StuMac

I've done very well trolling lives or dead, but just mount baits "head up" on a normal trace. Can't see the advantage of the rig shown. I've also watch pike feed in aquariums and have seen two types of take. If the prey is small, it just gets engulfed and the pike carries on swimming as if nothing has happened, swolling the bait as it goes. If the bait is big (10 inch pike, 3 inch bait) then the pike invariably grabs it by the head, swims straight to the bottom and sits there absolutely motionless with the prey fish thrashing in its jaws. No attempt is made to swollow the prey until it's well and truely dead. The longest I've seen a pike sit like that this and make no attempt to swollow the bait is three hours! The one thing I've never seen is the classic "Mr Crabtree" take where the pike swims off with the bait across its jaws and then "turns" it a few seconds later. At the time we had the pike in the aquarium I was starting to use big baits (12 oz - 1 lb trout). The experiment was not that succesful, as small pike seemed just as ready to attack big baits as small ones but you hardly ever hooked them. After watching pike feeding I put the hooks right up at the head end, and this did help a bit. I recon a single treble would be just as good as a "flight" of trebles to be honest, they always got their jaws clamped around the head, which held the gills closed. I came to the conclusion that big baits didn' select or attract big fish but just involved loosing anything but a double. I honestly don't catch that many pike to be so selective - I actually do enjoy catching fish in the 4 - 8 lb category - so that was the end opf the experiment!

That's a good point - money! Criminal enterprises thrive on money, if there;s no money in it there's no point in breaking the law. Salmon poaching is virtually unknown now simply because farmed salmon is so cheap that there's no point in taking the risks involved in netting rivers illegally. My local tackle shop has a fairly small freezer for all of its bait. About half of this is shellfish for sea fishing, about half pike baits. Of the pike baits about half are coarse fish, so there are probaly a couple of hundred coarse fish in there at most. How much is that stock worth in terms of profit to the buissness? How much extra profit will the shop owner make by selling illegal fish? One hundred *live* 4 - 6 inch roach / rudd / bream cost 50 quid from a fish farm. Dead they'd almost certainly be a lot cheaper. Don't take my word for it, ring up a fish farm, tell them you're a pike angler and ask if you can buy 10 kg of dead assorted coarse fish and how much would it cost. Not a lot would be my bet. Small roach, rudd bream etc are produced in huge numbers up and down the country and are basically cheap. I have been to pike fishing events where the orgaisers were giving dead trout away free. Neville Fickling will sell you 3.6 kg of 4 - 6 oz roach for £21. Once distribution / packing come ni then I doubt there 's enough money in the whole buissness to make this sort of thing worth while.

Many moons ago when I was a fit young lad and lived in Glasgow my friends and I were assembling on Glasgow Green to run the marathon. One of us was missing. Turned out that some thug had stuck a knife into his guts on Partick road. He was very lucky to survive. From what I hear more and more neds are carrying guns these days. Gun crime in some areas of Glasgow / Edinbugh is getting pretty wild.

That is indeed a very interesting post! L Leven is always screaming for a Cormorent cul, and there are certainly a lot there (although not as many as I've seen in pictures from midland reservoirs). The thing is that there ued to be about 300 that roosted under the Tay rail bridge every night. Now there are none. They've all upped sticks and moved to Trout Lochs because they're such an attractive source of food. There are also demands for a seal cul in the Tay estuary, and there certainly are a lot of seals. However, despite the seals, this year has been the best spring salmon run for decades - some beats have been having catches of well over a dozen fish in a day (I've heard of two anglers taking 23) , it's literally 20 - 30 years since those sorts of catches have been reported. There is also good snow accumulations in the highlands, which will keep river levels up through the spring and early summer so hopefully a good season. This is probably due to the fact that the Danes havs stooped commercial salmon netting on the waters around Greenland. If salmon are allowed to thrive on their feeding grounds, then nature will provide plenty off fish to keep anglers and seals happy. At present, the only large scale comercial netting is off the west coast of Ireland. These fish are heading for the big French and Spanish rivers which, by all accounts still have very few fish. The Danes are actually **** of with the Irish for not stopping this. They clamped down on netting off Greenland to allow salmon to re-populate European rivers, not to benefit the Irish fishing Industry.

