I'm planning on my first fly fishing trip for pike to the local river. Most of the articles I read are about pike fishing on reservoirs. The river is only about 7-8 meters wide and is pretty over grown. What techniques should I use? I presume I need to retrieve the fly against the current to get a take?

Any advice would be appreciated. Cheers.

Jag the fly up and down erratically parallel to the bank, with the overall pace of retrieve slow when its this cold. Concentrate on any slacker and deeper water and snaggy areas with good 'ambush' cover. Try and get it a few feet under the surface. No need to cast for miles you can just feed out into the current. Hold a big loop of line or position your rod at right angles to direction of retrieve to cushion any smash takes. Good luck!

Thanks, sounds like good advice. I suppose it just a question of whether it is too cold at present? Would I be better of with a spot of stockie bashing at my local trout lake?

Q1. No i'm off tomorrow tho' fishing and fish may be a bit slow.
Q2. Wait for your first good pike and tell me your answer. For me there's nothing like a proper wild fish... err... doing the wild thing. But be prepared to persevere - I blanked three long hard days before the first wee jack. The 4th trip I lost 2 and landed 1 all 10-15 lb

I fish a lot of small rivers, up to about 7-8m wide and find these venues great for pike fly fishing. They are narrow enough that you can usually reach the likely looking spots with a fly, although depending on the under/over growth this may involve upstream casts, crosscurrent, downstream, roll casts, catapult casts and sometimes just dangling through the bankside bushes.
I always use a floater in running water as sinking lines can catch on submerged snags too easily unless you cast almost straight down stream. With the floater it is easy to just throw big upstream mends in the line to control the drag of the current, also take some split shot with you, this can be the difference between catching and not. Clip anything up to a swan shot on the trace, right at the flys eye, to enable the fly to search the deep slacks. I tend to change the shot size(no shot in the very slow areas) sometimes for each new swim cast into..experience on your river will teach you when to add the weight, it really does make a big difference and is loads easier than tying flys with different amounts of balast in the dressings. The dirrection you cast can also affect the "lead" you'll require to get the fly where and how you want it.
Usually if the water is only a couple of feet deep then the pike will attack a fly in the top few inches but in the deep holes they may want it right down and pretty slow too, especially if it has been pretty cold.
Try and be stealthy. Might sound obvious but when small rivers run clear those pike will see you coming a long way off...even from their far bank lairs, because of this I try to keep maximum distance from anywhere I think a pike may be hiding or get low and keep the false cast to a minimum.
Have fun.
Dee

Dave,

Excellent advice all round there ... a lot of the advice about location covers lure fishing as well as fly flishing for pike. I've only just started fly fishing myself so I'm sticking to normal lures for pike this season but I'm hoping to give it a whirl next year.

Even if I don't catch any pike it'll be a good way of clearing the branches off the trees

Cheers,
Lawrence

Hopefully this next week will have my first go on the fly for river pike

Wish me luck,

paul

Great advice form SBD. If you can, try and talk to anyone who fishes the river for Roach, Dace etc with normal Coarse Fishing methods and if they are catching good bags from a particular swim, give that area a "Good going over". It's a safe bet that "Old Esox" wont be far away.

If you really want to go for it, make notes (wind direction, water temp, water height/colour and depth) and take some photos of the swims. It might sound a bit OTT but it will pay dividends in the future.

Ernie

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