Pike And Deadbaits

While fishing dead baits, sea or freshwater, I have most success with a float paternoster keeping the bait a foot of two off the bottom. As most of my piking is done in rivers it gives me more confidence that as well as smell the flow will give the bait some attractive movement.

I also like to think as pike have trouble looking down this method gives me the best of both worlds. I'll perhaps nail a bait hard on the bottom in the coldest conditions

My personal findings on the use of deadbaits is that using a pop up for roach and perch is more effective than any other method. With Sea baits I have had more success with legering. Although I have caught several good fish using a method I call "alkasmelt". This is a couple of alkaselza tablets broken in half and pushed inside the mouth of a smelt. Then fasten the smelts mouth shut. Having experimented with these in the edge the bait rises as gas builds up. It becomes vertical and then drops as the gas escapes. The tablets will disolve in about ten minutes. In this time the bait will rise and fall three to four times. However some gas must be absorbed into the bait as it remains semi buoyant afterwards. In the edge it will lift slightly with the movement of the water. How this responds at greater depth I cannot say. For along time I worried about the smell of the alkaselza. But it works.

Pike will take deadbaits at all depths - live fish sometimes remain almost motionless for long periods, especially when it's cold and dead fish usually float to the surface shortly afterwards, get carried off by wind or current and gradually sink.

sum times in the wintre the pike lie on the bottem their eyes are looking up. so pop up a dead bait is in their line of sight. it moves about in the flow of rivers to give vibrations to.

Are you sure that alka seltzer thing isn't harmful if you cast a bait off..? Sounds a great laugh though, worth trying on an extra rod when you're bored or want to wind your mates up.

No the alka seltzer thing is OK. I am not having a laugh either, some of the lads I have fished with have thought it was funny to start with. Infact one of my mates took the mick out of me for about 15 mins that was right up to the moment the drop off dropped on that rod after it had only been in position for about 10 mins. An 18lb 15oz fish stopped him laughing. He begged me for for some tablets. But I didnot give him any. He had some the next time we fished together. This is not just one incident, it has happened alot. last count 20 fish on the method, about 60% within 30 mins of casting out. The tablets will have desolved by this time but as I said before I think the bait retains a level of buoyancy. I also feel that this buoyancy is different from that provided by poping a bait up. I agonised over the smell in the water and the safety issue for along time. But repeat captures have lead me to believe that the fish don't worry about the smell, and suffer no ill effects. The only reason I have said anything about the method though is that I didn't invent it, and I don't fish for Pike all winter anymore.

Just a thought. In the aquarium trade you can buy small oxygen giving tablets that fizz for about 30 minutes. I think these would be perfect since they only give off oxygen and no smell etc...i will see if I can get some costs/product names etc.

Rob,
I keep these in case of power failures the brand I use are "SUPA" oxygenating tablets. The box contains 12 small tablets and costs about 50p from most pet stores. The tablets contain 100% Potassium Chlorate (IKCIO/3).

The address of the company is:

"SUPA" aquatic supplies LTD
Unit 2A, New street
Holbrook IND. estate
Halfway
Sheffield
S20 3GH.

Rod..thats the ones mate!! I think these would work wonders! Iused to have bokes of them, up in the loft, but, condensation made the boxes wet and they "fizzed away"..lol

Sounds a gas !
what length trace do you think it should be fished at ?
Do you think the bigger the tablet the more height a deadbait would get...Pev.

any one used kippers for bait i have used manx kippers i find them the best .peter

hi, peter, ive used sprat and that resulted in a 15lb pike, and i have a tip for everybody, personally i think a float alarm pike so ssaturday 20th i forgot a float and just tied my swivel with trace on it to the line and freelined a sprat in the margin, stuck a swinger on my line, 10 minuits later bite alarm when nuts and i conected with a good size pike!!!

p.s i was using a float a couple of hours before and never caught a thing!!

i think one thing particularly in carp anglers they seem to think u need to cast 100 yards to get to the fish, how wrong can they be, if u approach your swim properly, when i caught that pike i caught it right in the margin which is only 3 foot 4 foot deep,

I have used the Altaseltza thing, and had a few small zeds on it. The only thing I wonder about is whether or not the bubbles would harm a fish if they managed to take a bait all the way down? Remember that we drink the stuff when the bubbles stop fizzing.

can you stick an alka celza in a dead fish??? is it a good attractant?

I use roach,iv'e had 3 over 20lb beauties in one short session on roach deadbait.

wahay! for 50p its gotta be worth a cast !

Difficult to do other than agree with Graham Marsdens treatise on Pike and deadbaits.30 years of piking has driven home the message that static deadbaits do
offer the most CONSISTENT chance of a big pike in an average water.(If there is such a
thing.)
If there is something faintly unsporting
about sitting out a deadbait offering,I can live with it, for ALL of my biggest pike have fallen to deads,from every water I have
caught them from.The skill might be in presentation, it may be the way you prepare
the baits, it may simply be time and effort,
but not using livebaits would not dent my catches,sizewise at all.
There is no doubt that livebaits do attract
pike better than deadbaits in most conditions.In my experience livelies catch
more pike and quicker. Sizewise they fall
well behind a well fished deadbait.Pike are not subtle fish, but the big females are more likely to succumb to a static bait that is dead than a live one (i,e anchored).........Why?
I can only think that an 'experienced' pike
cannot 'read' a deadbait,(sea or fresh), in the same way she can a lively.I believe very much that older pike are far more wary than most believe, Ive had deads outfish a
livebait far too many times to think otherwise.Invariably the livebaits have caught more, usually at the start of the session, but be aware as soon as the smaller pike are no longer attacking the livelies,probably, (almost certainly)a bigger pike has arrived on the scene.This, for me, is the role of a livebait,if any,as
an attractor - to let the deadbaits do the real work.
Of course big pike are caught on all kinds of livebaits,but far more are caught on deads.Lethargy may also come into it, a static is not hard work for a big pike after all, but the real secret of catching
big pike is 1. Make sure you are fishing a water where there are big pike, and 2.Spend time and effort locating them.
If you treat them gently and put them back
carefully and unharmed, they will even grow
and quite quickly too.
I never use deadbaits other than frozen in
fish oils- these lolly baits cast like stink, if needed,and pike love them.They thaw very qickly, and are often taken in a semi frozen state anyway.I never use leads,
unless I want to pop the bait up,or the river flow is severe.One last must-do, baits must be as fresh as possible,dont be tempted to save iffy baits,big pike are not caught on em.......Just to confuse the issue, there is one deadbait that catches
as many small fish, and that is lampry's.
A brilliant catcher, but its very high blood content seems to attract jacks like no other bait. Im going to bed.

I cannot agree with Arthur Russell's comments at all. On the face of it, deadbaits catch bigger pike than other methods but the data presented by most people is skewed towards their own preferred method. To be successful in catching big pike, I believe an angler has to have the full range of methods available. Arthur says that all of his biggest pike have come to deadbaits and suggests STATIC deads are the most successful method. I can quote my own statistics which paint a different picture. My top ten biggest pike have come on the following;
No.1 Lure
No.2 Drifted deadbait
No.3 Lure
No.4 Trolled deadbait
No.5 Lure
No.6 Static Deadbait
No.7 Static Deadbait
No.8 Paternostered Livebait
No.9 Paternostered Livebait
No.10 Static Deadbait

Be wary of quoting statistics - and even more wary of taking any notice of them!
There are doubtless some very effective ways of fishing a static dead but the right method on the right day is the way to catch pike.

Eric

Most big pike were caught on deads, up until a few years ago, because that was what most people used.