Barrie Rickards' Angling - All about Pike

First 20 - after the 30 I read something recently about a guy who'd caught his first twenty pound pike. It wasn't his biggest. If that seems like a contradiction, it isn't, because his biggest was over 30 lbs. It's just that he'd never had a twenty pounder. He seemed to be a psychologically sound person, but I remember one friend whingeing away week after week because we were catching twenties and he couldn't. He'd had a thirty mind you. He was really worried that he'd never see another one as big. Why worry? Doesn't make any sense to me at all. Angling is far more about other things than catching the biggest, the best, the most, etc. People who worry about silly things like this need to sit back, close their eyes, and have a think. Hopefully, having a think will get them a life. (It's rather like my long distance running. I have never managed 5 miles in under 30 minutes, yet I have done 10 miles in under the hour on many occasions. Thirty minutes is my running equivalent of 20 lbs. As you can imagine, I lose a lot of sleep about it!). Four 20's in a day I was scanning my old diaries recently, whilst preparing a chapter for the PAC's splendid pike book 'PAC30' celebrating thirty years of the organisation, and I noted three occasions when I'd had four twenty pounders in a day. I think there was another occasion but part of my records were lost (actually stolen) at one stage, so I'll never be sure. My 'official' list of twenty pounders has all the fish, but unfortunately not always the dates. Such catches are heady and make up for all the hard days. I've just had another, which is why I'm writing this. After four blanks in a row I'd arrived before dawn on a slightly cold, squally, November day, and I decided on a swim which was sheltered - old age it's called! However, I knew that with two long casts I could put my deadbaits in the hotspot. I use two rods almost exclusively nowadays. Both are telescopic carp rods and the reels and end rigs are permanently set up. I can pack up and move swim very easily and quickly and often do so. But not today. At 7.05 am the drop-back indicator rose and fell one inch. And there it stopped. Exactly ten minutes later it did the same again, but this time the jiggle was followed by line streaming out and a fish of 10¼ lbs on smelt. In fact, I had a small smelt on both rods, one of Neville Fickling's Lucebaits products left over from last winter - and still looking shiny and smelling well. This isn't a long story. In fact, most of it was over by 9.25, but every single run came on the one rod, even though the other was only a few yards away (the bait in the water, that is). Runs were as follows: 7.05, a 'tweak' only; 7.15, 10¼ lbs; 7.35, 22½ lbs (fought for ten minutes!); 8.15, 24 lbs (came straight in to the net); 8.40, struck too soon; 8.55, 18¼ lbs; 9.20, struck too soon; 9.25, 21 lbs, 10.00, cormorant! Swallowed bait on surface, dropped the hooks (damn!); 10.10, cormorant, ditto; 10.55, 22¾ lbs. No more runs all day; and that at 10.55 was clearly an isolated run, most of the action coming in two hours early on. I've never had five twenties in a day, but on that day I thought I was in with a chance until it had clearly gone 'dead by not long after 9 a.m. I don't think I'll lose any sleep on that. Pike feeding patterns There's been some good writing on pike in recent months, not least by David McLachlan who, like Ron Clay, tends to tell it as it is. But I was amused just a little to read one of his articles on feeding patterns (I think it was in Pike and Predators). After all, Ray Webb and I laid all this out in 1971 in 'Fishing for Big Pike'. I think David was having a go at the modern doubters. And I remember too (and I'll bet Ron Clay can) that when Ray Webb first came up with the idea of pike feeding patterns most pike anglers laughed. Every experienced piker knows about feeding patterns. That catch I have just recounted was one of several, all the action being between 7 am and 9 am. It will switch, in due course, and then a new pattern will be set, perhaps for as long as six weeks or so. If you've only got half a day available it certainly is useful to know if you'll be wasting your time or not. Aggressive pike Darren Nixon wrote a good piece in 'Pikelines' recently on the subject of aggressive pike. Of course, pike are not aggressive on the bank. They don't attack, like a piranha would. But underwater they are known to be territorial. People who have dived to them and found them lurking in sunken cars, report that they flare their gills at the intruder. And I recall Fred J. Taylor once writing that a docile big pike never looked like feeding until he threw half a brick into the swim! I have always been hesitant about trailing my hands in the water when afloat. After all, I've had big pike take lures within feet of the gunwales when I have been travelling from swim to swim. But I was talking to a man and his wife recently, and it was the wife who had had her hand grabbed as she trailed it in the water. I was inwardly sceptical, but she had the scars to prove it. They described it as a huge fish, but the spread of their hands suggested a fish of 3-5 lbs, which somehow made it all the more believable. This isn't real aggression, of course, merely pike having a go at a small 'fish. Darren's account is very similar to one I described some years ago when Tim Cole had a fish of around 8 lbs which simply would not go away, despite being caught twice: for a third time it chased the spoon up and down, just off the rod end - whether these fish are angry, as Darren thinks, I'm not so sure. We'd be attributing human emotions to a fish and there's enough of that going on already. But it could be territorial instinct, or just downright hunger. Trolling with oars I also saw a nice piece on trolling on the oars, by Matt Dean. With good boats, outboards and electric outboards, trolling on the oars may be a thing of the past I suppose, but my word, it builds up the muscles, and if you are on your own, it's a very skilful business. I did years of it, and again quite recently. I only use one rod, whether it's in a proper clamp, or merely propped on the stern or gunwales. Some boats used to have a wooden cross-bar near the floor so that you could stick the rod butt under it. More often I've kept one foot on the butt button. In rough water it may be necessary to drop anchor having hooked a pike. Try that on your own, with a pike on the rod, and a boat seemingly going every which way. I guess we're in the past here. Piking is difficult enough as it is. BBC taking the p*ss again Maybe you listened to the interview with Fred Buller on Radio 4 (a Marxist channel if ever there was one). The interview was about his latest book, a 'Mammoth book of Salmon'. Fred was excellent and the interview went well. However, it was preceded by the Today presenters treating it as a joke. It was not just laughter at the thought of fishing, but jeering laughter. Why is it that the BBC cannot get its head around the fact that angling isn't a joke except to idiots? Well, OK…