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Brackish water pike

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Ronan's report


Sunday, November 22nd 2014

I've only recently ventured into fishing pike in brackish water, which is great fun. I went on a three-day trip, and caught only small pike, but that's of less importance :-).

It was great to see some new locations, store a few hints, tips and of course locations in my mental hard drive, which is getting smaller and smaller by the rate I seem to be forgetting things, so I've made notes.

One advice I had from experienced anglers was that I don't need to use huge flies as I'm used to. In fresh water, I don't think there's a limit to how big a fly a pike will actually take. Consequently, I tie and fish flies as big and bulky as I can cast them. So it was nice fishing "small" flies - 12-15cm long. On a proper pike taper (more on those some other day), they feel just like a size 8 wetfly.

I had run out of shortshank, wide gape hooks, so I just used my favourite pike hook, a Partridge Universal Predator # 4/0, and tied the fly short, so to speak (see PoD).

Tying the flies this way really doesn't seem to make a difference for the pike - we're using steel bite protection anyway, but it adds a great advantage. The long piece of bare shank in front of the fly is easy to find and grab with your pliers, when unhooking the pike.

And trust me, when you're handling x-number of pounds of pike off the side of a boat or a float tube, ease of unhooking/release is of major importance. A fast release is safer for the fish, but certainly also for the angler when messing about in between 700 razor sharp teeth.

And to finish on the flies - tied mainly of synthetic materials, they're very easy to cast. They shed all the water on the first backcast and the epoxy head adds enough weight to pull the fly under, once it's been drowned for the first time. Should it float, a short, sharp pull usually pulls it under. I tie some without any other weight than the hook and the epoxy (Tuffleye, to be more precise) and some with a little extra weight in form of either a tungsten bead or some lead free wire. The difference in fishing depth is maybe a foot or so, and if I need to fish even deeper, I'll use a sinking line.

In a pic, using a steel leader it's also simple and fast just to thread a bead onto the leader before tying on the fly.

Have a great weekend!
Lars


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