Wingham Pike Survey

[Anderoo]

That was a great read, thanks Steve. And what a pike! Looks like it's been eating the bream

 

Hopefully you'll get a thaw and be able to get an even bigger one. In a water like Wingham, especially with no piking allowed, there ought to be a few very big fish...

 

Interesting about the reduced cormarant predation and number of small fish, and therefore fewer accidental pike captures.

[Steve Burke]

Steve - a though for you on trolling and this should work nicely with baits. This design will almost never hang but will happily bounce over most any obstacle including the sharp bottom ridges you have on Wingham. The coloured bits are lead moulded onto the wire.

 

 

I'm not sure if this design is used in the UK or not but it's easy to fabricate if not.

 

Newt, for some reason I can't open the picture. If it's on Photobucket or something similar could you post a link? Cheers!

[medwaygreen]

Steve, don't forget that if you are working on the book, i will proof read it for you.

[poledark]

Congrats on the pike Steve would you like any help completing your survey? Just to add to your data bank you know

 

Interesting to see the effects of a bit of ice yesterday....I have had the Pan lake to myself for a couple of weeks (said to be a "very hard" water), but as it was the only fishable lake it was suddenly busy. Amazing to watch the spods???? being hurled out.

 

Den

[Anderoo]

Steve, just a random thought - if either you or one of the other poor souls who's being forced to undertake such an arduous task ( ) can bear it, maybe try fishing on into dark? I know pike aren't supposed to feed that well at night, but I had a very fit and angry 15lber on fake sweetcorn at gone midnight in the Spring and no pike all year in the daytime.

[Dunk Fairley]

Well done Steve! But surely it just goes to show that no matter how much we put into studying and trying to learn about fish, they'll still flippin well act how they like, when they like, throwing any predictions and plans out of the window?

[Steve Burke]

Richard - thanks for the offer, but Peter Rogers will be doing the proofreading. He's also going to do the design and layout, something he's really excellent at.

 

Den - I've had so many offers I'm beginning to lose count! However there's just going to be 4 of us on the two lakes combined to avoid any pressure.

 

Andrew - Staying on after dark is something I've tried in the past at Wingham. It's worked on the Coarse Lake but not the Carp Lake. Interestingly on the latter some of the carp members were woken up by pike in the middle of the night during the lean period in late autumn. In fact I recently put an extra column in the pike return book to record the time of capture.

 

As you know neither lake gets much pressure, let alone for pike. So it's not that causing the pike to night feed at Wingham as is commonly suggested.

 

Dunk - I get a lot of pleasure in trying to fathom out why I've caught and why I haven't. What's more, it works enough to be worth carrying on plus it throws up lots of new ideas to try, however unorthodox.

[Newt]

Sorry Steve. The photo was a link but it seems to have gone missing.

 

Here is a rough drawing and an actual (but small) photo of finished products.

 

As long as you keep it moving the only thing in contact with the bottom is a straight piece of stiffish wire.

[Steve Burke]

Thanks, Newt.

 

These are what we call bottom bouncers and I've used similar ones when trolling on trout reservoirs. The problem at Wingham isn't just at the terminal end but a little way up the line due to the many steep and sharp gravel bars. Of course there are ways round this but, unless I decide to do a lot of bait fishing from the boat, I'll probably stick to anchoring up and using drifter floats to cover water for the time being.

 

However Newt's suggestion is well worth looking at for anyone trolling venues like trout reservoirs.

 

By the way, I've posted before here on AN that even on trout reservoirs I've several times used a drifter from an anchored boat and caught from an area that hadn't produced to trolling immediately beforehand. I can't claim the credit for the idea as I was shown this by the late Len Head whom I took as a guest on a few trips. Len thought that the pike were possibly being spooked by the boats, but talking to Budgie earlier today he agreed that it was just as likely to be a slightly changed presentation.

[Newt]

"Bottom bouncers" - same here. I wonder if 3-4 feet of 49 strand wire at the terminal end of the mainline would allow these to deal with your rocky ridges?

 

It would be a way to present slow moving baits to areas that didn't often see them.