As the weather turns decidedly cooler there are some dreich days until the Spring so rather than hang up our rods it’s maybe time to leave the lures or flies at home and head out with deadbaits and a brolly chasing Pike in all weathers.
Unhooking:
Pike are fierce in the water but they need careful handling on the bank, if you’re new to fishing for them try to go along with someone who knows how to unhook them properly. There’s plenty of good instructional videos to watch, check out the PAC Pike Anglers Club or PAAS Pike Anglers Alliance for Scotland groups for guidelines and information on Pike angling across the UK. There’s nothing like having a calm head beside you though, fishing with an experienced angler there when you’re dealing with these toothy critters particularly if one gets deep hooked is invaluable and you’ll soon pick it up.
No matter what method you’re using to catch Pike you always need tools to land and unhook your catch. Hopefully you’ll be landing a specimen so gear up expecting the best and make sure you’ve at least got these in your kit.
- Large Net, soft knotless or rubber mesh
- Unhooking mat
- Long-nosed pliers
- Pike-sized forceps
- Side-cutters
If you’re weighing the fish you’ll want a suitable sling or an unhooking mat that doubles as a sling. If you’re measuring or weighing keep the fish wet and limit the time out of the water. Quick photo with the fish low to the ground or just above the water and let them recover in the shallows before swimming off strongly.
Rods & Reels
On most lochs you’ll use a 12ft 3 to 3.5lb rod, enough backbone to deal with casting leads and baits, capable of dealing with hard runs and lunges at close quarters. You can specialise later but the standard Deadbaiting setup will cover you pretty much everywhere.
Fixed Spool reels with a Freespool mechanism are perfect, Freespool/Baitfeeders/Baitrunners sized from 6500 sized upwards to give you enough capacity to fill with mainline. It’s more commonly a braided mainline these days the finer diameters mean you can beef up the breaking strain to at least 30lb but often beyond 50/60lb. This means you should be able to pull free from snags without sacrificing too much casting distance.
Bite Indication
You don’t want to let a Pike swallow the bait, strike as soon as they pick the bait up and often they’ll be hooked in the scissor making them easier to unhook and release. Most ledgered deadbaits have the top hook in the tail root and the other hook no further forward than the dorsal fin which makes hooking in the scissor more likely.
A balanced bite alarm and drop-back indicator with your rod set up on a pair of banksticks will let you know as soon as possible. Don’t wait for a second run, you might miss the odd fish but you’ll avoid deep hooking your catch making unhooking a lot easier for you and your catch.
Traces
You need a quality wire trace that’s long enough to keep your mainline away from sharp teeth, there are loads available but the most common are twin trebles, semi barbed allowing you to put a barbed end in the bait but leaving the other barbless points free to hook the Pike. If you are using fully barbed hooks crush the barb down you won’t lose fish but it will make unhooking much easier.
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