Why does a pike as a predatory fish attack a fly, or better streamer?  A fly which in fact, is so very far away from a real living creature.  Fluffy as most of our pike flies are, they stand, even as a very creative brew, miles away from the silvery scales and soft and fleshy shape of the real prey fish.  Leave alone the ‘lovely’ smell of a real roach, rudd or trout.  Plugs come far nearer in presenting the real thing, both in movement and shape.  If you for instance, have a look at the modern Rapala lures, these get very close to the real thing.  But… is that really necessary?  Why do pike set their body in motion to grab something?  If at all?  Hunger is the first and logic one that pops to mind, or maybe even better a good and healthy appetite.  For also pike have to eat to survive.  They happen to eat other creatures to just do that.   I think if trout and salmon would be available ‘all over the place’, they would be high on the pike’s food priority list. Followed by the various species of coarse fish also frogs and other amphibians.  On their ‘spring’ menu will be all kinds of young birds, like coots and ducklings.  And of course water rats and mice that went out for a swim.  Small enough animals that made the mistake of their life just to fall into the lake, not to far from a pike’s lie.  Pike even consume their own offspring, for they don’t really mind nor care about that.

Aggression? 

So do pike maybe grab a fly out of aggression?  Personally I do not believe that pike are that aggressive.  As aggressive as we all think, maybe even hope they are, or as we want them to be.  Pike chase other animals away that come into its territory.  They say, is a pike aggressive enough, I wonder, to swim twenty meters to frighten off something that came to close.  For I once read that pike would attack a fly out of pure aggression.  Something, another fish, beetle or another insect, or animal that came to near and into their territory has to be chased away. I think if they should do just that they would be big busybodies indeed, to chase away everything that came to near.  Lakes are loaded with other small and bigger creatures, so pike would be much more hungry after a long day of hard work, as you can imagine.  In fact far more hungry than pike are most of the time.  And… we would catch many more of them too.  But alas we don’t.   Animals hardly have any aggression in the first place.  Only we have that!  They (wisely) go out of the reach of humans, and if there is no other way they bite, claw or try do defend themselves.  Another fact is that pike only feed a short time every day, if at all.  They are known to not feed for days, weeks even.  I believe that pike look far more aggressive than they really are.  For all these teeth, flat head, big body, and don’t forget all these strange (brewed up by humans) stories about them, you name it.  But take it from me it really did not help them through the centuries. Not at all!

Just a thought

Now compare this behavior to that of a trout.  They really do the same as pike.  They have teeth too and eat living animals. All sorts of larvae under the waters surface, or flies that either crawl out of the water to start their fluttery life, or fall in by mistake.  Or sitting on the surface when they are laying their eggs, taking care of a new generation.  Ask a 100 people, which animal is more aggressive a trout or a pike.  I bet 98% of them without hesitation will answer pike.  For trout look ‘more’ beautiful, ‘more’ cuddly perhaps, for they live in beautiful rivers.  Let alone this, popping up nonsense of that ‘holy’ dorsal fin.  Don’t get me wrong I love trout and fishing for them.  In my profession I paint more trout than any other species.  Sure to be sure, they ARE beautiful, don’t start throwing stones through my windows please.  Personally though I do not believe that one fish is better, holier or more beautiful than another.  But I am pretty sure it must be in our genetic strings for hundreds of years now, pike are bad, trout are good (also see crow, magpie, hawk, wolf, snake, crocodile, shark and…and..)… And you will not easily change these prejudices.   So, I wonder, could this thought be the true reason, the deeper background on the fact that pike a re still treated as vermin in some countries like for instance Ireland?  Treated over there as vermin, even by studied people, biologists that hate pike from the very depths of their being.  These lesser human Gods, that rule the waters over there.  Sometimes you know, I really wonder.

Interest

My personal belief is pike grab a fly out of hunger (full stop).  They think it is something to eat.  Or if they are not hungry at all, they grab it out of interest.  What is it?  For a pike cannot take something in its hand a have a closer look at it.  It only has its mouth, to may be taste it, bite it a little and/or make it go away if it does not like it.  Maybe ‘taking short’ is pure lack of interest.  “Oh another fly”.  Another interesting thought is: pike grab something out of habit.  They are ‘found’ to clean the waters, ‘found’ to take care of sick and deformed other creatures, so that is what they simply do.  They have to, it’s their imprint.  I can believe in this one, linked to interest and maybe every now and tiny wee bit of aggression. And if something is a deformed creature, our flies are on top of the list… sorry guys.

Anyway I just wanted to share this one with you, and would love to have your opinion about it. 

