boy's pole and walked over, I told my older boy to reel it in. He got it about 3 feet from the bank and a big green shadow - looked like a telephone pole came up from behind the little gill, there was a quick squawk of his drag, then he reeled in the line that was now flapping in the breeze. I didn't get more than a glimpse of something big and long and green zipping up on that gill, but what I saw was freaking huge! I gotta guess it was either a muskie or a really big Northern. I'd guess it might have been a twin of the one you lost - or maybe a first cousin.