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239 Posts
I’ve been fishing on the Thames for pike on lures and flies for around four years now and I love it. During that time I’ve caught other fish as well but it’s always been as an incidental capture, I haven’t really stopped to specifically target the perch, chub and zander.
This year I’m going to start and I’m going to buy some nice finesse gear to make it fun. Already got a Luvias 2004, just want a nice light stick to match it to.
The annoying thing though and one of the reasons I haven’t done this before is that accepted wisdom says you have to use wire in FW if you’re going to use lures because you WILL get bite offs from pike.
So you get a really nice finesse set up, everything’s really delicate, 4lb flouro or PE0.4, a split shot or small jighead and small worm or grub, or a tiny wacky head and finesse worm and then you have to add a dirty great piece of wire to the front to ruin your nice delicate presentation?
My thinking on this is that what I’m doing is no different really to guys fishing with bait, a lobworm for example. They don’t use wire. I’ve had pike eat swimfeeders, luncheon meat, maggots etc etc when coarse fishing. The result is generally a bite off and you will end up leaving a small hook in the pike. This is kind of inevitable and I like to think that a small hook and short piece of light mono won’t really cause any issues and will rust out in say a week or two.
So I reckon I’m going to fish straight through to a flouro leader this year and de barb the hooks I’m putting in my plastics.
I don’t think I’m doing anything different to guys fishing bait.
BUT...
What about when we start looking at small moving lures like little cranks and vibration lures?
My feeling is that these are far more a pike target and the trebles on there could cause damage or death to the pike by pinning its mouth closed. Still, I hate the idea that I have to fish a 2” lure on wire. It just doesn’t work for me aesthetically and seriously hampers my confidence.
What do you guys do at the moment?
This year I’m going to start and I’m going to buy some nice finesse gear to make it fun. Already got a Luvias 2004, just want a nice light stick to match it to.
The annoying thing though and one of the reasons I haven’t done this before is that accepted wisdom says you have to use wire in FW if you’re going to use lures because you WILL get bite offs from pike.
So you get a really nice finesse set up, everything’s really delicate, 4lb flouro or PE0.4, a split shot or small jighead and small worm or grub, or a tiny wacky head and finesse worm and then you have to add a dirty great piece of wire to the front to ruin your nice delicate presentation?
My thinking on this is that what I’m doing is no different really to guys fishing with bait, a lobworm for example. They don’t use wire. I’ve had pike eat swimfeeders, luncheon meat, maggots etc etc when coarse fishing. The result is generally a bite off and you will end up leaving a small hook in the pike. This is kind of inevitable and I like to think that a small hook and short piece of light mono won’t really cause any issues and will rust out in say a week or two.
So I reckon I’m going to fish straight through to a flouro leader this year and de barb the hooks I’m putting in my plastics.
I don’t think I’m doing anything different to guys fishing bait.
BUT...
What about when we start looking at small moving lures like little cranks and vibration lures?
My feeling is that these are far more a pike target and the trebles on there could cause damage or death to the pike by pinning its mouth closed. Still, I hate the idea that I have to fish a 2” lure on wire. It just doesn’t work for me aesthetically and seriously hampers my confidence.
What do you guys do at the moment?