I've heard that too, but I'm afraid that counts as a natural movement. Wild animals don't have to accept national boudaries and neither do coastal species have to stay on the coast if there are better food sources elsewhere. If they expand their range naturally then they are native. The problem is that almsot all surveys of UK rivers show that the numbers of freshawter fish are rising not falling. Match weights on rivers have risen over the last 20 years and Charlie Bettell is always complaining there are so many silver fish in the Yare that he can't catch any pike. This is particularly true in the North where previously heavily poluted waters have been cleaned up. Up in Scotland you only see cormorents inland around stocked trout lochs. and if you look at the big inland roosts in the midlands / south of England that's exactly where they are too. I supoose most people fish stocked waters these days and there's no doubt they attract fish eating birds. Who can blame them? I'm basically a naturalist, don't like the idea of wholescale slaughter of wild animals. People are always clamoring for something to be killed - pike, seals, cormornets, otters and now Goosander. Find its strange as most coarse anglers would never dream of killing a fish. As most pike fishermen will tell you, the abundance of predators is almost always determined by the abundance of prey. I think the only real way to get rid of inland cormorents in the UK is to restrict artificial stocking. Not really practical as most people really wouldn't be satisfied with the sort of catches from a purely natural population. I'm not really that oposed to a cul, in fact localised culling at roosts is probely the only thing to do but, but I very much doubt it will make any difference to the population numbers in the long term. Most birds are very long lived, and can lay clutches of eggs every year for 15 - 20 years and only two of these have to survive to keep the poulation stable. That means you can have well over 95% mortality without having any long term effect on the population. If you shoot one cormorent, then all you do is make it easier for a chick to survive and grow up to replace it. This is why egg bashing is such a poor way of controlling bird poulations, it has been tried a lot as a way of getting rid of sea birds that move into towns. That's also the reason that grouse shoots to operate - they harvest a portion of the wild birds every year and maintain an environment that favours chick survival. This lets you kill an awful lot of birds every without affecting the population. In the UK we've created a number of very "cormorent Friendly" environments by stocking lakes and reservoirs to levels that could not be suported naturally. This means predator numbers have gone up (which is why are there so many pike in Ladybower, Chew etc) and there's no doubt that fish eating birds attracted in this way can damage natural fish populations. Rant over!!

The cormorent isn't native!!!!!!!! Who introduiced them then?

German freshwater fisheries are probably the healthiest in Europe. Take a look over the bridge parapet of almost any city in southern Germany on a nice summers day. Where have most authenticated 50lb pike come from?

My last three pike fishing trips have all been on cold days with frost in the morning. On the last one half of the loch (including my favorite spots) was covered in ice. Each time I tried the accepted method, and used weighted lures in deeper areas, concentrating them on keeping them hard on the bottom - nothing. I then tried small tobies / shads retrieved quite quickly over shallow (2 - 5 feet deep) areas and started getting follows / hits straight away. The first trip produced seven small pike and a 2 lb perch, the second was colder and I was dubious about my chances of catching anything, but got 9 jacks and 3 trout. The third trip, when the loch was half iced over, I really thought I was just going to be going through the motions but got 9 pike up to 8 lb and a trout. Somtimes the fish just havn't read the rule book - that's what makes fishing so fantastic!!

I don't know about waiting to warm up - fly fishermen have been taking loads of pike on my local loch (east coast), as have I on small lures fished in shallow areas. Had 9 a couple of weeks ago when half of the loch surface was covered with ice! Same number the w/e before that and 7 the week before that. Highest the water temp has been was 39 degrees. These pike obviously do not know that they're supposed to be lurking around in deep water at this time of year - I recon you'd have done very well with your rig

I've had quite a few pike on them, biggest just over 10 and definately have confidence in them. I've tried all the above but I find the most effective thing is just to cast em outr and reel 'em back, just fast enough for the tail to work. I find the takes can be strange, often very gentle as if you've knocked a piece of weed. I've had had jacks in the boat that havn't been hooked - they were just hanging on to the lure.

Absolutely - even possessing salmon parr is an offence! Strong little sods when you have them in your hands though - I'm sure they'd make good baits and nobody would care how many were released into Loch Lomond.

Don't write off German angling, their angling ethic is very different to ours and their laws are very complex and very different to ours, but their fishing is much more closely regulated and protected than ours. Fishing in many parts of Germany is far better than here. Go to almost any town in a rural part of Germany on a sunny day and look at the numbers of chub, dace, roach etc swimming around. Look at where most authenticated 50 lb pike have come from. I'm pretty certain that they would clamp down hard and fast on unlicenced fishermen taking large numbers of fish to eat.

Had afew thoughta bout this one over the past few days. Firstly it's not how we behave now that's impoprtant, the issue is how anglers behaved 20 - 30 years ago. Things were different then. Secondly, it occured to me that as pike angers are supposed to be so good at intoducing fish to waters, then why doesn't every salmon hatchery in Scotland make salmon parr freeely availble to anyone that needs bait. Native fish, bred from local stock, disease free and I imagine they'd be very good baits. They're certainly strong little things and people actually *want* more salmon in Scotland's waters.

