Back on the Pike

I have missed my pike fishing this year, which for various reasons outside of my control didn’t start until the last week in October! Usually, I would start on the lures before this, but alas, I couldn’t, did I miss out? I certainly felt so, but in reality, I don’t think I did miss too much, looking at the catches that have been out. It seems to have been another really poor September / October on most of the places I would usually fish at this time of year.

When I did manage to get out, I spent quite a bit of time, simply mooching about and looking for fish on the finder. This was quite depressing to be honest as I simply couldn’t find anything. Now from experience this doesn’t mean that there are no fish around. It could be that they are simply right on the bottom which makes them harder to discern on a traditional finder. Now if my assumption was correct and they were right on the bottom however it usually means that they are not in a feeding mood for one reason or another and you are going to have a hard time.

Another explanation is that they move away when they hear the boat coming. This is a possibility, and it only really happens in very clear water in my opinion. The way to check if this is the case is to drift a couple of areas and see if you can see some on the side imager. I did this and still didn’t see anything.
Being a bit out of touch with the water I was getting really twitchy, had the pike moved from where I thought they should be? Had there been that much pressure that they had been put off? This was also a feasible possibility, or were they still there and just tight to the bottom.

My gut instinct was that they were tight on the bottom, my rational was that if they weren’t I would have come across one at some point. I have seen pike behave like this before, and it is usually either pressure, the pike seeing too many lures across them, or its bout feeding behaviour and i.e. really full fish that make them go like this.

This feeding behaviour makes for very difficult fishing as with an over abundant food source a pike will only feed when it wants to, no matter how much we try and influence them with attractive lures or juicy deadbaits. It can just be a case of thrashing the water all day until they decide to turn on. Which in my experience is usually 10 mins before you are due to pack up!

One thing that I will always do in conditions like this is try and use something different to what everyone else has been casting. As the water was still warm, I fancied trying some jerk baits, as these are still quite a rare thing to see on most waters with soft plastics being the go-to for most lure anglers.

I like the Westin Swim, its easy to use and cast like a bomb, but really, they are intended to fish shallow water, yes you can catch fish shallow over deep water, but if they fish are tight to the bottom this is where you need to fish, and even the fast sink versions will take a long time to get down there if you are fishing over 30ft. You can weight them, and I have several that I have adapted for deep water work. So, I clipped one of these on, cast out and waited until it hit the bottom and tweaked it back to the boat, trying to keep it within a few feet of the bottom and about halfway back – whack I had my first decent pike of the year not only that, but I had the method sorted, this was going to be a good day…

Nope. That was the only pike I had for the next few hours! Its weird that it happens like that you think you have the method sorted and catch a fish straight away and then it slowly dawns on you that it’s not because of the method you are using at all! It was just a lucky cast or an un-lucky fish? Depending on which way you look at it. But you convince yourself that as you have caught one, it must be the way to go, so in effect I wasted a good few hours before I made the inevitable decision to move areas and look for some more fish.

This was easier said than done, as in most spots I didn’t see anything, and the couple of spots where I thought I saw “a something” when I went back over the spot they had disappeared. My gut was telling me that the pike were simply spread out and moving around, which means less targeted fishing and more blind casting. But if that is what you have to do, you have to do it, so I did.

This type of fishing is a bit hit or miss, and its more about grinding a fish out, but needs must. I often think that you must cover a couple of hundred fish each day without any reaction from them. Then for some reason they turn on, sometimes only for a few minutes, when they are more active and want a bit of a feed. On a tough day this usually happens at last knockings when the light levels change and bait fish become more active. If anyone’s says “I don’t mind a bit of casting, it can be very therapeutic, it doesn’t matter if you don’t catch” etc. I feel a bit sorry for them, its a means of catching fish, and every cast I want to catch a fish. That’s my weird mindset, but today I had done too much with little reward, bet at least I did put my new W6 Baitcasters though their paces while waiting for last knockings or “bite time” as I had re-labelled it in my head.

This is always an exciting time, but also a limited amount of time, as you also need to get back before kicking off time. However, in those last 5 minutes I always think you have disproportionately caught a lot of good fish.

There is always a sense of appreciation around this time also there is a sense of stress with the clock ticking down, is it going to be a waste of time or maybe I can sneak one out? Well, it was looking grim, then last cast I had taken… and spectacularly missed it!
That last cast then turned into a couple more as there was obviously at least one fish around. Eventually I managed to get one to take again and it was a good one, pulling the boat around on the flat water.

I didn’t mess about with it and got it to the boat fairly quickly. It was a lovely long fish which was quickly unhooked, a couple of pics and it was back, and I was racing back so not to be told off. Sometimes I think it would be better just to go out for that last knocking period rather than waste all day chasing your tail. The problem is you never know.