Hi All

Not been at the vice for a bit and gonna get going, tie a few for the coming couple of months.

Just wondering about you favourite length for a pike fly?

In my fairly limited experience I have probably done the best with 6" but gonna do a few different sizes methinks

Cheers

Marc

I mainly use 6-7" flies but i know plenty of guys who use 9" plus flies.
With modern day synthetic materials a 12" flies can be cast without to much problem.

T

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6-7 inch flies are fine I would concentrate more on getting a wide profile on your fly there are several ways you can achieve this,Hollow tying being the best.

Sorry to digress, but you guys seem like the experts, hope you don't mind? I've never fished for pike before. My colleague is a fanatical coarse fisherman and specialises in barbel and pike fishing. He has invited me to go pike fishing with him in a few weeks, somewhere he called a "drain" in the Scunthorpe area I think; sounds lovely. I've had a look on this forum and it seems that I shouldn't try to stick some terminal tackle on my 9'6" #7 fly rod, even though on other forums some folk say they regularly fish for salmon on that size and weight. Is that correct? I'll only be going for one day so it isn't worth buying a load of kit, so I will most likely end up using non-fly tactics on tackle borrowed from my colleague.

Treetrouter if your thinking of taking up Pike on the fly get yourself a 9wt you'll need to tame big Pike as quickly as possible.All the best on your day out.

What do you mean by hollow tying?

I have loads of materials which I got last year but just didn't make the time to tie but a few, was happy with the results but sadly again just did not make the time to go pike flyfishing...........hopefully this time around!

I just did not want to get pre-occupied with just the one pattern/ size so was just inviting opinions. As a very experienced Pike angler, specifically a lure angler I know how easy it is to form ideas and opinions based on personal confidence and everyone elses differs then from yours.

Cheers for the replies!

Go onto youtube and type in hollow semper fleye by steve farrar its the best tying of this fly ive seen.

as stuarty says hollow tying is an excellent form of creating bulk without the weight, easy to cast. plenty on the net about it, i think the key to hollow tying is the type of bt, hard to get the good stuff

u could also tie deciever style and use a tactic called flareing which is a pull down of thread to ''flare the bucktail''


other easy to tie flys and effective are pike bunnys or whatever u like to call them, go google

I regularly use flies between 8 and 11 inch. I would never use anything less than a 10 weight when fishing for Pike and regularly use a 12 weight if conditions dictate.

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what conditons require you to use a 12wt ?