Why are do some pike swims lack pike?

I occasionally fish a deep slow river where every swim seems to have the right features for pike - slow moving current, drop offs into deep water, lots of willows, snags etc.

Yet after fishing the place for a few years, it's clear to me that many good looking "pike" swims rarely if ever produce pike. I regularly fish them in the hope that one day they'll produce. I'll spend 10 minutes chucking a lure in the swim or 30 minutes with float fished deadbaits, but I admit my heart's not in it - I know for some reason the pike don't rate the swims as much as I do.

Of course there are other swims on the river which are fairly reliable

Has anybody any ideas why apparent pikey looking areas can be barren of pike?

Take my advice and totally ignore all the text book swims for river pike.........find out where the roach or whatever silver fish your river holds congregate and then fish very undead baits in that area!

Areas are barren of pike because they are barren of food.

My sentiments exactly Paul. No food no pike.

I love fishing rivers because you can never write anywhere off or start laying down the law about the best features or bits to fish.

Stay mobile and try to cover as much water as you can, fish crude as well; more than enough lead to hold bottom, big floats, rods up off the water.

Find the bait fish is good advice if you need to catch some lives or want jacks.

The bigger fish are often very transient, here one day, gone the next.

You're often better looking for swims where you can place baits so anything passing through can't miss them.

This was one of the best bits of advice anyone ever gave me, think about trying to intercept fish which are moving through.

And then there are the hot spots or lairs.

I've experienced quite a few times in my life where many pike will hold up in one quite small area. And that area will prove consistantly good throughout the season for catches, some of them big.

For many years, myself and a few others knew a small area of a large Yorkshire still water that produced many high doubles and lots of twenties. In fact if you couldn't get a bait into that area, you invariably blanked.

This particular hot spot was discovered in 1962 and it still produces lots of big pike today. During the winters of 1998/99/2000/2001, myself and Eric Hodson lost count of the numbers of pike we caught in this spot. On one day we caught 14 - 11 of those to my rod. The smallest fish we caught weighed 14 lbs, the biggest - 23lbs.

I still have a whole portfolio of pictures taken during these winters, but I am loath to publish them for obvious reasons.

On another occasion, Christine Rickards landed close on 25 pike up to 19lbs in one small area of a fenland drain. No matter how close other anglers put their baits, Christine was the one who caught the fish.

Pike hot spots and lairs are facts. Ray Webb was probably the first angler to seriously identify them.

Thank you all for the advice. Finding areas where there are prey fish is a problem on this river. There are low stocks of roach and dace, to the extent that nowadays anglers rarely fish for them. I think the scarcity of fish is caused by goosander and cormorant predation. Roach catches were reasonable until about 10 years ago.

In my first few years I used to simultaneously roach and pike fish. The results were dire - I'd be lucky to catch more than one or two roach in a day. I realised I was just wasting time trying to find occasional shoals of prey fish, especially on cold winter days.

My results improved a lot after I just concentrated on pike with deadbaits or lures, and moved swims regularly during the day.

I've read about hot spots in Big Pike by Barrie Rickards, although I have never been able to find one in the waters I fish. I know of reliable pike swims which usually produce a pike or two. I believe that a true hotspot has high concentrations of pike in a small area.

I think that as far as lakes are concerned pike will be consistently in one area but only because it is also consistently used by other fish. This could be due to an abundant supply of natural food or some other factor such as depth.
Rivers are a different matter altogether and through personal experience over the years I've found that pike will follow the prey fish. One experience was only last year when I spent a day after roach and chub on the Wensum. I found a nice peg and was soon catching some decent fish on the stickfloat until a couple of big pike began to be a nuisance. I had no pike gear with me but as I enjoy catching pike, especially from rivers, I decided to return the next day to have ago for them.
So the next day I tried for them with static and wobbled deadbaits and an assortment of lures but to no avail. After about 4 hours I gave up and changed over to the stickfloat to try and and get some more of the nice roach I'd been catching the day before but lo and behold the swim was also devoid of them. Not even a minnow took my bait.
My conclusion was that the roach and other silver fish had moved elsewhere and the pike had followed them.

Probably so Frank.

These days when I am roach fishing in the fens - and the roach fishing there is getting better, I take some pike tackle.

At the faintest sign of a pike, on goes a livebait. This nearly always produces a pike which I carry off a distance from my roach swim before returning it.

Chris......the genuine Wye and Severn 30,s i know of have come from known winter fish holding areas.

I agree though that on some days they can seem to be the haunt of small fish........untill the big girls are hungry again anyway.

A friend of mine took 4 good twenties and other fish in a day from such an area a couple of seasons back.

"The Big Girls"

As we all know, the really big pike are females.

But how do you tell a male from a female pike without doing the obvious?

Pike have a tendency to group up from about mid January. The male pike, I think, tend to be those lean scrawny fish that don't weigh much but fight like merry hell - you know - they jump all over the place. They are the ones more likely to be taken on lures.

In the old days when virtually every pike was killed, male pike were often called "Jacks".

Any thoughts?

Ron, you're right that the smaller fish are more likely to be taken on lures. The average weight of pike I catch on lures is about half that of the average weight of pike I catch on deadbaits.

Chris, you mentioned about using more than enough lead, big floats, and keeping the line off the water.

I of course understand that if you have the rod up high, there will be less line on the water and so less drag on the line and float.

But why is it an advantage to use heavy leads and floats? I'll follow your advice, but I'm intrigued to understand the reasoning behind it.

How heavy is heavy? On the river I'm referring to, I usually have about 12gms of lead substitute to set the float, and I might use a bigger float taking 15 to 20 gms when fishing the deepest swims (15 to 17 ft)

Keeps it one place in a heavy flow, 12gm wouldn't hold bottom on some of the rivers I fish, I rarely use under 2oz of weight float fishing, this is on a run ring.

Big float means it holds up even in deep flowing water and you can see it.

Thank you.