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Tackle, Tactics and Experience

Lures - Not Just For Fun

An Introduction To Lure Fishing For Pike From The Bank For The Experienced Pike angler.

Part 3: Using The Lures

Preparation

Before you go fishing you have some work to do with the lures. The lures I listed are all well made and strong enough to cope with the biggest pike, but the hooks may need some attention. If they are too thick in the wire you must replace them with something a little finer, you must also sharpen them. Very few hooks are sharp enough straight out of the packet, blunt hooks lose fish, check them and sharpen them, when you are fishing remember to check them regularly because they will be blunted by contact with fish or snags. Keep hooks sharp! With a pair of pliers pinch the barbs down, you will both land more fish and unhook them more easily.

Some lures are made of plastic, others of wood, examine the wooden lures and check them for any obvious flaws in the finish, pay particular attention to the hook hangers and trace attachment eye. If there are any apparent holes in the finish use some clear nail lacquer to seal them, even expensive lures sometimes have these faults. If water gets into a wooden plug it will first reduce its buoyancy, often critically on surface plugs, and eventually cause permanent damage or rot which may weaken the hook hangers and make the lure unusable.

See notes on lures made of wood

Make some traces, finished length should be no less than 15", it is better to twist the wire rather than crimp it, just one swivel for the line attachment is enough, on the other end use a plain clip without a swivel.

You may as well set the rod up before you set out so you can start fishing as soon as you reach the water. I use a small rubber bead threaded onto the line (before I attach a clip with which to attach the trace) to protect the tip ring of the rod from contact with the swivel.

I have tried, or seen, lots of different ways of carrying lures and I can recommend the Dart Book/Lure the smaller size is big enough for about thirty lures.


On The Bank - Summer

A quick run through the lures on the summer list describing how to use them.

Poe's Giant Jackpot

There is only one basic retrieve style to use with this plug, or any other stickbait, you must impart movement to the plug by twitching the rod tip downwards, and then allowing the plug a little slack line. Timing is crucial but it is easy to get the hang of it. The plug should move from side to side with a nice, easy rhythm, pause and allow the plug to stop from time to time, and wait a few seconds before restarting the retrieve. Vary the speed and rhythm a little, it is easy to get set into the rhythm and forget the pauses and variations, this will cost you fish.

Poe's Awaker

Very simple to use, either cranked or twitched back to the bank, all prop-baits look as if they ought to catch fish instantly, however, there is a catch - you must pause the retrieve sometimes and wait several seconds before recommencing. The precise combination of length and speed of retrieve against length of pause is the key to success.

Where and When to Use Surface Lures

There are times when surface lures are dynamite and other times when they are really useless, they do tend to be either "on" or "off" with few intermediate states, but sometimes they are the only lures the pike will take. Expect to take good-sized pike with surface lures, if you are only getting tiny jacks then you are probably fishing in the wrong place, you do not expect bait-sized pike to be swimming near the surface if big pike are about. A surface ripple often brings the pike up in the water, but if weed or other features provide cover near the surface then pike might be tempted. A flat calm or deep, open water are not good prospects for surface fishing, evenings often offer the best or only chance in such conditions. Surface lures are essentially summer baits, from about May until September is usually the limit but exceptional weather conditions could extend that either way.

Rapala Supershad Rap

There are several ways to use the SuperShad. First just crank it in, it will dive to about two to three feet and wobble nicely. Try a mixture of cranking and twitching, it will run a little deeper on the twitches. Using really fast "rips" with the rod top will make it dive deeper still but it will bob back up to the surface quickly when it is not moving. Next try long pulls, bringing the rod from pointing directly at the plug to a ninety degree angle, take up the slack and repeat. All of these retrieves, or variations of them, will catch pike under widely varying conditions, making it a very versatile plug.

Bomber Magnum Long A

Twitch, rip and crank this plug at depths down to 4ft. Quite a fast retrieve will work sometimes, often used as a search lure, to stimulate response from pike that might be more successfully caught on other lures.

Muskie Mania Lil Ernie

Use cranked and twitched retrieves with pauses, this smallish lure will run down to 8ft plus and hold its depth well right to the bank. Its large lip and high buoyancy mean it will reverse out of snags and weed if you feed it a little slack line.

Muskie Mania Burt Shallow

This plug has a wide snaking action when cranked but is usually best retrieved in a series of short pulls that send it from side to side about 3ft down, twitches also work well.

