Dead Fish in Lake

[thriller1]

True story. My wife and I were fishing Lake Ashtabula 2 years ago when we seen a "stump" sticking out of the water that shouldn't have been there. As we got closer, it was the head of a pike that had his full head out of the water. I have been around a fair amount of 22-25 lb pike and they did come close to the size of this thing. The crazy thing is that as we got closer, he was "popping" his jaws. My guess is that he was choking on something that he just ate? As we got right beside him he leveled out. In my infinite wisdom, I tried to net him. Soon as my net touched him, he came to and we saw the biggest water explosion ever made by a fish and he was gone. We fished that area fro another hour or so in hopes to see him again but he never did surface. Looking back, kinda glad I never got to net him. I could only imagine the shape of my boat if I did get him in.