...for serious pike and predator anglers!
Top-water Action
Top-water action - it's great fun!!
There’s no two ways about it, top-water lure fishing is the most exciting way of catching pike and chub during the summer months. Seeing a pike or chub following up behind a top-water lure, or bearing down on it from the left or right, is a sight to behold. Even though I've caught countless pike and chub on top-water lures, I still find it hard to control my nerves when I catch sight of a bow wave approaching my lure - the bow wave being created by a pike or chub as it homes-in on my lure just beneath the water's surface.
The approach...
Chub: I have found some waters to be far more productive than others when it comes to top-water lure fishing for chub.
The most productive waters tend to be those with plenty of small rodents residing along their banks. Rodent eating chub have a tenancy to attack their prey very fast and hard - giving the victim no chance at all to escape. Chub can strike with pinpoint accuracy - even at night.
When chub are not too hungry, they have a tendency to follow rather than strike. They tend to follow 2-3ft back behind your top-water lure and stay 6in to 1ft below the water’s surface - making them very hard to spot. On brightly lit days, sunglasses are a must for spotting following chub, pike and perch. Unlike pike, I have found it difficult to trigger a following chub to strike - but not altogether impossible! - now and again I do get lucky. I have found small crawlers and chugger plugs (better known as poppers) get the best results.
Pike: The speed at which pike strike depends greatly on how hungry they are. I sometimes get the feeling that pike attack my top-water lures just for the shear hell of it - but I'm quite sure that is not the case. I often get the impression that pike are just ‘practicing’ what they’re masters at - i.e. hunting, killing and eating. If a pike is really hungry, believe me, nothing, and I mean nothing, that swims in or on the water, will break free of a sizeable pike’s vice like jaws.
On a local water to me, a big pike was spotted by weed cutters taking a fully grown duck off the water’s surface. The water was so clear the weed cutters could see the pike laying on the bottom in 6-7 feet of water with the duck gripped firmly in its jaws - just waiting for all signs of life to leave the duck before attempting to consume it! Even using oars like spears the weed cutters could not make the pike give up its feathery meal.
I have seen baby chicks and fully grown coots taken on many occasions.
Was taking a fully grown duck a ‘foul’ deed on the pike’s part? ( Sorry about that! ) NO, of course it wasn’t. Most species of sea and coarse fish will prey on living creatures at some stage of their lives. Like sharks, pike are at the top of the freshwater food chain. They will attack all sizes of living creatures - from chicks and rats, to human beings!
Pike are greatly frowned upon by people who do not understand the law of nature – which is, eat or be eaten!
Mistaken Identity?
For those of you who think pike attacking dogs, cattle, or even humans, is just a myth, think again! Pike, being fast opportunist hunters, do on occasion make mistakes. The Norfolk Broads river inspector had his hand bitten, or should I say, latched onto, by a pike in the summer of 1997 - while washing his hands over the side of the boat! In the previous year, an angler washing his hands after mixing up some ground bait, also suffered bad lacerations when a good size pike latched onto one of his hands when washing them over the side of the boat. He made the mistake of trying to shake the pike free - which, as you can appreciate, was not a very good idea - but something I'm sure we would all instinctively do! Even I fell victim to it in 2006!
As you may by now know, I am a professional pike fishing guide - hence, I have no reason for wanting to frighten people and put them off of pike fishing. Believe me though folks, if I need to wash my hands while out fishing, I quickly dip ‘em and do the rubbin’ well above the water’s surface! If you were to see some of the pike that leap out of the water at boatside, i.e. as I or a client lifts a lure clear of the water to recast it, it would put you off of washing your hands over the side of the boat for the rest of your life!
Fact: I have had pike leap straight into my boat as they have lunged at a lure leaving water to be recast. You ain’t seen nothin’ like it - clients jumping up on to the seats to get clear of the pike’s needle sharp toothy jaws as it thrashes about in the bottom of the boat. Hooked pike used to regularly jump into my boat - i.e. back in the days when there was less food on tap. I had a couple of bad experiences in 1997. One pike that leapt clean into my boat, with lure dangling from its mouth, managed to attach a hook to my foot - painful or what! On another occasion a pike leap so high into the boat, with lure in mouth, a hook ended up in the top of my leg. Fortunately, the weight of the pike ripped the hook free - leaving me with a sore bleeding leg. Injury or no injury, I had to press on and unhook the crazy pike.
Fact: A pike responding to received vibration waves can thrust forwards from many feet away and hit the source of the vibration waves within a split second. Pike can move at approximately 30ft per second. Pike can move so fast, they may not get the chance to visually check-out the intended victim before latching on to it. Do pike attack humans? NO - it's just a case of ‘Mistaken Identity’.
Based on how many sizeable pike I catch on big top-water lures each summer, I ain’t takin’ any chances though (!)
Top-water lures...
3¼in Jointed Jitterbugs (crawlers) are my all-time favorite top-water lures. I have caught many hundreds of double figure pike on them - plus a good number of 20lbers.
Another top-water lure that I particularly like to use, and which catches very well, is a 5in handcrafted stickbait. To weight a hand crafted stick bait ( i.e. at the back end ), I inserted two sound chambers. When pike are not responding to crawlers, a stickbait, for some reason, seems to do the business. I twitch back very, very slowly... I think that could possibly be the key to its success! When pike are not in a crawler chasing mood, an ultra slow approach can often work wonders.
Over the last couple of years I have been having great success on my handcrafted ‘Pop On The Top’ lure. I designed it to mimic a topping prey fish. The success of this lure relies greatly on the retrieve technique. It may take one of my clients two or three hours to master the retrieve technique, but once mastered, it can be fun and action for the rest of the day! The really nice thing about the lure, is it can also be retrieved sub surface if required - by simply changing to a different trace attachment eye located at the nose end of the lure.
Retrieve techniques...
A high tensile rod, to achieve erratic lure swimming action, is, in my opinion, a must.
Enhanced lure action can stimulate pike into moving. It can also be used to ‘trigger’ a following pike and make it strike.
To spot following pike can be an art in itself. I have on many, many hundreds of occasions had to shout to a client - “you've got a follow” - more often than not, the client being unable to spot the following pike. I have come to appreciate that being able to look deep into the water well behind your lure and successfully spot a following fish, is not as easy for some as it is for others!
Pike can follow anything from 1-8 feet behind a lure. In order to see a following pike, you must slow your retrieve right down as the lure approaches boatside/bankside - i.e to give the following pike a chance to catch up with the lure and slam it! Slowing the retrieve down also gives the angler more time to spot a follow pike and trigger it to strike - i.e. by twitchin' the rod tip.
As soon as my lure comes into view, be it a top-water or crankbait type lure, I focus well behind and beneath the lure. I pay no attention whatsoever to the lure itself - but still keep it in focus (!) A karate student, of high rank, would understand exactly what focusing on something, without actually looking at it, is all about.
If you would like to know more about stimulating and triggering pike, please drop me an email. Clearly outline the points that you would like me to clarify for you.
I use many different types of techniques during the summer and winter months to entice pike. Due to other UK pike fishing guides having access to the Internet though, I am reluctant to disclose my highly successful techniques - and the very latest lures that I have designed specifically to mimic surface water creatures that pike prey on.
Good Luck!!