If there is more exciting freshwater fishing than catching monster northern pike in shallow water with the fly rod, I"ve yet to find it.

Picture this.

You"ve just made a 70 foot cast into a flat peppered with last year"s pencil reeds. The water is only two feet deep and you are watching your big feathered streamer dart in one -foot pulls under the surface as you strip it in.

Suddenly there is a huge boil and the streamer disappears.

For an instant you distinguish a large, thick, dark body peppered with light horizontal markings, turning away from you.

With a firm grip on the line you lift the rod tip hard, and all hell breaks loose.

The big fish can"t dive so she comes out of the water like a rocket and then back in where she begins a run that strips line from the reel so fast you"re glad you paid extra for the saltwater fly reel.

Sixty feet out she stops and begins to roll, wrapping the leader and line around her body and then she takes off again.

Wherever she goes, she"s leaving a trail of mud and debris in the shallow water.

All you can do is hang on and concentrate on keeping the line tight and the tip of the 9-foot rod high in the air.

Then the fish tires and you can lead her to the net. But she isn"t ready. She powers under the boat and crosses to the other side. You"ve gotten a good look at her and you are impressed. A lot.

You bring her back and this time your partner is able to slide the net over her head.

You leave the net hanging over the side of the boat so the fish can stay in the water while you collapse into the boat seat to catch your breath and let your heartbeat come back to normal.

Then with a big needle nose pliers, you slip the barbless, single hook out of her mouth, grab her under a gill flap and lift for a quick picture and then slide her back to her watery home.

There is no better time to fish trophy northerns than right after the ice leaves the bays.

The biggest fish in the lake move into these bays even when they are covered with ice. They are here to spawn and sometimes they spawn before the ice leaves. They disperse their eggs on submerged vegetation or underwater debris.

They will remain in the spawning bay for two weeks or more and feed well to recover from the rigors of spawning.

However, the sooner you can get into the bay after ice-out, the better the fishing will be.

Jim McDonnell, Royal, Iowa, and I hit the timing just right on North Caribou Lake, a fly-in just 100 miles south of Hudson"s Bay in Ontario earlier this spring. The big lake was still 90 percent ice covered when we flew in and the downside was because of the late ice-out, our fishing time had deteriorated to only two full days.

But we made the most of it in the only bay we could reach because of the ice.

It was a sunny, calm day, just made for fly fishing.

Here"s how we went about it.

Our rods were Berkley Series One fly rods. Mine is 9-foot and balances with a number 8 line. Jim"s is 9 1/2-feet and balances with a number 9 line. Berkley no longer makes the Series One fly rods, but comparable rods are available from Fenwick.

There are a couple things to consider when selecting fly rods for pike. First, is length. Long rods enable you to cast farther with less effort and handle the large flies you will be using much better than shorter rods. A rod of 8 1/2-feet would be about minimum for this fishing. Remember, you will be casting from the floor of a v-bottom boat, not a raised casting platform

Line should be WF8-F or WF9-F. The heavier line is needed to cast the long, air resistant streamers you will be using for pike fishing.

Our leaders were 9-foot knotless tapered leaders. Tippets were removed and replaced with nylon coated wire.

Here"s how to make a northern pike fly leader. Cut 15 inches from the tip of the mono leader. This is the tippet portion. Save it because it can be reused. Tie a loop knot in the end of the leader. I use a perfection loop. Next, strip off about 15 inches of nylon-coated, braided wire of about 15 pound test. Tie a loop knot in one end. Join the mono leader and the wire loop to loop. Use a figure eight knot to tie the fly to the end of the leader.

This arrangement will work with most of the lighter nylon covered wire; however, Jim introduced me to a new kind of leader material named Tyger. It is nylon-coated, micro-braided stainless steel in which you can tie any knot you might use in monofilament line. I was an immediate convert. You can tie on your fly using a two-turn clinch knot. It is a far superior material to anything else I have used for steel leaders.

The leader loop to loop tippet is something I"ve used for a long time, even on my trout leaders. It"s easy to change tippet sizes without taking the time to tie a knot and the constant changing of tippet sizes does not shorten your leader as knots would do. I usually have several 15-inch mono tippets with loop knots tied up in various pound tests ahead of time.

Our flies were Lefty"s Deceivers. The Deceiver is one of the best northern pike flies you can use, especially in the springtime.

Casting these big flies on long, heavy rods can be tiring. When your rod arm tires, try trolling the flies about 80 feet behind the boat. We did this a lot and caught several fish including a bruiser that went 26 pounds. If we needed to move to a different part of the bay, we trolled the flies.

These big fish are moving throughout the bay looking for food. And as the water gets warmer in mid afternoon, they become more active.

The action didn"t begin until the water temperature hit 50 degrees. By 4 p.m. it had peaked at 54 degrees and then began to cool off once again. Best fishing was from 2 p.m. to 5 p.m.

While waiting for the ice to go out on Caribou, Jim and I found another lake and spent an afternoon fly fishing for big pike there. We caught more than 40 fish up to 44 inches. It was so early, the locals hadn"t been on the water yet.

If you want a sure thing for monster pike, fly into a big, remote lake like North Caribou right after ice out.

And be prepared to do battle.

Larry Myhre is outdoor editor of the Journal. Reach him at (712) 276-5965 or email at: lfentfish@msn.com