I started fishing for pike when I was at boarding school, more than thirty five years ago. My pike fishing equipment included a nine foot hollow fibre glass ABU spinning rod coupled with an Intrepid Black Prince spinning reel. I couldn’t afford pike fishing lures or plugs in those days and so had a tackle box full of metal blade spinners.

I used to hike down to Scarborough Mere each Sunday and make cast after cast, never catching anything and always returning back to school ready for Sunday tea to report a blank to my friends.

One visit, I found an old wooden jointed pike plug on the side of the bank. Its hooks had rusted away but the rest of it was fine. Finds like this were always pocketed for remedial work back at school. In this case I had to repaint the body using my friend’s plane modeling gear, and buy two new treble hooks.

Tackled up with my first pike plug I headed for a weedy shallow end of the Mere that I had previously been unable to fish using my heavy spinners. I cast across the pool and soon could see my plug jerking across the surface. I was taking care not to reel in too quickly and snag the leaf strewn bottom.

Suddenly everything went solid, my rod bent and I realized there was something on the end of my line. However, the fight was short and a minute later I was proudly holding up about five pounds of prime pike! I cursed the fact that I did not have a friend with me or a camera to record the event. I knew that nobody would believe me when I told them back at school. But that doesn’t matter now, years later, as I can still remember the feeling of elation when I caught my first ever fish when fishing for pike!

Today I bought my first copy of Angling Times for about 8 years!  Coincidentally the front page featured article was on pike fishing in reservoirs  normally only open to trout fishing.  There seems to be awesome potential for record breaking predators in a venue that is unfished (for pike at least) and well stocked with a prime food source.

The standard of pike fishing in large open waters is understandably much better than in small slow flowing drains and ponds.  The abundance of high quality food and expansive area to roam ensures top quality fully muscled fighting fish.  I always found it upsetting when fishing some of my local ponds how unhealthy the fish stock always seemed.  For my sins, the first 10 years of my working life was spent as a fish farmer and I am only too well acquainted with the sort of fish health and quality resulting from poor waters.

Naturally the pike fishing tackle required for large reservoirs is at the top end of the scale in terms of strength and, well I suppose size.  A long rod of at least 12 foot and strong enough backbone to long cast at least 8 ounces or more will be needed, with line strength and reel capacity to match.  Fishing at 100 plus yards and aiming for 30 to 40 pound (and more) specimens means that you m ust be well prepared with your pike fishing tackle – it would be a sin leaving your end tackle in their mouths and many yards of line trailing behind these magnificent pike.

These trout waters are usually more prolific than other prime venues such as Loch Awe and other Scottish pike fishing hot spots.  This is as a result of the amount of food available which will always support a strong head of pike.  It is a shame that very often the trout fishery owners will cull large numbers of pike from their wayer in an effort to stop them eating the valuable trout which need to be stocked regularly.  The more forward thinking fishery manager will see that the pike will act as top of the food chain predators ensuring that the trout population is at its prime – the loss of some trout can be offset by opening the water to pike fishermen at certain times and in any case the loss is insignificant compared to that from cormorants and other fish eating birds!

I would see no harm in anglers being instructed to cull any injured or sick pike that they encounter.

Why?  Well Looking back to around 1999 I remember fishing regularly for pike, usually starting early on a Sunday morning at dawn and returning for a late brunch, thus leaving the rest of the day free with my wife.  I was fishing a confluence between the River Derwent near York and the Pocklington Canal, together with stretches of both of these waters and also the River Ouse in York.  Tales of 30 pound plus pike abounded.

I would set up two rods with popped up dead-baits with bite alarms then set back to enjoy the breaking dawn.  This was the best part of the day.

I was slowly building up my gear, added unhooking mats, monster sized landing nets etc.  It was about 2001 when I returned to the sport of scuba diving.  Something I had always liked but not always had the money.  I know a lot of people who enjoy both the sports of diving and angling – they do have water in common!  The trouble was that once I had started diving again there did not seem to be time to go fishing.  Also, for some reason I did not have quite the same urge to get my pike fishing tackle out of the garage.  At the time I was also trying to start a business on the side as a fishing tackle trader over the internet – this was not working very well either.

So the upshot was that my pike fishing tackle was left in the garage until a few weeks ago when I dug it out and started to dust it down!  Its funny how my interest in diving now seems to be waning and an urge to go pike fishing is returning.  I will need to replace and update some of my pike fishing tackle and intend publishing any interesting findings concerning value and quality of the equipment I will be looking at.

My rod and reel are actually intended as carp tackle and I thought that I might try this area of the sport as well.  As a relative newcomer to carp fishing I hope to research the various aspects of all sport fishing tackle and air the results over these posts.