Barrie Rickards' Angling - Piking Matters

PIKING MATTERS

A lot of people are successful and helpful

I've just been reading an interview with the legendary Broads angler Derrick Amies, onetime protégée of the equally legendary Broads angler Dennis Pye. It was an interesting interview in many ways and I found myself nodding in agreement with most of it - it took me back many years when I did fish the Broads a little, though not with a great deal of success. I only parted company with Derrick once and that was when he was quoted as saying “There's only one way to livebait and that's with a dumbbell float”. That is simply wrong. The techniques he and Pye perfected do work well in some circumstances, but so do other techniques in other circumstances, and better too. After perusing Derrick's many documents and photographs and old tackle, and often failing to draw him out on his views on when and where to fish, Derrick is then quoted, in answer to a question about whether he should write a pike book, as saying “You don't think I'm going to tell everyone how to do it while I'm still out there piking do you?”

Sad that. I mean, a lot of people are successful and helpful.

Deadbaits and butchery?

Whilst we are still on piking I saw the letter's page editor Tim Knight of AT had written, “You're dead right, deads can be far more effective than many people realise.” Really, a slip of the pen perhaps? How can anglers not realise how effective deadbaits are? And in the same magazine a Mr D. Pitcher of Warwick says of livebaiting “Let's cut out this butchery and encourage the young generation to use deadbaits.” There's nothing like a bit of angling unity, is there, to help angling? What people like Mr Pitcher fail to realise is that an awful lot of people disagree with them. Well, I assume they don't realise this, because the alternative is far, far worse.

Bite-offs and up traces

Piking debates run and run don't they. I saw Dave Lumb recently didn't think you get many bite-offs on deadbait rigs. Well, I agree, not many but too many if you do not use an upper trace. Upper traces are dead easy to use and they completely eliminate bite-offs and should be used in both dead and livebaiting. Some anglers think lives and deads will outfish lures in most situations. I'm far from sure about this. Of course, if you use three rods in a day versus one, then to effect a comparison you have to divide the bait caught results by three. When I did that with my pike list over 20 lbs (200 plus) I found that lure fishing had produced almost as many twenties as baits. Even on a day to day basis I'm not sure the concept is true: if you lure fish when the pike have just gone off the feed on baits, then perhaps you'll not do too well, but I remember when Basil Chilvers used to lure fish (only) whilst we were bait fishing in the fens, he did just as well as we did day by day. I used to think baits were best, but now I'm not so sure. Maybe waters don't go off baits in he way that waters do go off lures.

A untidy bucket of lures

Whilst still on lures I was pleased to see an article by Mark Phillips in which he describes the use of a bucket for carrying his lures. Dead on Mark - except that your bucket looks an awful lot tidier than mine! What I find is that if you hang the lures in neat and tidy fashion around the rim of the bucket the treble point which is on the outside always but always catches my trousers or the nearest bush and drags out of the bucket about half the contents. I just leave all the lures in a heap at the bottom of bucket then lift them all up in a heap when I want to select one.

Zander and big prey fish

I read an interesting piece by Neville Fickling recently in which he said that zander would attack larger prey than they can feed on. I'll qualify that slightly. Certainly they attack larger fish than they can immediately swallow and I have seen zander around 4 lbs attacking, and killing 4 lb bream. I don't think this is common but there are special circumstances when it may apply - probably after they have depleted a water of its food-sized prey. So, they cannot swallow a 4 lb bream, can they? But they can help themselves to bits of a decaying one and this they certainly do because scales of large bream have been found in their stomachs.

That man Collins

Still on zander, I see that Peter Collins, the man who got a caution for using set lines, has replied to criticism in the press in a totally unrepentant stance. It's a pity that, because he really has got this predation by zander quite wrong. Thirty-plus years ago there was a problem in the fens, because they ran through the silver fish like a knife through butter. But as predicted then, that situation has long stabilized and the total biomass now of pike + zander is probably about the same as the pre-zander, pike-only situation. All the indications are that this is the case. But then Peter seems to hate pike too - and they have been there a lot longer than he has or will be. Give up, Peter, please, before you begin to look too silly.

Side-planers are back in vogue it seems

These are the cheeseboard-looking objects that, attached to your lure, enable you to make the bait run out sideways from the boat or, if you are on the bank, run along the opposite bank. I used them a bit in the 1980s and they are effective: I used to walk along the Old Bedford River with the side-planer-fished deadbait walking the other bank. But I didn't find it an enjoyable way of fishing so gave it up.

Pro Anglers

I have a lot of time for Jonathan Ward-Allen of Medlar Press (Waterlog) but I think he over eggs things a little in his recent haranguing of the professional anglers in our midst. For the most part these guys are very experienced, often with a long and successful amateur pedigree, and they do not lend their names to rubbish, not least because their careers depend on it. Those involved in guiding are often very good at it, to judge from the reports I get from their clients. Those associated with rods have often put a great deal into the rod design, rather than just sticking their name on someone else's blank. I know there are exceptions, one or two charlatans, but generally our professionals operate to a very high standard.