| PROFESSOR BARRIE RICKARDS | |
Professor Barrie Rickards is President of the Lure Angling Society, and President of the National Association of Specialist Anglers as well as a very experienced and successful specialist angler with a considerable tally of big fish to his credit. He is author of several fishing books, including the classic work ‘Fishing For Big Pike’, co-authored with the late Ray Webb and only recently his first novel, ‘Fishers On The Green Roads’ was published. He has been an angling writer in newspapers and magazines for nigh on four decades. Barrie takes a keen interest in angling politics. Away from angling Barrie is a Professor in Palaeontology at the University of Cambridge, a Fellow of Emmanuel College and a curator of the Sedgwick Museum of Geology. |
Hot-spots and big water pike
I was reading an article in Pike and Predators recently, by Gary Knowles on big water pike, and he mentioned the idea of hotspots and how pike anglers abuse them. I had to agree with his remarks, with one proviso. The kind of hotspots to which he was referring, and to which flotillas of boats sped daily, were not hotspots in the sense originally defined by Peter Wheat, or by Ray Webb and me in If you want to know what a real hotspot is then look it up in “Fishing for Big Pike” and read of the evidence. Of course, pike feed outside hotspots! All this was clearly described in our book and it is a pity that a few more people don’t take the trouble to read up before talking about hotspots. Not that I’m criticising Gary Knowles on this score because what he has to say about the so-called hotspots on trout reservoirs is perfectly sound in my view.
The on-going debate about barbless hooks
There has always been on-going debate on barbed v. barbless trebles and I do note that a few more people are coming around to my (minority) viewpoint that micro-barbed trebles are best. Fish do come off barbless trebles, whatever people say. That would not bother me unduly, but I am increasingly concerned about the amount of damage barbless hooks do to fish that are to be returned to the water.
More recently there have been debates about trebles v. VB doubles (see for example Pike & Predators no. 77). I have no doubts at all about this. Those double hooks were always based upon misconceptions to my mind and I don’t think they work very well in practice. I remember fishing quite a bit with Colin Dyson, who was well sold on them (he had experimented with single hook rigs in the early 1960s, as I had). On one of our fenland pike trips, Colin and I, and Tim Cole, had eight double figure fish in one day. We were all in one swim, chatting away, and fishing two or three rods each, all mixed up. Four of the doubles were twenties, and each one fell to my rods. Colin and Tim weighed them, to an accompaniment of rude remarks, but, and this is the more important thing, Colin pulled out of three doubles on his VB rigs, and two of these three looked like twenties to me. We could have had six in the day! I know that he got rather wary of them in the end after a few other experiences. So, Kevin Woolner’s recent remarks get full support from me on all fronts. In lure fishing I don’t rate either singles or barbless at all – and it’s not without experience, which in my case goes back to the 1950s.
Jerk-baiting for pike
Jerk bait fishing for big pike is still with us. I remember, many years back now, being introduced to this by Malcolm Bannister who had obtained some from the States and handed me a fistful to try. There’s one thing that puzzles me a bit and that is the insistence of some anglers that you cannot jerk bait fish unless you have a multiplier. It is true that a multiplier is nicer, and I use them a lot, but I have also used big fixed spool reels with big jerks and other very big lures, and have not found them a problem at all. So I’m not sure what the problem is. Is there anyone out there who can explain?
Post mortem on the worst piking winter for years
Perhaps its a good time to hold a post mortem on the ‘worst’ piking winter for many years – at least, so say lots of anglers who have had a hard time. Some good fish have been caught, of course, but even the guys who have caught them consider that taken as a whole the season has been bad. Certainly that has been my own experience, my ‘worst’ season for thirty years with one scraper twenty amongst the bigger ones. I say scraper twenty because in reality it was a seventeen pounder with a 21/2 lb jack in its throat. I caught the same fish three days later and it weighed in at a little over 17 lbs. After a good discussion of the Ely/Fenland branch of the PAC in March the most popular theory, which I liked too, was that last summer was such a good breeding and grooming time for fry that the pike concentrated on feeding on those fry right through the winter. Any fish that I did catch this winter were in very good condition, proving that they were feeding well, if not on my deadbaits as a rule. The problem does seem to have been nationwide, so it would be interesting to hear of other views on this matter.
Problems affecting the Carp Society
It’s rather sad to read of all the problems affecting the Carp Society, not to mention the fact that as I write they do not now support the Specialist Anglers Association (SAA). There’s a very clear and good pr
