My dad recently noted that I hadn’t yet caught a pike this year… hadn’t I? NO INDEED, I had not! Somehow I had rather gone fishing for barbel, trout or whatever came along. But I had recently tied supernice streamers (Gunnar Brammer’s “MegaJerk”), which moved so beautifully in the water that no pike should stay unimpressed!
So off I went to a local river, where in the shadow of the trouts which most people fish for, an occasional pike here and there might grow to very nice proportions. The water is relatively low and clear at the moment, so the pikespots can be found a little easier… although it still is the “needle in the haystack”. But I was lucky that day, and I discovered a nice fish below an overhanging tree on the opposite side of the river.
Since I was unable to cast to that spot with my streamer I decided to try and provoke the pike to come over! So I cast a little left, and a little right, stripped the streamer in superslowmotion… and very suddenly, after roughly 15min, the pike stirred, rushed towards my streamer and inhaled it from behind! SET…. but nothing happend, the pike was not hooked! My hands were shaking… the pike turned around, and took position below some overhanging gras. How could that be? I was shocked!
My only hope was, that the pike had not felt the hook yet and might come again for the fly…
…in such situations, usually the fish are either OFFENDED and do no longer react to anything, or they are ENRAGED and want to eat the streamer even more!
I cast towards the pike again, stripped slowly away from it, and after a short while it came again rushing out of the undergrowth, and soaked in the streamer from behind… SET… and again no hookset! What was wrong? Was I just unlucky? Were the hooks badly positioned, was my hookset to early? I touched the streamer and felt the supersharp hooks… nothing wrong with that!
So again… the pike was now somewhat to the left, lurking between some stones on the ground of the river… I stripped the streamer through the current about a meter infront of him, he came up, opened his mouth, I saw the streamer disappear and NOW! everything worked out! The hooks were sharp and the leader strong, so I had enough confidence to apply some pressure and keep the pike away from the roots of trees and heaps of driftwood. Used to the strong currents of the river the pike fought like a bulldozer, but in the end it landed in my net and the fight was over! What a nice fish! Anyone who just goes flyfishing for trout and grayling, misses something truely exciting! Pike on the fly rules!