Anglers who fish for large predators such as pike talk about triggers, those little understood factors which motivate the fish to commence hunting or feeding. Fluctuations in water temperature, atmospheric pressure, stages of the lunar cycle, amount of light, pure hunger, or combinations of all play a part in rousing the predatory instinct. One day a water known to hold pike can seem devoid of fish, the next it comes alive, Saturday the 24th of November being a fine example of the latter.
A cold frosty morning found David Murphy rigging up at a favourite pike water. Employing two outfits both baited with roach, he float fished one and ledgered the other. Having fished the venue on a number of occasions his best haul to date had been a couple of fish. Little did David know when lobbing out his first rig, that this trip was set to go down in the annals.
In David’s own words: “It was a ripper of a day, the rods were flying off the stands, we must of had about 8-9 runs. The two pike were caught on the floats using dace and roach. The ledgered baits produced a number of runs of which there were two screamers. On one the line shot off the spool nearly causing a birds nest, this happened twice. You couldn’t leave the rods as about every 15 mins or so there was a fish on. The pike Robbie caught actually broke the top treble hook and we lost three pike by the bank, it was a cracker of a day.”
What more can you say, well done lads, that’s why we go fishing……….
Click on: Playing the Pike Percentages.
Tags: Angling, Dead bait, Fishing, Float fishing, Ireland, Pike, Pike angling, Pike Fishing, Roach
