River piking with Big Lures

After attending a recent PAC talk by Eric Edwards, I was very interested in his way of fishing his local spate rivers with big lures, jerk bait rods and Abu multipliers. His record speaks for itself, and the style of fishing suits my general roving approach big time. I decided to purchase a little more kit, including 100lb Power Pro braid, and giving it a good try; generally my pike fishing is centred around either float fished deadbaits, and roving about or using a couple of rods and concentrating on ledgered deads in a couple of swims.

I had a few hours spare, and decided to give it a go on a stretch of my local river. As usual, the path was difficult and a fair bit of walking was required, but that doesn't both me. The first swim has fenced off to keep the livestock away, and I foolishly argued that it wouldn't be electrified - how wrong was I (ouch). Different to how I have previously lure fished (which is a rare event), and on the advice of Eric, I was covering each swim for longer periods, trying different lures, with different actions and at different depths. On my third or fourth swim, after flogging away with a lure for a while, I was thinking that there probably wasn't a pike there. A change of lure to a spinner bait brought an instant response in water i'd covered a few times (just goes to show!). The rod slammed over, all hell broke loose, and the small rod and multiplier outfit performed admirably.

This one weighed 8lb 15oz.

After a few more swims on the spinner bait, but without success, a change to a rapala max-rap brought an instant response. I'd decided to try and make the lure seem like a dying fish, stopping at times, and it was when I stopped retrieving that a pike smashed the lure and then swam towards me at a rate of knots, causing me to quickly reel. It was netted quickly, and this weight 7lb 8oz.

Happy with that, hopefully many more to follow....