By Andrew Marr
When it comes to fishing, there are many factors far beyond our control. Weather, water temps, wind, moon phases and time of year all play huge roles relating to what pike are doing on any given day, and there isn’t a thing we can do about it. All we can try to do as anglers is react and adapt to the conditions that mother nature throws at us. Knowing how to react and what to do under certain conditions can be the difference between success and failure on the water. Sometimes slowing down your strip speed and really picking spots apart in a methodical manner during a cold front or post frontal weather pattern is the flavor of the day. But there are times that dictate a different approach and the right call is to speed up, in everyway! A period of stable weather with an imminent storm on the way, time to let it rip! Pike are ramped up, chasing, aggressively following and nipping at flies, put the pedal to the metal! The pike are showing their aggressive side where ever you go, time to hit as many of your best spots ASAP! You guessed it, there is an immediate need for speed!!
Early in my youth, when I began pike fishing, I learned a valuable lesson from one very specific pike that took a few tries to finally catch. I was still using mostly conventional tackle at the time, as the fly fishing bug had yet to fully take hold. I was casting a 5″ suspending jerkbait around a patch of weeds one fall day, twitching and pausing, when a nice pike showed up right behind it. I would twitch and pause, and the pike would close the gap, gills flared, clearly wanting to eat, however it never committed and just followed all the way back to the boat before finally veering off at the last possible second. This particular pike followed on consecutive casts, with the same result, nipping, following but not fully committing, then darting back to the weed bed. I decided to give the pike a rest and return a little while later to see if it’s mood had changed. Sure enough, about an hour later I returned, same jerkbait in hand, and launched a cast, made the twitch and pause, and the same pike was immediately behind it once again in a flash. No matter how I ripped, paused or twitched, the pike would not eat, even though it was never more than mere inches behind the bait. Again as the bait neared the boat, the fish turned away and darted back to its lair. In a bit of a frustrated mood I immediately pulled the boat back a bit, put down the jerkbait and changed to a small inline bucktail. I recall saying to myself that this pike clearly wanted to eat something, right now, I launched the bucktail over the weed bed and started reeling as fast as I could. When the bucktail quickly cleared the edge of the weeds, the seemingly picky pike clobbered it, first cast, with zero hesitation this time! After a good strong battle I was able to bring it boat side, remove the hooks and give it a measure, at 41″ it was a huge pike for me in those early days!
It was amazing to see the mood of a fish change from what seemed like a moody, picky eater that wanted a very specific finesse type of bait, into a pike that wanted to pulverize something and knock the stuffing out of its next meal! When that pike was given a chance to look at a bait, for a long time, it was seemingly trying to make up its mind! When I changed the presentation and introduced speed into the equation the pike only had the option to react now, or miss a chance at a meal. The slower hanging pauses wasn’t triggering enough to flip the switch, I was giving it too much time to mull the decision over. When the bait changed, and the spinner, combined with speed, forced the fish into a now or never decision, it reacted by eating, violently, without any of the hesitation it showed earlier.
Although not a fly caught pike, the lesson I learned from that experience has stayed with me 20 plus years on. I have been able to apply it many times now as a professional pike guide with both fly and conventional gear. If you give a pike that is showing aggression, or a high level of interest in a slower presentation, enough time to think about eating your bait, even if they are super aggressive, they may or may not eat it as your not forcing their decision or reaction. However, if you turn around and give them a now or never decision, there is a very good chance that pike reacts by hunting down the bait , and eating it, with extreme prejudice! So often when anglers are trying a slower finesse approach, with pauses, and a big pike starts playing cat and mouse with your bait, an angler can think that even more finesse or pauses is required. A pike showing mild interest, or one that never fully “closes the gap” by more than a few feet, slowing down and adding hangtime to your bait is a great choice. If the pike appears “hot” and is displaying obvious signs of aggression, then try turning up the dial and force them to react rather than think. Sometimes these scenarios don’t even require a change of the fly but simply the a change in the speed of the retrieve as demonstrated in the next example.
