L_A_2015_S_

6

CONSIDER

CONCEALMENT

It is hard to over-emphasise this

point, it is possibly the most

important one in this whole

article. As I said earlier, pike are

blessed with excellent eyesight,

they use it to great effect and not

only for spotting prey, also for

spotting danger. This is another

of those reasons to think about

your approach to your swim and

to plan carefully how you’re

going to go about it. Far too

many anglers ruin their chance

of catching that big pike before

they ever clip on a lure, simply

by standing up at the water’s

edge in full view of the pike. You

need to move slowly, wear drab

clothing, beware of heavy

footfalls and possibly most

important of all, avoid being

silhouetted against the skyline.

If you’re approaching a swim

that has cover in the way of trees,

bushes or walls, then use that

cover to stay hidden from the

fishes view. Sometimes though,

if there’s a high bank as on most

rivers, it’s very difficult to get

down to the water’s edge without

being seen. In this case, don’t go

down to the water’s edge at all

but instead, cast from a point

well back from the edge. If the

bank is a high one, you only

need to get to the point where

you can see where you want to

cast to, so the most the fish

could see of you is the top of

your head, down to your eyes.

You may only get one cast if

you do this, it’s often difficult

to retrieve the lure without it

hanging up on bankside

vegetation at which point

you might be forced to reveal

yourself in order to free it

but so many of my fish have

come on the first cast in a

new swim that I know that

one cast is often enough.

Some swims are almost

impossible to approach

without being seen. If that’s

the case, then don’t fish that

swim when the daylight is

good, try to approach it

when light levels are low,

so hit it very early in the

morning or last thing before

the light fades completely

in the evening.

Eric Edwards the master of big pike on bait and

lures gives us the last five of his top ten tips which

will help you catch big pike consistently!

7

FOOL THE

FOLLOWERS

If you’re at all experienced at

lure fishing you’ll know a little

about followers. They’re fish

that follow the lure, often right

to the bank, without actually

taking it. It’s probably fair to

say that with pike, the bigger

fish do this far more than the

jacks do. Pike are not clever

creatures by any means but

they can learn from experience

and if they’ve been fooled by a

lure once, they can be a little

more wary the next time. The

biggest pike I ever saw was a

follower which I did not catch,

a monster of a pike which

followed a spinnerbait right to

the boat on Lough Mask back

in 1996. Yes, followers can be

very big indeed, they can be

the one fish we want to catch

more than any other.

What to do about followers?

Well it isn’t easy, I have a few

tricks up my sleeve but they

don’t always work, probably

less than 50% of the time in

fact, but that’s better than

nothing. Often, the first we

know about a follower is the

flash of its flank close to the

bank as it turns away from the

lure. My instinctive reaction

to this is to flick the lure short,

back out along the line that

the fish is following as it swims

away whereupon the pike sees

the lure and gulps it in without

a thought. It’s as if the pike is

nervous of the lure but knows

it’s left it behind, so this new

thing in front of it must be

something else, something safe.

If that doesn’t work and the

fish follows again, alter the

speed of retrieve. Speed it up,

slow it right down, almost to a

stop even. I’ve heard of people

dropping lures to the bottom

and having pike slurp them

right in from there and while

it’s never happened to me, I can

well believe it. My next trick is

to change the lure, and make it

a big change, something really

different not just a different

colour of the same lure. If the

fish followed a swimbait, put

on a spoon or if it followed a

spinnerbait, try a crankbait.

A trick I’ve been using in

recent seasons which can make

a difference is to change the

angle of approach. Back in

November I guided LAS

member Alan Behenna to a

fish on the Wye which, at first,

followed his lure. Alan was

drawing the lure across the

stream over a snag which is

well hidden below the surface

but which I knew was there.

When the fish wouldn’t take I

suggested Alan move to the next

swim upstream from the snag

and drop the lure in from there

BIG PIKE

ON LURES

TEN TOP TIPS

PART 2

Steep banks and a

wealth of snags – dare

you cast your lure

right into the thicket