Pretty crap reporting I agree but...... Large numbers of Chub, dace, carp, gudgeon, tench, roach, rudd and ruffe *all* appeared in Loch Lomond about the time that pike angling got really popular there. Several big name anglers had aerated live bait tanks established in the back of vans and were openly arriving with enough bait to last a week. Ruffe have reach plague proportions in parts of Loch Lomond. I have seen photos from Rowardennen of bucketloads taken with a single sweep of a net from the shore. They have completely displaced perch from some areas. This population is Geographically very isolated and has appeared in recent times. The reason we know this is that Loch Lomond is one of the most extensively studied freshwaters in the UK. Ruffe are actually found in many lochs that attract large numbers of pike anglers from the south, fortunately this is a relatively small number of waters at present, mainly in the Trosachs area. These waters are not studied as extensively so less is know about them. Ruffe have also apeared in lake distict and welsh waters frequented by pike anglers. I agree, I cannot see ruffe being deliberately targeted as bait fish. However, when I used to live bait, if I had caught a ruffe it would have gone in the bait bucket with the rest. It would have been the last bait I used so it would probably have gone back at the end of the session. (Actually that statement is not strictly true - it should read "when I used to live bait with fish I had caught myself" - I've used trout from hatcheries since). There is somthing odd about the biology of ruffe that lets them establish huge poulations very quickly once they get into a new environment. I've only caught 2 or 3 in my life so never thought of them as very common, although I'm told that you can catch loads on the River Endrick now. It may well be that pike anglers did not introduce Ruffe, there are other "inexplicable" fish populations in Scotland - Bullheads in the water of Leith. Ruffe have also got into the great lakes with no help from UK pike anglers. However, I have never heard any alternative explanation, and the balence of probablity points the finger at us failrly squarely.

Last w/e was pretty cold up here (Scotland) surface temp was 39 degrees F. The loch I was fishing is shallow - the deepest part is only 13 feet. I started off there with deadbaits and weighted soft plastics retrieved along the bottom but no sign of any fish. Then had a jack just as the boat was drifting out of the deep area, and so concentrated my efforts there for a couple of hours - I had a total of 6 jacks and a decent perch from water that was only 3 - 5 ft deep. Most came on on lures and I had loads of follows and takes - a fast retrieve and small flashy spoons running 8 - 12 inches semed most effective. No sign of big fish so back to the deep area for the last couple of hours of light hoping that a big old girl might start cruising around as the light was going. Had one more jack. Interesting day, even though no big fish were boated, and it gave me a lot to think about becuse the success I did have came using an approach that was almost exactly the opposite of what most people would advise. Back on the same water this weekend and I think I'm going to concentrate on the slightlty deeper areas (7 - 8 ft) near where the jacks were coming from last time. Pehaps the lunkers are holding out there to pick off the odd jack that strays away from the shallows?

It helps if you buy ice - put loads into a sealed bag and put that into the water. Makes a big difference in summer. I find rainbow trout as you describe, but that browns die pretty quickly.

I've watched pike in an aquarium, and when the prey fish is large relative to the pike (3 inches vs 8 inches) the pike always grabs the bait, and eventually ends up with its head in its jaws. It then swims to the bottom and just sits motionless for up to three hours (yes three hours) making no attempt to move or swallow the fish. Oncethe prey fish is well and truely dead, then it is slowly swallowed. The pattern when the prey fish is small is quite different. Here the pike simply engulfs the bait and swims away whilst swollowing it. Even then, it usually takes a good 30 - 40 seconds to get the bait down. The one thing I never saw is the classic "Mr Crabtree" take where the pike has prey fish held across its jaws. This squares with my experience with big baits (1 - 1.5 lb rainbows). I find they do not put jacks off, but that you do get lots takes where the fish just goes to the bottom and stays there. These seldom result in hook ups and you almost invariably lose the bait. After seeing the aquarium pike feeding I started keeping the hooks near the head - this improved things a bit but I would often end up reeling in 3 - 5 lb pike that were just hanging onto the bait. I didn't get the impression that they attracted big pike any more effectively, they just made it virtually impossible to land a fish under ~ 12 lbs. I don't catch enough pike to be so selective, so I gave up the experiment. However, I have recently started to use whole lampreys (dead obviously). They look amazing in the water, I've often mistaken them for live eels when I'm reeling in, and all that blood and ooze must be a good attractor. They seen to get fantastic hook up rates, they are really effective if float trolled very slowly almost scraping the bottom. Best I've had on them so far is 15:12 but smaller pike seem to engulf them very quickly.

