Thanks for coming back on this. Gary, what you say is valid, if indeed light tackle is being used. Rods are now built for the job and are pretty powerful, but I suppose some may just use their normal trout gear. David, is this a fact about Bob Church? or was he trout fishing and just happened to hook a pike? When he fished the Pike Fly competition he was certainly using a wire trace, so why wouldn't he use one again, if indeed he was Piking?
Ref. Grafham's poor results, I find it hard to believe that this is all down to Pike Fly fishers! Hardly anyone fishes it for pike with a fly! Perhaps it was the caning it took from a few Fish mongers last year, who not only fished it with fly tackle, but killed all they caught for resale to Hotels and restuarants. At least 1 Thirty and several twenties, plus quite a few Zander disappeared down this route. This has hopefully been stopped by AW bringing in bag and size limits. All of this on top of years of abuse by the netting teams.
Rutland has been fly fished a bit more than Grafham, but the results of my friends who do it are about 1 Pike every 10 hours. Hardly a case of pressuring the Pike population, more likely a case of pressuring the Fly fisher.
I think Matt needs to look elsewhere for his causes, namely the practise of going ashore and subjecting the fish to "just one more from the other side" plus the obvious recaptures. Look at Llandegfedd, what's happened to the catch rate there? I bet no ones fly fishing for them there!
Chew has been Fly fished all this season for Pike, how come there are any left if what Matt says is correct?
Interesting isn't it!
Regards,
Colin