 I have some of the best fishing in the south west on my doorstep but if you recognise where I am please don't reveal it in the comments because giving away secret pike locations results in unsustainable pressure on those fish. Recently a school pupil I'm working with asked me the inevitable what's your biggest ever fish question which led to him wanting to know why pike difficult to catch. That question had me a little stumped because it isn't a simple answer so the focus of this pike fishing vlog is to try and explore that. It's a subjective question because the lads pike fishing experience amounted to about 45 minutes of him watching a bong and for him that was too long. But my job as a professional angling instructor is to show the best way of guaranteed pike even though there's no single method of achieving that in all situations. There are ways of increasing your chances of catching fish though and I'll try to cover those as best as I can. If you watch my angling videos then you'll know that I like to give the fish a chance and that my preferred style of fishing is catching on lure or flies. So that's my focus but it'd be totally wrong to ignore the merits of bait fishing as it can often produce a big old fish. But pike are fragile creatures and I believe it benefits the fish as well as the angler to celebrate not what you catch but how you catch it. Anyway time to catch a fish. If you enjoyed the video please subscribe. That is awesome. Oh god that freaked me out. Oh look at that. Because you caught it. See if you can pick up and put it back in. Well done. First time with people to catch an eel. Put your knees over there and I'll pass it to you. Okay so I'll need to put your hands out like that. You might jump so don't be scared. Place it nice and slowly. It won't hurt. Put them over there. How's that? Well done. What a day. After all that excitement with schools we've only got about 45 minutes of light left but we're going to go for a stroll and see if we can catch ourselves a nice perch or a pike on the lure. But I'm not holding my breath. Starting off on a key tech flapper. I should scale down. That wire trace is six pound breaking strain by the way. My favourite Fox Micro. It's very bright. It's got something a bit of orange in it. It's quite coloured water so that's the reason why I started off with something a bit more big. That might get a bit lost in that coloured water. Steve's enjoying himself I think. He's just bonded off. I think everyone had a really good feeding spell this morning. Because it's not like we're picking up tiny ones is it? It's not even like little ones are chasing it or anything. We've got more chance of a pike. Fish on. Fish on Steve. Fish on. Yeah. It's a pike. He's completely done me. It's a pike. Yeah. He's completely done me. He's in those reeds. Am I right? Well done. Gone. What was it? Pike. Still that's fine. That was good fun. But that's fine. It's opened out. That's fine. That's good. Long live the pike. It's funny isn't it? I mean no one's obviously fished this little stretch because the reeds aren't bashed down. I don't know what the lure is on that one. Whether you're allowed to smash the reeds down to make a little opening. Look only for your officer of the lure. Excellent. I love that joke. I'm having it. Exciting. I'm going to take you a second one isn't it? So the question was why a pike difficult to catch. Well in my instance it was difficult to catch because the reeds got in the way. I guess the real answer is the mouths of bony. So hook penetration can be difficult. They're apex predators. So there's less of them. Actually there's going to be a pyramid for the prey fish at the bottom. And as you go up the pyramid, ecological pyramid, you end up the predators at the top and there's fewer of them. Trophic levels, that's the correct terminology. And they don't need to eat all the time. One of the most difficult things about catching pike is finding a place where everybody else hasn't tried to catch one already. If you can find a water where they haven't been targeted then I would say they're pretty easy to catch. I'm going to head out again today on my more local river and I'm going to chuck some lures about. I'm going to take two rods this time because I've put the focus on pike. I'm going to take a lure rod for throwing bigger lures than I was yesterday. But I have to be honest I seem to have more success hooking pike when I'm targeting perch with tiny lures like that. Have you been out all day? Had anything? Really, generally speaking bait fishing is easier but that's not always the case. I once took eight children out from the local youth club pike fishing. Four of them stayed with a colleague and dead baited and the other four came with me roving with lures. Halfway through, no on a quarter thing, so we switched over and the four lads that have been dead baiting were bored out of their skulls so they've been catching