There are a few around - only problem is that predator density is largely determined availability of prey. This is why stocked trout reservoirs often have big pike in them - stocked to unrealistic levels so predator abundance goes up (and they attarct cormorents for the same reason). I think most "preadtor fisheries" are basically trout stocked puddles with pike in them. Another problem is that big pike tend to drop dead quite often if they're roughly handled, so once these places get popular they tend to run out of big pike quite quickly. Not my idea of an attarctive place to fish at all, but they do exist.

I heard that he was almost hiding with his hood pulled up over a flat cap so he was hardly recognisable and that most people didn't even realise he was there.

Did she!!! I am not worthy!!! (Grovel Grovel) Wjat was she like? I did a degree in Zoology but left the field, ended up in phamacology but always had the urge to get back into real science and study fish!! [ 27. September 2005, 08:12 AM: Message edited by: StuMac ]

May have huge potential if global warming kicks in!! Send me a PM and I can advise of a better hill loch, that does doubles / twenties, also a fantastic spot to fish in!

I think I know this loch, if not I know one like it. I actually think the pike have been there for a while, Queen Victoria is supposed to have commented on them (That gives a big clue as to where the Loch I'm thinking of is!). Although a lot of the pike caught get killed, the walk up from the road really does deter most people and the amount of angling pressure is very low. I know a few people who fish it, and eat most of what they catch. The biggest they've had is a 12 lb. As a peacful and tranquil spot (on a good day) it can hardly be bettered, but I have heard that some guy who was on big brother made a film up there, which was to be shown on TV. The crowds may well descend if he gives the location away. For what it's worth, I think that the water is just too high, cold and unproductive to produce anything really big. Winter is a very long season when you are nearly 2000 ft up in the North of Scotland, and summer can be pretty grim too. Whilst it is generally true that pike populations sort themselves out in the way described by the PAC, the links above are to studies which are very heavily biased. Winifred Frost's work which underlies the 'Jack Explosion' idea is quoted. She was probaly the best authority on pike biology in her time, and I don't think that there's anyone of her stature around now. However, not all of Winifred's ideas are as popular with pike anglers, and these tend to be just ignored. She did, for example, always maintain that pike predation drove the average size of prey fish down. Her view was that waters with good heads of pike would produce fewer specimen sized roach, bream etc. and that, from the perspective of anglers interested in these species, pike removal would be beneficial. With respect to this loch, the conventional wisdom in the USA / canada is very different. They feel that the intoduction of pike into cold and unproductive waters can have very severe effect on the natural populations of trout and char - in some casses causing local extinction. There have been lots of studies of the effects of pike introductuions into lakes high up in the rockies / sierras (particularly lake Davis). The 'end senario' they depict is not a balanced water, but a water dominated by large numbers of small, under fed pike that prevent trout char populations re-establishing themselves(hammer handles as the call them in the US). Whilst all big pike are female, not all female pike are big. It is perfectly possible to have a functioning pike population with very few fish weighing more than a few pounds. Not sure who's right, but I think it's imprtant and interestnig to look at both sides of an issue like this.

Charlie Bettel's 9 footer? RT-4 I think, I use it for bait fishing from a boat, but would be OK for spinning I recon.

quote: The Germans went down that road so now if you fish in Germany (not that I have the slightest wish to) you MUST retain your fish - courtesy of the Green Party influence I believe. That's an over simplification, but fundementally you're right a lot of Germans do fish for the pot. However, what you've failed to point out is that the the influence of the Green party also means that the German environment is protected a lot more effectively than ours. Their view of conservation it is based around protecting the habitats in order to allow a healthy population of wild fish to survive. Converting every available hole in the ground into a rainbow trout or carp fishery would not be tolerated on environmental grounds, although commercials are starting to appear. German angling tradition, and their culture of eating fresh water fish, means that anglers expect to be able to take fish home. But this also means that angling is an activity that is very strictly regulated in order to allow *controlled* harvesting fish by properly licenced anglers. Like most Eurpoean countries, you are very likely to have you licence and catch inspected if you fish in Germany, and you are in serious trouble if you've breached any regulations. The pike fishing available in many regions of Germany is very good. Where do most of the authenticated 50 lb plus pike come from - Germany.

The biodiversity argument is clap-trap. Excess cormorants DECREASE biodiversity. We visit a local RSPB wetland site three times a year - autumn for migrants (terns, waders etc), winter for winter visitors such as ducks, grebes etc and spring again for migrants. ....then this is a very good argument for a cormorant cul and should be put forward. I'm not opposed to cormorant culs, I just don't think they'll achieve anything.