catching pike to win matches

[singy]

Guys in my old winter league (many moons ago before I started specimin hunting) Used to wrap tin foil around their swim feeders, many is the time a match was won by a pike grabbing one of these on the retrieve and the small gozzer baited hook found the flank somewhere.

 

Bang out of order, intentionally foul hooking fish to win money.

 

[ 27. September 2004, 01:20 PM: Message edited by: singy ]

[argyll]

'Two of us spent 4 hours with the lures this afternoon at a water, I am told is full of pike, but nothing at all...'

 

Matthew see if this makes you feel any better. About a dozen very capable anglers (one or two post on AN)fished a fenland water on saturday that in the past had returned pike to 28lb, double figure zander and perch in excess of four pounds. With good local knowledge and armed with lures, deadbaits, livebaits AND pike flies, between us we managed a 4lb jack and a 1.25lb perch. I wouldnt read too much into the bad days, you're just getting them out of the way before the good days arrive.

Nearly forgot.... I blanked !!

 

[ 27. September 2004, 02:31 PM: Message edited by: argyll ]

[Steve Burke]

I've posted before that if I were ever to enter a pike match I'd use worms twitched back or fished sink and draw.

 

These tactics have very often brought me a lot of unwanted pike when after perch. In fact, more than nearby anglers fishing for pike using conventional methods! What's more, they were all using two rods to my one!

 

Sink and draw in particular has been very successful. Sometimes using a weight several feet up the line worked, but usually best of all was putting a swan shot right next to the eye of the hook.

[Ken L]

When I used to match fish:

All fish baits were banned.

All artificial lures and flys (including a bit of silver paper on the hook)were banned.

Trebles and multiple hook rigs were banned.

 

No problem.

A big single hook on a wire trace and either a whole sqid or a really huge lobworm can be relied on to bring a few pike if they are there.

 

That said, pike really don't do well in keepnets, in the early eighties, most clubs didn't have scales that could weigh individual fish over about 10lb, weighing pike on a regular basis isn't going to make you any friends and of course even if you decided to give it a go, you'd have to put up with the helpfull sugestions about catfood or chucking 'em up the bank from the less than enlightened.

[Dick Dastardly]

You all know my views that pike are not a suitable fish for match angling but Bradford has all ready touched on this so I will not labour the point,

Just out of interest and to part answer Bradfords post it was a common thing for the Irish team to target Pike in the Home International matchs of yester year.So sucsessfull was it that English teams copied it.The tactic used here was large ledgered lob worms twitched.

[Bradford Angler]

The angler in question - is famous on this middle length of this River. Also a tackle shop owner and winning captain of many winter leagues. He is a veteran of matches and a gent from the hey days of mega roach bags, requiring gallons of casters when the cooling stations were running.

He is a brilliant angler on the waggie. I guess he will have fished from the start for the snappers - he most probably was pleasantly suprised to amassed such a bag - but would definately have known they were there or there abouts.

Maybe I will bring up the topic of worms and slow retrieves and see if he "twitches and gives the game away". I have caught pike before on large worms when river fishing but would never have put it into practive in a match . . as I thought it was mostly a fluke catch . .

 

thanks all for this . . . . you have taught me a thing or two again and made the old grey matter work a bit.