Over the past week great mate Pingers had a very large pike on a two pound dead trout, fished on a drop-off, presented under a super-sensitive float. The next day, Tim had one of pretty much equal size on the same complex, cranking back a copper spoon at some speed in almost brown water. The one capture I could well understand, the other was a complete surprise, and I needn’t tell you which was which. BUT… the more I pondered the two fish, the more I realised that despite my intimate knowledge of the water, the more I realised I really do not know.
Right now, in the middle of the winter, I cannot decide if the big pike are loners or live in pods. The evidence for both possibilities is there, and all I can assume is that some are solitary and some are not.
We all know Broadland pike move huge distances routinely, but what about pit fish? Some pods of pike appear to remain in the same gully for weeks. Other identifiable pike seem to maraud on an almost daily basis. Individual preference? Food supply issues? River fish? One Wye pike spent the entire summer and autumn in a single slack, presumably because her food came to her without need to search it out?
Over the years, we have caught on three pound baits and three inch ones, without any clear preference being established. Prey is grabbed indiscriminately? Is it a case of matching the hatch? That is, when small silvers predominate then small baits are favoured, but when those silvers get to a pound, bait sizes need to be raised? Or is it purely random, and pike take a bait out instinct, curiosity or simple hunger?
On the water in question I have taken scores of pictures of big fish this century, but very few have been in flashlight. A “last knockings” fish is very rare and top feeding times appear to be between 9.30am and 2.00pm. Bright days can be as good as dark ones. This rather goes against accepted pike lore, but are all waters different? Or are more subtle influences at work? Moon phases? Approaching weather fronts?
Nev Fickling once wrote that pike take herrings drowned on the top, in mid-water, or on the bottom. Perhaps that is all we need to know. Get a bait out there and if your name is on it, as they say, the pike will be yours. Perhaps if we really did know all the answers to all the questions, where would the jeopardy be in that? Would we want our wild piking to become reduced to the level of a commercial carp water? What goes on in those craggy skulls of theirs is a mystery so much of the time, and so I hope it remains.