nothing for two hours and couldn't wait to chuck lures about which they did in the very area they've been dead baiting in. Within about five minutes one of them had a fish on in the very spot they've been dead baiting in all morning and then five minutes later another one, then another one which is special there. That turned out to be my only follower of the session. Overnight it poured with rain and dropped from nine to ten degrees down to something like one or two. We've only got to go to the river seven to discover that these fish will hit lures in coloured water. I might have to come back tomorrow. The water's a little bit clearer, it's probably the only place I can lure fish. I'm going to give it a few chucks and this is a spot where you can do free fishing. I don't know if they're legally moored but I used to bring merchants' academy score kids up here during the winter for fishing lessons. I wouldn't be able to do that now. It's very sad. Oh, one other thing. My wedding ring's down there somewhere. Right there. I lost it about eight years ago. I know from experience it's snaggy as hell so I'm going to start off using a realistic realistic looking lure. Something like that. That's the Seville magic swimmer. So in theory with it flooding like that a lot of the fish would have taken refuge in this cut. There's anglers everywhere so I've caught so far. I'm surprised there's life because it's absolutely filthy down there. Well, that's promising. You can guarantee that pike would see more lures than I've seen hot in us. But with the weedless setup it's actually got to smash it hard enough to push that that bit down and get hooked up. I want to have to go for the perch before I catch pike then. That's a Fox Micro Shad and that's called my two biggest perch. And my biggest pike. And that's attached on this occasion to six pound flex on it wire. One of the most common mistakes by far that I see when people lure fish is retrieving much too quickly and when it's cold and the fish become less active quite often they'll sit hard on the bottom. If you retrieve your lure too quickly it's not going to go along the bottom. If you keep the rod absolutely still facing the lure then stop. If the line just goes slack then you know you're on the bottom. So if you're retrieving too quick if you stop the V in your line where the line enters the water if it's still sinking it will come towards you. Such a pretty fish. It's pretty historic to see this door slap like that. I reckon I can catch these all day long. I wonder if there's any big ones. Deary me, they're getting smaller not bigger. It's just nice to catch something. The perch are really welcome bending the rod but I can't finish my vlog without catching a pike so get away from the crowds head round the corner and start chucking some larger lures. I suspect that was a big perch. My amazing wife has gone taking the kids to school and picking them up so I've got a whole day, no excuse for not catching a fish today. So I have some really interesting chats with various people over the course of the last couple of days. And the general consensus is that big lures catch the bigger fish. It's not something that I necessarily subscribe to but I've been in competitions where small lures have won the day. It's something I'm really keen to explore a bit further actually. I'd love to hear other people's opinions whether they think big lures catch bigger fish. Look at it. Lure packet traces traces lure packet wet wipes totally not a scum not anglers. I couldn't have asked for a better data blank. It's absolutely stunning. I'm going to sit down with a coffee and just enjoy it. Bumped into about three anglers who have all been out fishing for the last few days and all caught absolutely nothing. So it brings us back to the question why are pike so difficult to catch? Well they're cold blooded. All the prey fish they're cold blooded they don't need to eat. If they're not feeding they're not really going to be very vulnerable to being ambushed. An old system just closes down. Right 12 days have passed since I decided to do a vlog on pike fishing I'm kicking myself for it because I decided to do it and made up the title for the vlog before setting out fishing and I really didn't think it was going to be this difficult to catch a pike so the rivers are still in floods. Yesterday we had six dead baits out with the school that I was working with and not a sniff that was down on the Bridgewater and Taunton canal so I've just moved out a little bit further a field now the lockdown's finished onto the Somerset levels to see if I can find a pike I hope it works because I need to finish this vlog. It turned out to be a really bad move it wasn't a venue that I fished before it was a day ticket online and it's just one of those horrible days where I quickly realised that the whole of the system had been drained out and sent out to sea and I was fishing in about 7 or 8 