An Irish Pike Experience
If you are first timer or relative new comer to Pike fishing, reading the modern press, you could well believe that pike are only caught from either, Trout reservoirs or commercial fisheries! This is not true.
Here in Ireland we have thousands upon thousands of acres, of wild, hardly explored lakes, Loughs, Rivers and Canals.
And through the lack of angling pressure these waters receive, there is always the feeling that what you are catching has neither seen a hook before and that you are only scratching the surface of what lies beneath.
Ireland provides the kind of sport that will get any Pike angler excited, with amazing numbers of hard fighting fish possible in a day, and the chance of a twenty pound plus fish, from every single water I know!
Here is a tale of one of my days out guiding by boat.
In October you can be fairly sure that the majority of prey fish and small fry are heading for the deeper areas of the lake, you can also be sure that the Pike aren’t too far away either.
An early morning trolling session using spoons or fast run crank baits, allow you to first find the shoals of prey on the fish finder, or by getting takes/catching pike in the same area you have a good ide
a where to start.
We dropped a couple of markers up-wind of where the shoals were located, and set our drift to bring us through the shoals of bait. We set our floats so our 6oz Roach dead baits were just off the bottom, as the Pike usually lie beneath the massed shoals of baitfish. We put out our drogue so we would drift very slowly and stay in the area for a l onger period.
We didn’t have to drift very far before the first float shot under, when Mick struck, he met good resistance, and after a spirited fight we boated the first double of the day. It was on this first drift that both David and I found some action both taking nice fish around the 8lb mark. We then took in the drogue (underwater parachute) and motored
back up to the markers again.
We repeatedly got takes around the shoals of small fish, which at some points were over 150mtrs long. We never managed a take when the baits were in amongst the prey, but as soon as we got out to the fringes we were getting hit hard.
We will never know how many Pike surrounded these shoals but over the next 2 days we managed a staggering, 47 pike, and 24 of them were double figures, for a combined total weight of 470lb. The beauty of all this is that it happens year after year in the same areas, you just have to know where?? The photographs say it all!