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FLY-FISHING
FOR PIKE by Paul Le Gall,
translated by Claude BELLOIR
8
- FISHING ACTION : Strike and missed takes
I believe that the pike's mouth, paved with teeth as it is, requires a
marked strike, and that's what I do. And yet I've read that, contrary to this,
the angler should feed a loop of line just as one does when fly-fishing for
salmon, and that the pike just hooked itself. As I can't convince myself, I
strike rather twice than just once, above all when the fish is big and has 'taken
the lure with a long line out on the water.
I have sometimes, for fun or out of necessity, with God on my side too-
managed to run the backing through the rings of the rod and cast out more than
25 metres. Very often in such cases, the pike threw the hook as there was too
much line out and as a result, too much slack
line before the strike. In particular I remember one day as I was river fishing
and a whopper rushed at the lure over-bending the rod and making the reel scream.
It threw the hook even before I had time to pull myself together and control the
situation. This instance is a fairly good illustration of how it becomes
problematic to control line and lure beyond the common and useful casting
distances (10 to 15metres).
 About
the size of lures, we've already seen that shortening a long tandem streamer
down to the one front hook very often permitted to put an end successfully to a
series of 'knocks' that never develop, caused most of the time by small pike.
These hard and very short bites don't give the angler the time to strike
properly. They're all the more frustrating as their brutality and quickness give
the angler the feeling to have missed a good fish.
A recent observation confirmed that it was nothing of the sort and many
missed takes were occasioned by small or even very small pike. I had caught
sight, a short distance away, of a jack of 20cm at most, motionless and sunning
itself on a shallow in clear water. For fun and as discreetly as possible, I
cast a “Moustache” hardly more than 50cm in front of the fish. As
soon as the lure landed, I saw a lightning strike at the lure and above all, I
had in the rod and in my hand holding the line EXACTLY the-same sensation
as that I had from 'missed takes'. Once again, the fish wasn't hooked. Although
I was very vigilant, it was so quick that I had no time to see where and how the
lure had been hit or how it had been released. And of course my reflex strike
came to nothing. That's why I feel less frustrated when I miss them now.
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