I have spent a lot of my angling career fly fishing for trout.  This has been very enjoyable but is a pass time I now only do occasionally, perhaps when I go on holiday to Scotland or I very rarely if I fancy a morning by the lakeside.  The latter is now very infrequent as the local fishery where I used to whet the odd fly line Raker Lakes has now closed its put and take trout fishery and all its ponds are taken up as coarse fisheries.  I think that the problem was that the lakes were not suitable for the needs of the trout, but were fine for carp and other coarse fish whose requirements for highly oxygenated and cooler water were not so great.

So now if I fancy a bit of fly fishing on a summer evening I have to think of alternative venues.  I still would like to walk, cycle or at worst only have a quick five minute drive to a local venue to grab a couple of hours on a balmy evening.  So if I target pike in my local River Derwent which is just down the road I can still achieve this!

The type of sport fishing tackle I use for pike fishing not so very different to that used for trout fishing.  I use a heavier rod and line – in fact the one I hardly ever used that was intended for sea trout and grilse fishing.  It is an AFTM 8/9 setup with some strong backing on the reel.  I make the traces up with a 12 inch length of fine steel wire neatly whipped onto a small snap link at one end and fixed to 10 feet of 15 lb strain monofilant at the other.  This seems to work with the pike flies that I tie up myself.

The flies are not as big as some would use but a whole lot bigger than a typical trout lure.  The size does affect the casting even on the stronger gear.  However, because I am fishing the river my casting is usually restricted to about 10-15 yards using a stalking technique.

A typical pike fly with long tail

The takes can be quite spectacular and it is very satisfying catching even modest jacks.  Fish in the 5 to 12 pound bracket can provide huge entertainment!  Now that I have returned to pike fishing I will make sure that this method of catching pike is at the top of my list of things to do.

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.