An old adage is, "big bait, big fish," meaning the bigger lure or live bait an angler employs, the more likely he is to catch a trophy.
That's not necessarily true, of course, because big fish also consume small prey.
Still, muskie anglers often throw baits the length of a man's forearm, and trophy northern pike anglers sometimes dangle huge sucker minnows on otherwise bare hooks, because they know big fish often order their meals super-sized.
Yet no matter how gargantuan a predator fish is, logic would dictate it would choose a more diminutive specimen than itself to eat.
Logic would be wrong, as the accompanying photo of a dead northern pike and an equally dead largemouth bass illustrates.
The unfortunate pair were found by Joe Biernat of Forest Lake and his 7-year-old daughter, Madelyn, while fishing on Big Marine Lake recently.
Obviously, the northern bit off more than it could chew -- something predator fish like northerns regularly do when their attack instincts get the best of them.
Example: A northern sometimes will hit an angler's bait as it is retrieved, only to whack the same hook-laden lure minutes later, after being released.
