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