If you follow my blog ( I hope you follow my blog, and if you do, thanks so much) I assume it is because like me you have a keen interest in fly fishing mostly for Trout ( and sometimes Grayling). So if you are at all purist about that, maybe don’t read on this one time. This post isn’t about fly fishing, nor about fishing for Trout ( of any variety).
This blog is about fishing for Pike using artificial bait….spinners, and plastics. Basically chucking things into the water, that bears no material content that could be construed as made of the stuff the fish actually eats….though in fact maybe that also describes fly fishing.
The one club I remain a member of has opened up their water to members for the two weeks on either side of the trout fishing season, to have a go for Pike. The only methods permitted are lures and fly (suitable for pike definitely not things a trout would routinely take. Obviously, Trout being an opportunist predator as well will often have a go at something that’s quite evidently too big for them, but on the whole, if you target pike with pike lures you should ( most of the time) hope to catch Pike…..and maybe bigger greedier Perch. The reasoning behind this opportunity is that the club wants to survey how many Pike might be in the water. We know there are a LOT of Perch but Pike seem to be a rarer catch. I only caught my first up there in Summer last year, on a dry fly of all things!
Now it is worth saying I would really have liked to have had a go for the Pike with a Fly Rod, but I simply do not have one suitable. My heaviest rod is an 8 weight at 9foot long, and while it has plenty of backbone to chuck larger trout lures, I did try once to hurl some Pike Flies I have that look like Perch ( would have been ideal in this instance) but basically, it cast like the proverbial sack of….well, you get the idea. I think basically you need a 9 or even 10 weight to chuck around what are basically budgies tied to a hook, with any sort of “finesse”.
What I do have though is a light predator spinning/LRF rod and a rather rubbish fixed spool reel that is years old. I got the rod to have a go for Perch and Jack Pike on the canal a few years back though have hardly used it. I did though have a selection of soft plastic lures, drop shot lures and some spinners, and wire traces. The reel dates back to my days when I used to work away a lot and I got it to do a bit of spinning of an evening when stuck out on some island somewhere, in summer with not a lot to do. I should really go buy a new one but I find it hard to justify the cost for the rare occasions I am able to use it.
in essence, though I have enough “stuff” to have a go for any smaller pike in the loch, so that’s what I went and did on Friday. I wasn’t entirely sure how popular this Pike fishing would be, but it soon became evident, very popular is the response. There were I think two boats out, another was set up to go and there were at least a couple of bank anglers. And in the time I was up there more came fished and went or were fishing after I had left. One of the guys I spoke to had been up a few times and said they had caught one Pike the day before, and knew of one being caught that morning. As I was just finishing tackling up and about to leave the car a couple of guys that had been fishing on the bank came by and they had one between them. It is worth saying though that as far as I am aware nothing bigger than about 6lbs had been caught.
I have to be honest and say that using smaller Pike Lures as I was ( my rod has a max 24gram rating, so I can’t chuck around big giant lures ( I think one of the guys said they were using big 100gram lures from the boat which strikes me as seriously heavy).
I decided to start by the boom on the dam wall, a bit of structure always tends to attract fish, especially Perch, and where there are shoals of fish generally you will also have a Predator nearby. I started with a Perch Slider ( I don’t make up these names!) casting as best I could around the valve structure in the water. Nothing showed interest.
I then moved right along the end of the dam wall near the weeds and tried in through the weedy shallow areas. Here, the water is never more than 3-4 feet deep at the most so you don’t want to be fishing too heavy lest you are snagging on the structure of the dam that makes up the sub-base of the bottom here.
A Wind Up
I have to admit it and say I find the spinning more taxing physically on my aches and pains than the fly fishing, which might surprise some people as all you seem to be doing is flicking the artificial bait out and winding it back. I think part of my issue is I have not settled on what’s the best way to wind for me. I am a bit back to front with winding on a fly rod. For me, though I am naturally right-handed, I find it incredibly hard winding a fly reel with my left hand and holding the rod with my right as I wind in, this seems to be the “normal way” most (not all) right-handed fly fishers work. I have been the subject of some light-hearted ridicule when observed to be swapping the rod to my left hand in order to wind in with my right while playing a fish. When spinning I have to cast right-handed and as you basically start to retrieve almost as soon as the lure hits the water it kind of makes sense to wind in with the left hand, but something about this does not feel right to me, and I end up somehow standing twisted, which in turn makes me sore through the course of a few hours. As I write this a few days later, I still feel the aches of an afternoon’s spinning three days ago!
I was in two minds to head back by the car and get a cup of tea and then continue on down that shore, but opted to head around the end of the lock and up the far bank, thinking I wouldn’t be that long. in the event this took longer than I anticipated and I kind of wished I had bothered to lift my flask out the car boot because a cup of tea would have been most welcome as the afternoon wore on. I found a lot more wadable areas than I first imagined ( usually it is quite weedy up this bank) and so fished quite a few pockets between trees along the shore and round the corner into the bay. In some areas, I was getting into deeper water and in those cases, I put on heavier lures and spinners, and in the shallower weedier pockets I was on the more floatable lures that duck and dive just beneath the surface. I even tried a big Toby with a weed guard that worked really well at keeping me snag-free.
What I was missing though was fish. I really did expect to get a few small Jack Pike assuming there are many there. You know the sort of things, maybe about 1-2lbs and a foot long, but no. Nor did I catch any Perch…and the loch has a huge population of them that can become all you will hook in some conditions even with just a line dangling in the water, but not today. SO not sure what this says about the population of Pike. I looked in the book before I left and there were literally 2 or 3 recorded and those I could account for from earlier witnessing or conversation so doesn’t appear that we are inundated with them for now.
