My favorite fishing partner (Mrs. Ragas) and I just concluded annual vacation week. A lot of the same patterns we experienced and observed from the other week will carry over again into this week, as it appears warm weather is here to stay for another while. We jumped a bunch of lakes over the last week. While we (she mostly!) made it look easy, the fishing was pretty challenging each day. We got lucky with some windows, weather changes, and cooler water temps that pushed and kept fish shallow each afternoon. Each day the weather had to do something different too. Some days were bass-only, other days were mixed bag and other species. We caught a lot, adventured to places, succeeded a lot, and struggled too. We had an afternoon or two of good quality smallmouths and largemouths, while the rest of the week was a strong bite for big northern pike and crappies. The recent weather changes really fired up the pike, as we caught a number of them in the 30-inch class or larger, including a few PB's. We identified our best bites, and just stuck with them rather than beat the dead horse. We love our crappies. And we love our pike..... when they are of big