Flies

Why fishing for pike with a fly?  Since it is far more easier with live or dead baits, plugs, jerk baits or whatever we have found over the years to get them.  Well I do not think I have to explain this to you guys.  For fly fishermen are, a wee bit daft in the first place.  We pike fly fishermen? well I don’t know.. but, we are the worse kind of nutcases.  Romantics, maybe!  Fishermen that only count their 30’s and 40’s.  The way they caught them is not of interest, as long as their grinning face is in the magazine, or on the record list.   Only this counts it often seems to me…. You are drifting away mister Swier!  Am I?  Sorry!  

(Pike) Fly-fishing is the best way of fishing I know of.  I love it.  Talking of flies for pike you have to think in categories.  Of course your country is different than mine, but I think the waters are more or less comparable.  So we use flies for smaller drains and canals, waters where a 15 pounder is a very good fish.  And we have waters where we can expect a bigger fish.  We also have diving streamers in all sorts and ways.  For these smaller waters I use flies tied on 4/0 hooks. They are about 12 to 15 cm long from head to tail.  But when I go out with my pal Henk Rusman to a lake called Vinkeveen, or any other larger lake, the size of the flies we use is different.   The lake I am talking about here also holds a big head of large pike, so that is a nice thing to know.  We also happen to know that the pike over there really do like big things.  And since we are always willing to please somebody, that is exactly what will be on the menu that day.  BIG flies. So we use big tandem flies that easily measure 25 and even 30 cm in length.  It is really beautiful to use your imagination brewing up flies like these.   Thirty centimeters! are you nuts Ad?  Och maybe… Sure always have been, never even tried to really argue.  Artist you know, so crazy big time.

How big is BIG?

In the strong believe that a large fish only will get in motion, when there is something swimming around worth all the trouble.  With this ‘knowledge’ I started to tie these big creatures.  Thought of as a weirdo in the beginning, over here in Holland loads of fly fishermen use these flies today.  And every now and then I hear someone say: “You still are a weirdo, but you were right in the first place”.  “Thank you”.

Well friends this was my idea on pike flies.  My thoughts on the matter changed over the years, and will change in the future, because, we learn every day that we are out on the lake or at a river.  So I hope our learning will not be over for a long time.

Have fun. 

Ad Swier/Holland. 

The Technical part

To cast flies like these we use fast and strong 10 weight rods and slow sinking lines.  And every now and then we get lucky.

The materials I use in these flies are the following: Of course I use my own hooks, the Partridge CS43 in 4/0 and 8/0, it is a barbless hook.  As tying material I use: Buck tail, Icelandic sheep hair, holographic Fly Fibers and/or Flashaboo, long saddle hackles, marabou, Zonker strips with hair from Rabbit, but even better from Artic fox, strips of shiny stuff, old fly line for the connection and Mylar piping to make it look nice, eyes and epoxy glue.  My favourite colours are: Green and Yellow (mixed), a White body with a Red head, Black and White or Red, Pink and Red, White or Black, a Yellow body and a Red tail and finally Yellow and Black.  For the divers, I used to clip them out of dear hair (the Dahlberg divers) they were ruined easily though, so nowadays I use the foam from Edgewater of the US.  Beautiful made stuff that works very easy, it is very strong and it floats like a duck.  It comes in all forms, colours and sizes, also in blocks out of which you can cut your own diver.  The cone like shapes heads for instance are hollow at one end, so you can use them as a (very) noisy surface popper or, used the other way around,  as a sliding head up front of a load of hairy stuff. I like it a lot.  I colour the foam with Pantone markers, add funny looking eyes and varnish the whole body after that with Softex.  You can also ‘needle’ some these special coloured elastic bands trough the body to add…well you tell me.  Anyway the possibilities today are endless and with some creativity and of course trust in what you are doing.  Well you can have a lot of fun just the tying the streamers themselves.  

When I tie my stuff in, I always varnish at each stage,  a new bunch of hair or a feather, varnish.  To tie these flies will take you quite a bit of time.  I have seen guys playing a fish or even just losing it after a minute, to find the material of the fly floating all over the place.  So I use simple white nail varnish to do just that, it is rather cheap, it dries quickly and does the job perfectly.   The head of a streamer I normally finish with stuff called Z-poxy, specially when eyes are added.  But normally two part glue (fast drying) will do the job as well.  If the glue does not run smoothly, keep it close to the lamp.  There are special machines available today that will turn your fly (and keeps the epoxy where it is meant to be) for as long as needed, but you can also walk a round for some time turning the fly by hand.  That’s up to you. I draw ‘my’ patterns for you now [to follow]  Have fun kids!

Ad.