8/22/2019 Trout Fisherman Caledonia Pike Tube Article August 2013

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TrouTfisherman JULY 24 - AUGUST 20 TrouTfisherman JULY 24 - AUGUST 20

Of tubes andexpress trainsTheres a new range o tube ies in town. Ater several bruising encounters with HomeCounties pike, frst impressions are avourable

THIS was an odd assignment in

several ways.While my normal shery trip

sees urbanisation recede in myrear view mirror as I venture into

the countryside, today would see the bricks andmortar only intensify, as I headed for London andthe densely populated Home Counties.

I was visiting a trout shery, yet trout were thelast thing on my mind.

I would lunch onpaninis and ca macchiato inthe suburbs, when I would normally be wolngdown tea and baps in a timber lodge miles fromanywhere.

Even though Id been assured that wed almostcertainly blank, whats more, the job was in thebag already.

All told, I could be forgiven for feeling a littledisorienated by the time I reached my destination.

No so my host, Andy Buckley, for whom todaysvisit would hopefully be a euphoric lap of h onour.

Just days earlier, he had sent me the all-important catch photo, testimony to two sessionsthat brought him over 50lb of pike from thisvery place, in the form of a brace whose secondinstalment weighed in at 31lb. Where this ranksin the all-time pantheon of y-caught pike takenfrom the bank, Andy is still trying to establishbut that he would be returning to the scene of histriumph was never in doubt.

The 20-plus pounder Id had a week earlier wasa personal best but as soon as the second pike

...two sessions...brought him over 50lb o pike romthis very place, in the orm o a brace whose second

instalment weighed in at 31lb.

I youre used to row upon row o daintybuzzers, y fshing or pike can come assomething o a culture shock.

SMALL StiLLWAtERS:PIKE ON FLY

8/22/2019 Trout Fisherman Caledonia Pike Tube Article August 2013

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SMALL StiLLWAtERS:PIKE ON FLY

TrouTfisherman JULY 24 - AUGUST 20TrouTfisherman JULY 24 - AUGUST 20

took the y, I knew the bar had been raised, hetells me.

Pike takes vary a lot but they can be veryaggressive in summer and this one really threwitself at the y.

A pike-on-y devotee for 10 years now, thislatest summit was made all the more satisfying bythe fact that the y that Andy was using whichaccounted for both sh is a brand new design,one which Buckley believes incorporates severalfeatures that bode well for his future piking.

The rst of these explains the voluminouswad of vivid materials that have made a tropica lgarden of his y box.

They oer a full prole no matter from whatangle the pike see it, he explains. With a lot ofpike ies, you only see them in their full glorywhen you view them side-on. Look at them frombelow or above and they are a lot narrower.

Because of the materials used, though, whichare almost totally synthetic, you get size withoutbulk, so they are much easier to cast than is oftenthe case. Whats more, they stay light: they dontretain water, you just shake it o before re-casting. Ill be using a 9wt rod today but I couldeasily cast them with a 7wt if I had to.

Casting, he reiterates, may well be as muchaction as I get today. The weather has been warmof late and pike are no sun worshippers. But forthe fact that we had a catch photograph in the bagalready, I would have had to travel down the nightbefore so as to be ready for a breakfast-time start.

Get here about nine, nine-thirty and you ndthem in the ats, says Andy, but once it startsheating up, they will move away into deeper

water. Well be struggling for anything sizeable atthis time of day but we might be able to get a jackor two.

He sets up on the bank. We have the place toourselves: neatly maintained, it is rich with trees,crowded around the sedate lake like onlookers ata ght. Blessed with numerous bays, points andhideouts wedged between bankside vegetationand leafy canopies above, you sense you couldsh here for some time before your optimismfaded (for the time being, incidentally, themanager has asked me not to name it).

Understandably hoping for a little dj vu, Andybegins casting to the same spot that had servedhim so well on his last visit.

Sporting a sturdy reel (the drag system has tobe decent: its always better to play pike on thereel) the rod is loaded with a slow-intermediateline with a oating section just behind the head.

A full-intermediate would catch weed toomuch but this line gives you the option of shing

just under the surface if you start your retrieveimmediately, or shing deep by delaying the

retrieve to let the line fall at a rate of 1.5 inchesper second, Andy explains.

