Pike from Featureless Fisheries

Pike from Featureless Fisheries

IF THERE IS one thing that we have the excavator bucket to thank for, it is those lovely bars and features it creates in gravel pits. If only there were more features like those in the meres of Cheshire, Shropshire and Staffordshire and all those ancient estate lakes. Usually, the most we can hope to find in the way of features are the smoothed out remnants of a stream bed, a stream that long since ceased to flow, or is reduced to such a trickle it lacks the force to have any significant effect on the lake bed.

Typical Cheshire mere, usually shallow round the margins, deeper in the middle

It is the lack of features in meres and estate lakes that makes finding the fish so difficult. When you’re faced with anything from 10 to over a hundred acres of water, where the bottom is shaped like a shallow saucer with very few irregularities, you know the fish could be anywhere. Of course they still have their favoured areas, for when there are no distinct features even the insignificant ones become significant; an area where the lake bed deepens fairly suddenly by a few inches can often be as attractive to estate lake fish as a 2ft drop-off is to a gravel pit fish. Finding those subtle features in meres and estate lakes is, however, only part of the problem and not the foundation of this article.

To move or not to move?

There are a number of anglers who prefer moving swims fairly often when pike fishing, giving a swim an hour or so and then upping sticks and moving to a new swim. That’s good advice, depending where you’re fishing, but I reckon it is much more of an advantage in gravel pits and rivers. I’m not suggesting that roving from swim to swim won’t work on meres and estate lakes but that on featureless waters there are days when sticking to the same swim and working it are a better option.

Graham and his best pike from a Cheshire mere at 28lb 12oz

The secret, if you like, is knowing the right time to use the stationary approach, and exactly where to use it.

The right time to sit and wait for pike is when the pike are feeding well, or are likely to feed well, when the conditions suggest that a few runs are on the cards. That’s the time when the pike are most likely to be on the move, in search of prey, or at least willing to move if they pick up a suggestion of a meal. And especially so when the pike live in a featureless water that provides few ambushing areas. There are plenty of meres where even the margins have few weedbeds from where an attack can be launched. Furthermore, due to lack of features, the bulk of the prey fish spend their time in deeper, open water, which in the saucer-shaped meres and estate lakes is usually the middle region.

But you just don’t go along to a featureless water and sling a couple of deadbaits into any old area and hope for the best. You still have to put a lot of thought into choosing the right swim on the day.

You still have to make it as easy as possible for the fish to find the bait

Although the basis of the reasoning for fishing the stationary approach is that hungry fish will find the food it still makes sense to make their search for it as easy as possible, the ultimate being if you can drop it on their noses and they don’t have to search at all. Which, of course, is the philosophy behind roving, in that you hope to eventually cast your bait to fish that are present in the swim. So, in spite of the lack of features, take the water temperature and wind direction into account, use your knowledge of the water from previous encounters in similar conditions, and fish the swim that in your estimation will be the best on the day.

Sensory pores along the jaw

Remember, the reasoning behind the stationary approach is that it can be the best method when there are few, if any, features that pike can use as ambushing spots and to find food they have to go and look for it rather than wait for it to come along to where they’re lying in wait. Now, pike use several senses to find food: sight, sound, feel and smell. If they lie in wait then they’re using mainly sight, sound and feel (through the many sensory pores along the jaw and body). If they’re on the prowl for food then the sense of smell comes into play all the more.

The oil factor

With that in mind, remember that mackerel are recognised as one of the best deadbaits for pike. There are few pike anglers who would disagree with that. And mackerel are amongst the oiliest of baits – cast one out and you’ll see a flat spot created by the oil that will drift off for a long, long way before it disperses. When that mackerel lies on or close to the bottom that oil is seeping into the water and being carried along the underwater currents, however weak those currents may be. Leave the deadbait for long enough and that smell trail will extend for a considerable distance, which can be picked up by any pike that wander into it.

One of the best pike deadbaits – oily mackerel

Reel in for another cast and that smell trail is broken. Cast to a different area and you lay down another smell trail. Do that on numerous occasions and you leave so many smell trails the pike won’t be able to find the wood for the trees, so to speak. Think of it like swimfeeder fishing; when you re-cast then cast to the exact same spot. If you don’t then you would be better not re-casting at all.

Increasing the oil factor

Incidentally, to boost the smell trail I often inject the bait with extra oil, or use an oily flavour to soak the balsa sticks I use for popping up baits. Very often my heavily oiled baits indicate a bite more quickly than any drop-off indicator, for you see an explosion of oil create a flat spot at the surface when the bait is squeezed in the jaws of a hungry pike. Many, many times I’ve seen this flat spot and been able to pick the rod up, close the bale-arm, take hold of the line between butt ring and reel and feel the bite long before there would have been an indication on the drop-offs. I find I’m scanning the water for these oily flat spots all the time when I’m deadbaiting for pike. They’re the best indicator of all, especially in shallow water when the oil slick is instant.

Compelled to roam

I used to fish with one particular mate who felt compelled to go roving round the meres when he was pike fishing, even when legering deadbaits. It wasn’t that he didn’t believe he would catch if he sat put, but that he was so impatient he couldn’t sit still for long. After half an hour of sitting behind the rods, and then another quarter hour pacing behind them, the baits would be reeled in, his rods and banksticks bundled under one arm, rucksack with baits and tackle on his back, chair in the other hand, and off he’d go to the next available swim. And then the whole process repeated until he ran out of swims to try or just got so tired he had to sit for a longer spell.

The thing is, he almost always caught fewer than me. Same tackle, same baits, same tactics, apart from his mobile approach and my stationary one.

Compelled to stay put

Where he was compelled to up stakes and move regularly, I had this compulsion to stay put. Every time I thought about reeling in for another cast (never mind reeling in to try another swim) this little voice in my head would say, “Don’t do it, there’s a pike been following the smell trail for the past half hour and you’re just about to pull the bait from under its nose.”

Graham and a 22-pounder from a Cheshire mere

I invariably fish two rods when deadbaiting for pike and one of the rods stays in from the minute it’s cast to the minute I pack for home. Unless, of course, I have to strike at a run. The second rod is only reeled in following an indication that didn’t result in a hooked fish. Or after at least two hours of the bait being out. I would say that as much as 9 times out of ten it is the bait that has been out the longest that catches most of my fish.

At times I fish a free-roaming livebait rod as well as the deadbait rod and, when the wind is right, a drifter rod with either a live or dead bait attached. That rod often catches the most fish, but I always wonder if it is the small trail from the deadbait that has attracted the fish to the area in the first place. Makes you wonder doesn’t it?

Remember though, the stationary approach will not necessarily be the best way to fish on gravel pits and other waters that are heavily endowed with features. Features make for holding spots and where there are plenty of those it is probably best on most days to try each one until you find the fish.