Odyssey Pig 6" Suspending

This sinking jerkbait is surprisingly easy to work and control at any depth, it will ride high in the water if required. A simple "twitch - pause - twitch" retrieve will see it glide from side to side erratically.

Any 1oz bucktail spinner

A straight cranked retrieve will usually work well enough, but varying the pace, or including short pauses, will trigger pike sometimes. If the pike are high in the water they will sometimes take bucktails when they are worked very fast so that they bulge the surface or leave a visible wake.

Any 1.5oz spinnerbait

Either a straight cranked, or sink and draw retrieve will work. Varying the speed and sometimes bulging the surface also work. Working it fast over weed-tops and allowing it to drop into gaps between the weed will be effective sometimes.

Landing and Unhooking

Many anglers hand-land their pike to avoid net problems, but some swims with high banks prevent this. You must make you own decision about hand-landing, fish up to about twelve pounds or so can usually be grabbed behind their heads, with thumb and forefinger just inside the top of the gill slits and easily lifted safely. There are risks, very often at least one treble is hanging free from the end of the lure, if the pike shakes its head at the wrong moment you could end up with a pike on one end of the plug and your hand on the other! I can assure you, speaking from personal experience, that this is painful and bloody. I used to hand-land nearly every pike I caught, but I tend to use the net a lot more these days. If you have marginal weed by your feet you can sometimes run the pike into the weed, reach down with the pliers and unhook it without touching it, perfection! Remember to turn the pike round and guide it back into open water.

Forceps are fine for hook removal when bait fishing but they will not be much good for lure-sized hooks, you need long-nosed pliers. Do not struggle with inadequate equipment, get the hooks out and the fish back into the water as quickly as possible. Very occasionally you may get a pike that has hooked itself in such a way that it is extremely difficult to remove the hooks, the simple answer to this is to use a pair of small bolt croppers to cut the hook. Always carry one or two spare hooks as replacements.

Deep hooking with proper pike-sized lures is very rare but sometimes a pike will have a hook caught well back in the gill rakers, this always looks hopeless but stay calm, make sure the pike cannot shake its head, the most secure way of achieving this is to lie the pike upside down on the unhooking mat and kneel with your knees either side of the pike's flanks. Gently push the hook free, perhaps by first inserting the pliers through the gill slit, it is surprising how easily they come out - if there is enough room for the hook to get in there, then there is enough room to get it out.

Because pike caught on the tackle as described are quickly landed and unhooked they usually recover as soon as they get back into the water. I have only ever had to support one (small) pike for more than a few seconds after release.

Summer Waters

Summer, for the purposes of lure fishing, should be defined as the frost- free period that usually lasts between mid-May and mid-September. Weed growth, and average water temperature, will peak towards the end of that period. Pike will be spread out all over the water, as will the prey fish. With long daylight hours the pike often behave quite differently at different times of the day, with activity peaking usually around dawn and late afternoon/early evening.

Weed is an important pike holding feature, presumably they use it for cover from which to ambush prey, and perhaps also for comfort, in a dense weed bed they must feel secure from disturbance. In a water that appears to be full of weed try to find weed adjacent to deeper water, that will usually hold most pike.

The weather has the greatest influence on pike behaviour, frontal systems, rises or falls in barometric pressure, water temperature, wind strength or direction, sunlight and even the phase of the moon all have a bearing on the response of pike to your lures. The combinations of these effects are so complex that it is impossible to predict what sort of fishing you might enjoy, but you can make a few generalisations. Bright sunshine, cloudless skies and no wind can make life hard, pike activity can become very dawn/dusk focussed with fair sport at those times but nothing at all for the rest of the day, prolonged periods of high pressure will lead to a gradual increase in activity, but still strongly focussed on the two key periods, if you can get up early enough you can enjoy some predictable sport, and almost set your watch by the time of the last take just before 9 a.m.

A warm, moderate south westerly breeze can mean plenty of pike moving and catchable, but the sort of warm fronts that are often brought in by these winds can make lure fishing very unpredictable. Persistent rain usually causes a marked dip in pike response but occasionally sport may be reasonable, even with surface lures. Showery conditions usually offer steady sport in between the showers. A day with a mixture of sunshine, showers and variable breeze will usually offer reasonable opportunity for some sport.

