Jerry’s spot on with the handling.
Pike are quite a fragile species and it’s imperative in my opinion to go with someone experienced until you are confident with them yourself, as a rule I find the smaller fish are trickier to handle than the big girls as they tend to be livelier and you’re working with just a finger or two in the underside of the mouth instead of a hand, ideally you want to be rolling larger fish onto their backs on the unhooking mat so that you can pull the lower jaw upwards towards you in order to get a good view and remove the hooks with more control over the fish which occasionally involves straddling it… as daunting as it might sound it’s a confidence trick too and very straight forward once you’ve done it a couple of times but take the trouble to find someone who will show you and ideally oversee your first attempts and you’ll need long and short forceps ideally along with long handled wire cutters and a deep throat disgorger just in case
Gear wise I think you would be ok with a 2.5lb tc rod on a stillwater, possibly even lighter (I’m generalising as some will use much lighter for various reasons and some heavier but experience helps if doing so) and a reel with 15lb mono will see you right, it doesn’t have to be a baitrunner either as you can double a rubber band over the blank close to the handle and push a loop of line through it with the bale arm off which will do as good a job for the purposes of giving it a try.
If you’re deadbaiting, end gear will be a wire trace with 28lb seven strand being a common choice along with your choice of hooks and I would start off by float fishing as it’s more involving and easier to present the bait at different depths or hard on the deck and there’s very little left to interpretation with the take especially if you use loaded pencil deadbait floats when fishing on the bottom as they rely on being tightened right up to the bait in order to sit properly and the slightest movement by a pike will register whether it’s a run or a static pick up… easier and more positive I reckon than trying to interpret bleeps on an alarm until you build up more experience.
A large landing net, again ideally 36/42” should cover all your needs but whatever happens…
If in any doubt at all whether you’ve got a pick up strike!
Pike can be savage when they hit a bait and they can also be extremely subtle on occasions too, especially when they’ve been laying up for long periods in winter and the last thing that you ever want is a deep hooked fish so always hit any indication.
The very best of luck with it, I hope you manage to give it a go as it’s a very involving and interesting fish to target and worth seeking the guidance for your first couple of outing if you can.
I always forget something and have only touched on what I think would be a good and practical starting point so have a good trawl through the Predator Forum too, loads and loads of good advice and info in there and always consider the fish as the first priority and banking it the second.
mg: .