'60lb' Pike Found Dead !

[anglerusmaximus]

Im sure most of you have read the anglers mail and seen the shock horror of a so called 60lb pike corpse. It was found in the Norfolf broads by some Watson guy. It was examined by specialists and was believed starved to death after they retrieved a wire trace form it's throat.

 

You see gentlemen we still have people pike fishing, in the warm summer, who at the end of the day don't know how to unhook pike. I mean at the end of the day a person out there has hooked into a very large fish and oviously snapped up on it. This resulted in the death of probably the biggest pike in British waters today.

This is indeed very sad to see it come out dead, but just imagine if it was caught alive?

What would we be saying?

Norfolk is a very popular holiday destination so please people if you know anyone who is going there fisihing try to deter them from fisihing for summer pike. If this happens again to another big fish, we as a group of anglers have suffered a very big loss.

[chesters1]

was there any evidence the pike had been landed??it may have snapped off in its bid for not having its picture in all the press

[anglerusmaximus]

THey found its head chesters m8!!!

 

[ 26. September 2002, 09:09 PM: Message edited by: anglerusmaximus ]

[chesters1]

it was a good fight then ,without a body how did they know it starved to death :confused: maybe it was deliberatly gorged and the body now resides in a london resturants freezer

and without a body how was the weight guessed perhaps it was a thirty with a large noggin

 

[ 26. September 2002, 09:48 PM: Message edited by: chesters1 ]

[Leon Roskilly]

The whole fish was found, but in a bit of a state.

 

The gut was empty, and the hooks found were very big 'uns.

 

I expect someone had been using a 'kinked' trace (once a trace becomes kinked, get rid of it!).

 

I think that the decomposing carcass was weighed at about 35lb, but the fish would have weighed a good deal more in good condition.

 

The head was removed by the finder (a friend of John Watson) who thought that the fish's body was too manky to have been worth bothering with.

 

Tight Lines - leon

[chesters1]

i bow to your increased knowledge leon

a pity that the fish was dead ,despite the "aware" times we live in the pike is still treated as a viceouse killer when in fact its one of our more sensitive ones ,our club runs a pike awareness "test" without the red stamp in your book you cannot fish for them ,a pity all clubs didnt run it ,and free fishing was more controlled

[Paul_D]

I haven't seen the article myself so I'm not totally 'au fait' with this unfortunate occurance. However, it seems to me from the posts here that there may be many reasons why the creature came to have a trace in its throat. I do my very best to treat all fish I catch with the utmost respect but I have been snapped off many times over the years as, I expect, you all have. It's not clever to jump to conclusions without knowing the facts. And what is this cr@p about not fishing for Pike in summer?

[Peter Waller]

The facts are that it was hooked by a very experienced local angler who works in a local tackle shop. He was fishing a private water near Wroxham, hence his wish to be publicity shy. He was after a big fish that he was aware of and his gear was suitably beefed up. Nevertheless the fish broke him on the first run. He returned to the water a few weeks later and discovered the fish, with his tackle still in it, floating belly up. Watto, who I have spoken to, tells me that he did not suggest a weight for the fish, that was an AM guestimate. John is strongly anti summer piking, not an opinion that I support. My own view is that more pike are killed during the winter by poor bite indication and inattentetive anglers than are ever killed during the summer. However I agree wholeheartedly with John in that we must reduce angling pressure on pike by incompetant, unthinking anglers.

 

[ 27. September 2002, 01:33 AM: Message edited by: Peter Waller ]

[Paul_D]

Peter, ditto your last sentiment. As to the large fish, that angler is probably feeling very bad about this unfortunate incident but he probably would had it 'only' been a jack as well.

[Adz]

The corpse was 53 inches long... nearly 4 and a half feet of pike... with a 12 and a quarter inch head...

 

Some pike! A big part of the trouble here is people waiting far too long, with relatively small baits, before tightening down to fish and setting the hooks.

 

You might miss a few runs or lose a few fish through the hooks pulling out, if you tighten down straight away, but how many gut hooked fish will it prevent?

 

Cheers,