The next story to emphasize the point happened more recently, with a regular guiding client of mine. We were again working over the top of a large weed bed, but with flies. My guest was throwing a monster magic fly, a wonderful big fly that can produce well at a wide range of retrieve speeds, and is renowned for catching big pike. The weeds we were fishing were down a foot or two from the surface, the angler was working the fly at a medium pace, closer to the weed tops. On one of his casts, as the fly neared the boat, a big pike showed up behind the bait, clearly looking hungry. Gill’s flaring, staying inches behind the bait, reacting to every twitch aggressively but again, never fully committing when given lots of time and opportunity. Unfortunately this pike also turned away at the boat after chasing half way back, and u-turned right back to the weeds. The angler seemed a bit dejected, I however was thrilled as we had just found a big pike that clearly wanted to eat, RIGHT NOW! I instructed the angler to immediately cast back to the area the pike had swam back too, and to STRIP IT BACK FAST AS HE COULD. The fly, the exact same fly, only got half way back to the boat before that same pike crushed it! What turned out to be a thick 44″ pike smoked the same fly it had just refused one cast later, the only difference was it was being ripped back to the boat, at lightning speed! Same fish, same fly, different retrieve speed, different outcome…
This is not an isolated experience but rather a scenario that has been replicated many, many times in my guide boat, season after season. Get a follow and rejection from an aggressive fish on a slower strip speed, immediately cast back, double the strip speed and the fly gets annihilated! If you get a follow from a pike and can read their mood, it can tell you all you need to know about how to catch it, or what presentation it may be inclined towards. Certainly there are lots of days each season when clients and I need to slow down, hover flies in front of big pike, and painstakingly try to convince them to just nibble a subtle presentation. Sometimes pike just aren’t in an aggressive mood, stay way back from the fly and never close the gap, mouths closed the whole time. Pike acting passive as described aren’t ideal candidates for a ramping up the speed approach, generally speaking. However, when pike are showing their aggressive side, are clearly prowling for their next meal, the size of the fly, and the speed it is retrieved should both increase.
Some days on the water are just magic and it’s seems like every pike we see, we catch. Working at a lodge that can have up to 30 boats on the water on any given day allows guides to see and notice pattern’s in catch rates. There are days when 30 guides will collectively catch only a few pike per boat and fewer big ones. The opposite of course occurs also, when at days ends every guide and guest arrive back at the dock with smiles as the pike were just “turned on” that day and every boat has caught both numbers and size. The more active pike seem to appear and the more pike your contacting showing aggressive attitudes, the more an angler should be encouraged to maintain a higher strip speed and fish more spots in an effort to contact more pike and cover more water as the day progresses. When the pike are fired up, usually due to positive weather condition’s or patterns, our retrieve speed is one of the most direct factors we can control. Day’s like this don’t come along often but if your ever lucky enough to be on the water and get the sense that all the pike are fired up that day then you need to get fired up too. Burn some gas, rip some flies and up the speed of everything your doing to capitalize on the opportunity, because it never last’s forever.
Pike that react to every little twitch, don’t turn away, are flaring their gills and opening their mouth should tip you off that upping the speed may be what it takes to trigger the bite. Don’t let them think it over, make them react! It isn’t uncommon when we see a follow and get a rejection that we turn to finesse and try to subtly trick the pike into eating a snack size fly. It’s is certainly the right idea at times making it easy to overlook going in the opposite direction, ramping up size and speed. Opportunities to capitalize in the moment are fleeting, and might only happen once or twice a day if at all. Other times it’s like the whole system your fishing is in a feeding frenzy and you need to create as many opportunities for pike to eat your fly as you can, in a limited amount of time. So when a chance comes along, and you can tell that a particular pike is in the mood to eat, then and there, unlock your own need for speed and rip the fly past them! The results can fell like catching lightning in a bottle!
