Pike - how important is bait?

[The Flying Tench]

I went piking this afternoon. Thought it shouldn't have been too bad. High pressure, though admittedly it's been high for a while. Nice temperature rise. I went to a spot where river meets canal where the last time I went I had 5 takes in an hour on wobbled smelt, though admittedly they were only small jacks. Spent 2 and a half hours today wobbling with herring, then sprat, and tried some deads - herring and lamprey. River conditions similar to last time. My hope was that with bigger baits I'd get something a bit larger. Not a touch, big or small - even on the sprats.

 

Nothing too unusual about that, I realise, but the contrast in the amount of action was striking. So here's the question. How much can you learn from a nil result such as this? There are several things that can affect a result, such as:

 

type of bait

weather

river conditions

time of day

unexplainable things in the mind of Mrs Esox

 

Now one thing I haven't yet mentioned is that last time I managed to drag myself out of bed to get there at the unearthly hour of 8 o'clock in the morning! (Which was dawn). My instinct is that time of day was the key factor rather than the fact that I didn't use smelts. (Compare it with barbel fishing. Aren't I right that time of day is usually more important than whether you use meat of pellets?)

 

So my question for experienced pikers is this: am I right that, as in most other types of fishing, bait can affect the number of fish you catch and the size, but if there is a total blank it's more likely time of day than type of bait that's the problem, assuming weather conditions etc are reasonable? (I appreciate that if weather conditions are really great they will feed for much longer).

 

After that I moved to a spot a few hundred yards away, which raised another query about pulls that don't materialise, but I'll put that on another thread.

[Peter Waller]

It happens to us all John!

 

I did okay on Thursday & Friday last week, nothing special, just okay. Sunday was a no no, out and out blank.

 

High pressure, neither new nor full moon, weather had settled despite fickle winds, lot of water in the system (broads), fish had fed well a few days earlier. Just an excuse to be on the bank.

[gozzer]

There is some underwater footage of pike, some taking baits, here. If you look for related items then there are more.

 

http://www.youtube.com/results?search_quer...p;search=Search

 

I know its in the US, and the tactics are different, but it might give an idea of what's actually happening under water. It shows pike aren't always spot on when they strike.

 

John

[The Flying Tench]

Gozzer, for some reason my computer doesn't easily get those youtube videos to work, and a number of them came up all about pike. What is the title of the one you recommend?

 

To illustrate my point about bait not being the key, on other threads people have advised staying 20 mins and then moving on if you don't get a take. In a sense that implies that the bait is not the key, as otherwise the advice would be ' take 20 mins and then change the bait'.

[jamie dimery-seek]

type of bait

weather

river conditions

time of day

unexplainable things in the mind of Mrs Esox

 

So my question for experienced pikers is this: am I right that, as in most other types of fishing, bait can affect the number of fish you catch and the size, but if there is a total blank it's more likely time of day than type of bait that's the problem, assuming weather conditions etc are reasonable? (I appreciate that if weather conditions are really great they will feed for much longer).

 

To illustrate my point about bait not being the key, on other threads people have advised staying 20 mins and then moving on if you don't get a take. In a sense that implies that the bait is not the key, as otherwise the advice would be ' take 20 mins and then change the bait'.

 

 

Could be none,one or all of those factors,thats pike fishing

 

It might be that they aren't in the same area now that they were in before,was it recent when you last caught there? were conditions (temps the same) flow in the river?maybe that they were held up in that spot for a reason and have now moved on.

 

I tend to move after 20 mins or so if there is no signs of life in the swim,you could sit it out changing baits and hope they come through your swim in the course of the day,or you can try and search them out by moving.

 

then there's always the chance that you might pass each other without knowing it

 

 

try different times, a stretch i fish usually only produces well in the first and last hour of light

another stretch they prefer to dine around 1 ish lunch time

[gozzer]

Gozzer, for some reason my computer doesn't easily get those youtube videos to work, and a number of them came up all about pike. What is the title of the one you recommend?