Overall, youre looking for a line with enoughmass to let you get your y out with just a fewcasts; an important factor if youre hoping to bechucking these big ies around all day.

With pike not as skittish as trout when they spota y-line in their vicinity, Andy works with a leaderno longer than seven feet, composed of around 5.5feet of 40lb leader and 18 inches of 30lb wire.

Think about the diameter of your leader aswell as its breaking strain, he cautions. Ivelearnt from bitter experience that too thick aleader will present problems in getting the knotto bite when you attach it to the wire.

This will sound alarm bells with some pikeanglers. Dominic Garnett, for example, in hisbook Flyfshing or Coarse Fish, describes as

suicidalthe idea of knotting leader to wire inlieu of using a rig ring. Andy swears that he has

18ino30lbwire

found the answer, however: the slim beauty knot

beloved of American tarpon anglers for tyinglines of markedly dierent diameters. (See www.animatedknots.com/slimbeauty)

Getting to the business end of the set-up, hepoints out that another benet of a tube y isthat it allows you to sh it with a variety of hookdesigns. He has opted for a size 6/0 Partridgehook (other makes of 6/0 may be too heavy, hecautions) with a shallow throat, minimising thedistance from the hook bend to its point with aview to snagging those sh that merely nip theys back end.

A blurred bundle of colour passes overheadas he casts, like a bouquet being lobbed at anopera singer. For all the ys bulk, he certainlyseems to make light work of getting it out there.It lingers just long enough on the surface forme to anticipate a popper-style retrieve, witha monstrous rooster-tail of water in its wakebut then the intermediate line does its stu,the bright colours disappear and Andy works it

back towards him with a series of long strips andstops, to cater for sh more willing to move in the

summer (in the more sluggish days of winter, hewill opt for a slow gure-of-eight, alternated withletting the y simply hang.)

Well be struggling for anything sizeable.If I left shing for good tomorrow, my abidingmemory would be how every rule has itsexception. Ninety minutes into this supposedlybarren part of the day, our afternoon erupts asdramatically as the water in front of us. Three shgo for Andys lure in the space of an hour. Jacksthey most denitely arent.

Thats the downside to clear water. Fish mightget to see your y but you also get to see exactlywhat youve lost when your timings slightly o.

Poor Andy is like the cricketer who inexplicablynds himself edging to slip the same kind of half-

volley that he was eortlessly smacking for fourin his last two innings. Three strikes but theyrejust not having it.

He estimates two of the escapees to havebeen well north of 20lb. That was bigger thanthe 31-pounder he says of one, as he fallsdisconsolately to the oor, so traumatised, thewords come out as a stage whisper.

At least the ies seem to work, I suggest,although it feels tantamount to telling thegrieving widow at a funeral that her hat looksvery nice.

With the best will in the world, we really aregoing through the motions now. Every pike inthe lake knows theres a rabbit o and has edaccordingly and I am working with an angler whosuddenly looks more haunted than Macbeth.

But you know what shermen are like. I phoneAndy six days later and jokingly ask if hesrecovered yet.

Oh God, yes, he replies, as if Ive dredged up

some irrelevant titbit from childhood.I know where I went wrong. Ive got a plan

Three fsh go or Andys lure in the space o an

hour. Jacks they most defnitely arent...

The Good: a31lb pike. On y.From the bank.

The Bad: two weeks later and Andy ruesthe three that got away...

I you, too, get so ocused on fshing thatyou never get round to digging a canout o your bag, prevent dehydrationby using a hydration back-pack, which

oers quick access to uids.

Big pike are oten taken on y at reservoirs too. NickElliott took this 31lb Ravensthorpe fsh on a Minkie.

5t 6in o 40lbleader (connect

to wire with slimbeauty knot)

Slow-intermediate line

New oN the marketAndys pike tube ies are new romthe vice o Malcolm Anderson,whose company, Caledonia Fly

Company can be ound atwww.caledoniaies.co.uk

Retail buyers can obtain the iesat Farlows o Pall Mall(www.arlows.co.uk/).

andys pi s-up

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