Silver Scales Pro Team member Lee Harper-Smith really knows his stuff when it comes to Fly fishing for his local Pike, and Lee recently put our products to good use to land a PB fly caught specimen. Well done Lee!
Lee takes up the story:
Fished all day yesterday on my local river with deadbaits without even a sniff of a bite – the river looking better than it’s looked for over a fortnight.
Managed to get out for 2 hours today and decided to fish with 1 rod on deadbaits while fishing the other on the fly.
I eventually got a follow on an Impostor that I had some success with before Christmas but the fish turned at the last second, at least it was a fish I thought! The interest had come to an extremely slow fig…ure of 8 retrieve. After a few more casts I decided to move back to the area I had started in, as I favour this area but hadn’t fished it as slow.
Sure enough on the second cast I felt a few plucks at the Fly but nothing had followed. I decided to change to the mega Jerk Fly as it had a stinger hook that might just make the difference on a day when the pike were clearly being finicky.
Second retrieve on the mega Jerk Fly on a figure of eight retrieve I could see the fly coming back next to some submerged reeds and just as it had come past them a pike literally sucked in the Fly! I responded quickly and she broke the surface quickly not realising she was hooked – I could see she was a big fish. With fly in her lips only lightly hooked with the stinger my heart was racing and then the fight began as she powered off into 12ft of water. I frantically managed to get the fly line back on the reel and the clutch set to 6 which is my preferred setting to make light work of the fight. After a few lunges she was beat and in the net….time for a rest for me and her; my thoughts were then on targets was this my target fish for the season – a 20+ on the fly. I knew it was a close one, she was long but quite lean.
The scales read 22lb 8oz with the net which I knew was close, the net rolled in at 2lb 4oz. I had just done it 20lb 4oz – 2.5 months before the end of the season.
I leant a lot today, particularly that pike will feed in the wrong conditions but only if you play cat and mouse the right way – definitely a slow and low day today! Fly can out fish deadbaits too especially when everyone else is using deadbaits or lures.
All materials used in the mega Jerk Fly were sourced from www.silverscalesflytying.co.uk