 

/quote]

 

Hi John.

Try:

 

 

 

 

 

I hope that helps.

 

John

[The Flying Tench]

Thanks Gozzer, yes I got 3 of them to work, and very instructive.

 

John

[Anderoo]

I know I'll be corrected, but I don't think bait is all that important, and particularly where pike are concerned. If I'm wobbling baits, I'll be happy using pretty much anything (size and toughness being the important factors, not species per se). Same with lives. With deads it's more complicated and I will have preferences which change from one session to the next depending on venue/conditions/method but I reckon if your bait's in the right place and presented fairly well (pike are not that clever) and the pike are feeding, anything's fair game. I don't think a feeding pike will ignore, say, a decently-presented smelt just because it's been caught on one a couple of times before. I reckon those days when the pike are being sneaky (following lures/deads without taking, inspecting and leaving deads) they're not being clever - they're just not feeding.

 

To a greater or lesser extent, I maintain that this applies to all coarse fish. While carp are probably the most cunning, I don't believe that their intelligence justifies an entire bait-making industry! Sometimes fish just don't feed. You don't catch whoppers just because you changed your base mix and upped the levels of robin red, or outwit huge pike just because you sneakily chucked out an Indian catfish deadbait!

 

When the pike have really been having it in the past and I've run out of deads I've caught a few bonus fish on really mangled bits of bait, like half a mackerel reduced to a backbone, tail and flap of skin!

 

Thinking about it I think bait is probably at the bottom of my fishing priority list.

[Dick Dastardly]

On some waters (rather than at some times) choice of live/moving as opposed to dead/static can be very important.Some examples-

 

On most trout reservoirs I fish a static deadbait is a complete waste of time! litterally!! You could go years without a run! Despite this I often still have a dead or two out just to confirm this (only on waters where Im not restricted to numbers of rods though) I mention that to silence the "self full filling prophecy" comments.

 

On several rivers I know the ratio of takes on lives to deads (I quite often fish 2&2 on such venues so once again its not the SFP or numbers thing) can be higher than 20:1 in the favour of lives.

 

Back in the late 80's I did a study over 3 seasons where I recorded every run,every capture over an average of 4 trips a week.I fished four rods at all times,two with sunk float paternostered lives and two with ledgered deads.Bait wise my findings pointed to the following-

 

When the pike were actively feeding lures ,lives or wobbled baits produced the most fish.The live bait comming out tops only really due to the fact that you cant effectively use multiple lure or wobbling rods!

 

When conditions are poor the deadbait would enevitably "save the day" with the only fish/fishs caught.

 

All the large numbers of multiple captures were to live baits.

 

The maximum size of fish caught was similar (in fact exactly the same as I caught the same 24 on both methods!)

 

That said on some river venues (and strangely only the river venues) all though producing very few runs in comparrison to lives the deads did produce a higher average size.

 

And that was really all I could conclude from an awfull lot of rod hours! But it does show that you need to both know your venue and be prepared to use both types of bait to get the best results!

[The Flying Tench]

Very interesting, though partly a separate point from Anderoo's. Would you agree, Budgie, that for wobbling and livebaiting the species of fish is not that vital?

 

I've two difficulties with livebaiting. First, it's not allowed on most of my local waters. Even where it is I've always had a concern about treating a live fish in that way. I'm not wanting to re-start that debate (if anyone wants to it might be best to start a new thread, or call up one of the previous discussions). But I'd like to ask a subsidiary question.

 

I've partly changed my position on the issue by thinking about fresh deadbaits for perch where, if I catch a gudgeon and kill it, that's final even if no perch takes the bait, but if i lip-hook a gudgeon and no perch comes along I can put it back to swim away.

 

Now thinking of pike fishing, if you use a snap-tackle, I'm not sure returning the live fish is such a good option. But how well does lip-hooking work for pike baits? (I've never live-baited at all, so forgive me if this sounds a bit basic.)