Those nasty,nasty Pike.....gimme a break

[M.K]

Allrigh! Thanx. Thats pretty much the case in latvia, where i'm from. Do you have small perch family fish called ruffs? Theys v.nice in soup.

[Peter Sharpe]

Fair enough Danny, although I'm surprised that jerkbaiters, (I bet they don't dare to describe themselves by that name to non-anglers), use line far in excess of the fairly standard 15 lb bs employed in deadbaiting. Unless they always use very heavy braid, heavy mono is quite unsuitable for the continual casting of lures, and in any case, I would think a deadbaiter is just as likely to use braid as a lure angler.

 

It's not jerk baits themselves that I object to, it's the unacceptably barbaric hooks that seem to be supplied with them as standard. Presumably, these are imported from countries where fish conservation is regarded as of no importance. If people remove them, and replace them with smaller, micro-barbed hooks then there is no issue. If people claim that the baits won't work with smaller hooks, a claim that I find incredibly dubious, then they just shouldn't be using such damaging lures.

[Leon Roskilly]

Nightwing:

Pike are also often kept for the table, particularly encouraged in waters where they are overcrowded and stunted.

er, Nightwing, you usually only get lots of little pike when nature is trying to make up numbers to replace bigger pike that have been killed.

 

see http://www.anglersnet.co.uk/authors/leon14.htm

 

Or is there some other factor at work over there?(like what happens when pike aren't the top predator, on muskie waters wher pike don't get much chance to grow big).

 

Tight Lines - leon

[Danny H]

Peter here is a thread from 2000, I think it outlines a few points that might help.

Dan

 

http://anglersnet.co.uk/ubb/ultimatebb.php...ic;f=1;t=000822

 

In answer to your line question, lines of 100lb are common, to get lures back and generally deal with the multiple casts.

Also this normally stops all crack off problems.

 

I don't think, that Jerkbaiters create the force that a sea anglers creates with pendulum cast and 4-8 oz lead, but I'm pretty sure they don't use 100lb line, so Hitting swans is something I haven't seen in quite a few years, having witnessed tens of thousands of casts

 

Finally I myself being a lazy sod tend not to take the J.Bs out much, so I hope I'm being as objective as I can hope to be, My passions are more Rubber now!!

 

Micro light/ Jerkbaiting /Topwater/Twitched minnows/Crankbait/buzzbait/spinnerbait/spinner etc, etc are all just tools for different situations, I know of one resi where you can't buy a bite unless you use very small or very large lures.

 

-And yes Jerkbaiters/Crack offs and Rubber are things that cannot be discussed in public without eyes being raised.

 

[ 06 April 2002, 08:41 PM: Message edited by: Danny H ]

[Nightwing]

Leon, your theory makes sense, however the thing is that pike are not a particularly popular food fish here, and often the lakes with the stunted fish also have the lowest keep-rates.

So, I think something else is at fault here, besides over-harvest.

Pike are kept, as I mentioned, not as often as other predators, yet they seem the most likely of any to run to "stunted".

Strange.

Our DNR has placed some lakes into special regulation, increasing the size limit to see if that helps, but to date, it has had no effect. Because few fish were being taken under either set of regulations, little effect was seen, and the overall population in these lakes has remained relatively unchanged in average size.

If these "stunded" lakes were suffering from large amounts of fish being kept and killed(particularly large fish), I could see your point, but when few fish are being taken, something else must be afoot.

Now, in the lakes where the fish ran to being stunted, and all size or creel limits were removed, the fish tend to get larger after a few years! This has encouraged the DNR to go this rout with the stunted lakes.

Again, given your findings, these are also strange in that they run quite the opposite.

Maybe it all has to do with there being so many other predator species on our waters?

[StuMac]

I often find it strange that the countries that have what UK anglers would call the 'worst' records at fish handling / killing seem to have rivers that contain a lot more fish that ours.

 

I think most UK anglers would agree that fishing in USA, france, spain, scandinavia and even Germany can be a lot better than here. I was looking at the shoals of chub and dace in the Neckar at Tubingen just a few weeks ago thinking its ages since I saw anything like that back home.

[John 'BLOCK']

Quote..Do you have small perch family fish called ruffs?

The old mauve eye...never thought it would taste that great....how come these are hardly ever mentioned in coarse fishing circle and does anyone know if there is a record weight for this species ???

[Leon Roskilly]

John 'BLOCK':

Quote..Do you have small perch family fish called ruffs?

The old mauve eye...never thought it would taste that great....how come these are hardly ever mentioned in coarse fishing circle and does anyone know if there is a record weight for this species ???

We certainly have ruffe in the Medway. Small perch like fish that take a small hook baited with maggot down deep, rarely hooked in the mouth This, together their small size have not made them a popular coarse species)

 

Another name for them is pope.

 

When catholics were going through a period of unpopularity in England's history, the poor ruffe suffered.

 

Their dorsal spines were embedded into a cork, and the unfortunate creature left to bob around, to great mirth and merriment.

 

(This was before even my time, I hasten to add)

 

The appearance of ruffe in waters not previously colonised by them has been blamed upon live-baiters, which is stange because ruffe are universally reckoned to be at the bottem of the list for preferred live-bait species. However the ruffes' appearance has been used as part of the argument to ban the practice of live-baiting on some waters.

 

Tight Lines - leon

 

[ 09 April 2002, 06:17 PM: Message edited by: Leon Roskilly ]

[John S]

John 'BLOCK':

Quote..Do you have small perch family fish called ruffs?

The old mauve eye...never thought it would taste that great....how come these are hardly ever mentioned in coarse fishing circle and does anyone know if there is a record weight for this species ???

I've caught a couple in Yorkshire and Lincolnshire, but they are few and far between

 

As far as I know, the record stands at 5oz 4dm, caught in Cumbria.

[M.K]

In reply to the question to the ruff record weight all I know is that the Latvian record is 165g wich is guite tiny. I have seen lots of these fish hoked in the mouth.

 

[ 09 April 2002, 07:25 PM: Message edited by: M.K ]