REVIEWED BY CHRIS BISHOP Price: £ 18.95 | ||
| No prizes for guessing I’m a pike anorak, an avid collector of books and magazines. I devour everything I can get my hands on because over the years, I’ve learned so much from the writings of people like Neville Fickling, Mick Brown and Eddie Turner – not to mention contributors to FISHINGmagic and other websites, many of whom have become good mates and fishing partners. I’d looked forward to the arrival of ‘Everything You Need To Know’ from the day I read it was in the pipeline. Modern piking is so diverse I doubt you could do more than scratch the surface in 1,000 pages – let alone 190. Rather than being everything you need to know, the book is more a snapshot of Neville’s outlook on fishing for pike than a comprehensive guide, although a footnote does admit no book could really tell you everything you need to know and he was having “a bit of fun” with the title. Seasoned pikers will probably glean a lot from some of the snippets of information and reading between the lines. You certainly will if you fish the Fens or the Broads (where’s the number for that private bit of the Cut-Off again..). Let’s face it, success in terms of the list of people who’ve banked more than 100 20s, or caught truly massive fish usually comes to people who’ve got on the right waters before anyone else has. Being in the right place at the right time is so often what counts. Most of us fish average waters, close to where we live and our results reflect it. Where the book falls down is it offers few clues as to how Mr Average can raise his game. Take the lure fishing chapter. “In recent years with the advent of some of the modern lures it has become clear that lures can actually outfish live and deadbaits,” Neville writes. “If you had told me two years ago that livebaits would be totally outfished by lures I’d have laughed at you. I’m not laughing now.” Yet the discussion on lures and lure fishing is short and confined to a couple of anecdotes and stories about catching pike on a certain type of big rubber lures many have abandoned because of the terrible hook-ups which result from using them. On deadbaiting and livebaiting the advice is generally simple and common sense, although some of it does fly in the face of widely-accepted pike lore. All flavours do is mask the scent of the bait, Neville argues. He’s never seen much point in popped-up baits but suspended ones are a different story. We’ll never know the truth until pike learn to talk of course, yet many would probably argue the toss over either point. The livebaiting section will probably raise a few eyebrows. On the one hand, Neville says it may well be banned in five years’ time. On the other, he outlines how to set up holding tanks. The sections on different types of waters probably save the book and make it worth buying for any aspiring piker – which let’s face it, most of us are. But in view of the fact many newcomers to piking will buy this book, a chapter on fish handling would probably have been more valuable than a chapter on the merits of different cars and camper vans.
Published by and available from: Lucebaits Publishing Telephone: 01427 613002 |
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