Wobbling deadbaits

[Anderoo]

Does anyone routinely use wobbled deads when piking? By that I mean taking one rod, a small bag, and a landing net and covering lots of water, trying different areas, depths, retrieves, etc? Maybe it's the age of soft plastics, but I never see anyone else doing it and only rarely hear of people doing it, and often then as a king of 'last resort' when fishing static deads.

 

Are soft plastics as good? I've never used them. They'd certainly be less hassle.

 

Also, has anyone had much success wobbling deads on gravel pits? I certainly haven't! I always used to get lots of follows and hardly any takes, but a static dead would usually get runs. On rivers though, a wobbled dead is almost always my first choice. I find it a little odd that it's fallen out of favour.

[dant]

Does anyone routinely use wobbled deads when piking? By that I mean taking one rod, a small bag, and a landing net and covering lots of water, trying different areas, depths, retrieves, etc? Maybe it's the age of soft plastics, but I never see anyone else doing it and only rarely hear of people doing it, and often then as a king of 'last resort' when fishing static deads.

 

Are soft plastics as good? I've never used them. They'd certainly be less hassle.

 

Also, has anyone had much success wobbling deads on gravel pits? I certainly haven't! I always used to get lots of follows and hardly any takes, but a static dead would usually get runs. On rivers though, a wobbled dead is almost always my first choice. I find it a little odd that it's fallen out of favour.

 

 

Don't worry Anderoo, you may be a little old fshioned but not alone.

 

I would say 90% of my fishing is done with one rod, a game bag full of all sorts of things, a landing net and un-hooking mat.

 

Free-lining and wobbling deads covers just about all of my smaller river piking.. It's probably just down to a trick of experience but I always feel more confident using live or dead baits when I'm fishing Pike and Perch e.t.c.

 

The case for artifical baits such as those funny coloured rubber worms and the like has been well made by many experienced anglers and theres no doubt they work. There's also a strong case for keeping it simple and I'm sure there has been many cases of people missing oppurtunities by consistantly chopping and changing.

 

Most of my fishing is done in short stints, due to time constraints and there's simply not the time and the £'s to try out all the different methods.. I'm sure I'll get round to giving them a go at some point.

 

I would say my favourite wobbling bait would be a Smelt as they have tthat strong tail root which will stand up to a bit of casting or on certain club waters round my way where they don't allow livebaits I twitch and wobble a 5 inch or so Roach/Chub.

 

On Gravel pits I do often spen an hour or so knocking a bait along the margins but mainly tend to fish static deads or one under a drift float..

Edited November 6, 2007 by dant

[lewis888]

I was thinking about trying this seriously at the weekend for pike, how do you rig the bait? Do you add any weight or just "freeline" and use the weight of the bait to cast/sink?

[Steve Walker]

Does anyone routinely use wobbled deads when piking? By that I mean taking one rod, a small bag, and a landing net and covering lots of water, trying different areas, depths, retrieves, etc?

 

I don't do much piking, but when I do, that's how I usually do it.

[Anderoo]

Oh, OK, I'll put away the pipe and slippers

 

I still reckon it's a very under-used method. The flexibility it offers is the key to its success IMHO. I love that feeling when you're slowly using the rod tip to 'knock' it erratically along the margin and there's that gentle 'donk', followed by a couple of nods on the tip and you know that all hell's about to break loose

[Steve Walker]

Aren't a lot of pike anglers really out-of-season carp anglers? Hence, static deadbaits and bite alarms are what they are most comfortable with?

[Anderoo]

Aren't a lot of pike anglers really out-of-season carp anglers? Hence, static deadbaits and bite alarms are what they are most comfortable with?

 

Probably a fair few are. I was talking to someone about that the other day, and he mentioned that a lot of people blank (or at least, don't do too well) when piking because they always fish on the bottom, a la carping, when the pike are much higher up in the water with the prey fish. When wobbling you have a good chance of finding the feeding depth quite quickly.

 

Incidentally, I reckon in season carpers would catch more carp if they travelled lighter and moved around after/ahead of the fish more.

[Leon Roskilly]

I was thinking about trying this seriously at the weekend for pike, how do you rig the bait? Do you add any weight or just "freeline" and use the weight of the bait to cast/sink?

 

I usually attach a snap-tackle bottom hook towards the back of a sprat, wrap a the wire around the sprat, then the top hook behind the gills.

 

I then use long nose pliers to pass the swivel behind the gills and out of the mouth, connecting it to a swivel on a longer wire trace (with the wire coming directly out of the mouth, you get a better presentation, and the sprat seems to last longer).

 

One or two swan shot helps to provide casting weight, and 'sink', but only when necessary.

 

 

Sometimes I'll attach a bung above the wire trace (they are easy to attach/detach), especially if I want to 'stick-float fish' a dead bait along the banks of a river, pausing and letting go, not quite 'sink and draw', but very effective.

 

The exact rig will depend where I'm fishing, deep gravel-pit or fast shallow river.

 

 

I prefer sink and draw this time of year, when the pike aren't chasing lures so readily, but it's not so cold that I want to hunker out of the wind behind deadbait rods.

 

 

I'd also say that sink and draw tends to outfish other methods now, apart from livebaiting.

Edited November 6, 2007 by Leon Roskilly

[Steve Walker]

Incidentally, I reckon in season carpers would catch more carp if they travelled lighter and moved around after/ahead of the fish more.

 

That's just silly; how would they carry the barbecue, TV and beer fridge?

[The Flying Tench]

I also don't do much piking, but most that I do has been wobbled smelt. But most of the pike I catch are only up to about 6 lbs, so I'm starting to experiment with bigger baits. (I know small static baits will catch big fish).

 

In all honesty I regularly catch in one or two hotspots, but I'm pretty unsuccessful on other venues. I'd be interested to know whether Anderoo and others find they catch doubles by wobbling. It could easily be my technique needs improving.

 

I'm thinking of having a crack at a Thames weirpool with a friend - not sure which one yet. Seems to me a mobile fish washing around in the white water ought to interest a discerning pike. Have others tried this?