Different lures and presentations will be effective under different weather conditions, I feel that straight crank and twitch retrieves are better in the sort of conditions under which you would expect the pike to be feeding if you were using baits, whereas jerkbaits often work better when conditions appear to be difficult, though I am sure others would disagree. If you are catching pike in the morning with one presentation you may find a subtle change in the weather may make a completely different type of lure and retrieve necessary for the afternoon. Do not just keep flogging away with the one lure because you have caught fish with it earlier.

In clear water pike can see a long way, and they do not like bankside disturbance, a surface ripple will provide some cover but it pays to be as quiet and discrete as you can, in calm conditions I find that I end up using longer-casting lures because all the pike have been spooked away from the bank, either by me or other bank users, even low-flying birds will move the pike into deeper water or thick weed cover. With a breeze the pike are usually closer to the windward shore than they are to the lee, this is often interpreted as pike following prey fish, I believe it is because they have been scared away from the bank where there is no ripple to disguise bankside activity.

I find that most of the waters I fish have a period between about 8.30am and lunch-time when lure fishing is hard, although one particular water fishes very well at that time, but the weather will disturb these regular rhythms, sometimes intensifying or depressing activity spells, and sometimes, in extremes, turning them completely on their heads. Pay attention to the weather and how it affects your waters.

Basic Summer Tactics

Start fishing near weed, try a surface lure, very often a surface lure might move a pike but it won't take it. If you see a pike that does not strike at the plug a good idea is to swap to a SuperShad and twitch it back slowly just beneath the surface, this works so well sometimes it is almost like cheating! You might carry on all day like this, raising pike on the surface lure but only hooking them on the SuperShad, or they may be slamming the stickbait, remember the retrieve advice, stop the lure sometimes, give the pike a chance..

You will sometimes notice pike following, but not taking, your lures. Sometimes they will follow right up to the bank and stay there even if you remove the lure. If a pike has been excited enough by a lure to follow it then it should be possible to make that pike take the lure. If a pike follows the lure in to the bank, stand still and try not to frighten it, after a few seconds it will move away. Either try a different lure or use the same lure and retrieve it a little differently, trying to trigger the pike to hit it. If you have not scared the pike then you have a chance. Try stopping the retrieve some distance from the bank, let it rise to the surface, wait for a few seconds and restart the retrieve, try various lures and retrieve patterns. Pike are peculiar and unpredictable creatures, and lures sometimes seem to provoke strange behaviour.

If you see no sign of pike then quietly move to a new swim, try the same lure again, if there is still no response you might be best to try a SuperShad anyway, or a Burt, both of these lures will fish high in the water, over the top of most weed.

Is this your first visit to this water? If so you may be wiser to try to cover as much bank as possible, searching for good potential swims and fishing as you go, don't waste time changing lure too often, stick with a good all round plug like the SuperShad or Long A and cover the water quickly, if you get a fish, stick around a while, perhaps trying different presentations if the first fish is not repeated.

If the water is fairly free of weed then deeper running lures might be used, the spinnerbait can be worked quickly to cover a lot of water, if exploring is a major objective. With a sinking lure like a spinnerbait you can let it sink to the bottom, counting how many seconds it takes to stop sinking, and get a rough idea of comparative depths. You may find the lure is snagged in weed when you start the retrieve, rip it free and retrieve it normally, when you recast try beginning the retrieve before it stops sinking, still counting it down, repeat this starting the retrieve earlier and earlier until the spinnerbait does not pick up any weed, now you know that your lure is working just above the weed. The type of weed that your lures pick up can help you, slimy green algae will not hold good pike, so move on, lilies, Canadian pondweed and Potamegaton are good for pike. >

Do not cast a lure that has weed hanging from it, always clean them, pike do not eat weed. With all the lures try to vary the presentations until you find the key retrieve pattern. Concentrate so that you are always aware of the lure's position, depth and behaviour, then when you get a take you will be able to repeat that presentation.

If you try and relate your lure fishing catches to pike feeding behaviour you will quickly come up against some contradictory results, and here I will throw in a personal observation and opinion that you may, or may not, agree with. Very often you can catch pike on lures when they will not take baits, at other times baits are far superior. I can clearly see that a lure in the water, no matter how attractive and beautifully finished, is clearly not a fish, I believe a pike must be able to see that as well. But pike, like all animals, especially predators, are curious, and they have no hands, if they want to examine an object in the water then they can look at it, listen to it and smell it, but if they want to know what it feels like they must bite it. On different days different lures or retrieve patterns attract pike, so make your lures look interesting and provoke pike into biting them.