inches of water Well it's salmon blanks After my disaster yesterday I'm not going to give up, I'm going to keep going for this pike it's nothing more humbling than nature you know it's really quite funny that I found it so difficult to catch pike and really it serves the purpose of this video to catch. Anyway I've spotted some fish they're topping just underneath this bridge so I'm feeling really excited I'm really glad I came out that's a really bad start but it will give me a chance to test out the benefits of having 80lb braid it's completely opposed to it 3 weeks ago but I thought I'd give it a go since that's what people are doing well it worked the question is have I bent the hook I can't help but feel these fish would have seen hooks before though big old splash like that natural instinct for a pike would be to go over and investigate it when they've been caught a few times I sometimes wonder whether the smaller lures start to pay off it's interesting that that shoal of fry have all moved off just from that one cast I've got pike all around me I'm casting this great big Western spinner bait out it's spooking the shoals of Sunbleak I think that they're feeding on and it's spooking the pike I'm just not having it so I'm going to scale down to something a little bit more natural and delicate I suppose you know just since I've listened to peace and quiet you get what Simon sounds like until you come out to the Somerset levels it's just quite straight silent as well hello Luya yahoo I haven't got it in yet oh silly boy don't pose for the camera I don't care that you're small I'm just pleased to have caught you you don't know how much you mean to me Mr Jack alright let's do this properly and arrest him in the water for a minute get the mat out because that's tomorrow's well it's the next generation's 20 pounder that is now it's been blessed by me ah that is such a relief I know it's only a baby if you can't do a pike vlog without a pike I can now finally move on I might catch a few more but blind with what a relief and that's why you don't use nets because they can get themselves in a right old tangle thankfully it's not a treble single hook I don't bother with stingers or anything like that it was a good idea to know where the hook's gone in before we pick a fish up like this you can see it's gone in there they've got such thin membranes here I see people chining pike putting either their fingers to the gills or that is so cool thank you Mr Jack you have no idea how much you mean to me I never normally put all the weight of a fish on the head like that but you don't need to the fastest retrieve on the bright orange Barkley shad I guess because it's shallow you can afford to retrieve it quite quickly with a weight on like that it certainly wasn't put off by that fox jerk bait trace it's all a learning curve for me it's heavy geared stuff this isn't even considered heavy this is a 40 to 100 gram rod people are now asking what Roger recommended for 100 to 200 gram casting weight I'm still struggling to get my head round it obviously it works good boy like buses aren't they great ages and then two come at once it's just in the insides of there very lean fish clutch off I've just taken the clutch off and there we go Louis just pops out do you like fishing with just a single hook never liked trebles really fish back in the water what's that 20 seconds out of water yeah I haven't got a mat I think we've got a nice soft wet vegetation here it's in a rubber net I'd like to check my fish for traces if you're wondering what on earth I'm doing no traces are going to flip that is the markings of another pike maybe it's mum maybe it's mum's had a little nibble on it what a beautiful fish never grow tired of their markings what's that about five different venues before I actually found a pike it's worth travelling for that extra 10 minutes now that lockdown's over still in tier 2 it's nice to still see that there's pike in the Somerset levels because you hear all the horror stories about fish removal and poaching and otters and all the rest of it people going in boats but the Somerset levels is a beautiful place I wouldn't have actually minded blanking here it was a stark contrast to the early urban environment I was in yesterday so on Wednesday I was determined to get the pike in this vlog and I put six rods out on Bridgewater Taunton canal with dead baits on a couple of other assisting coaches looking after that side of things not a touch all day there's only one that did get a take because one of the students which was fantastic on one of the lures but he inexperienced he just pulled into it and bent the hook for life because it is exciting when they hit that lure I forgot how exciting it is actually especially when they throw themselves at the lure right in front of your feet no matter how many times it happens I still absolutely jump out my skin I've got all the battery left so I'm going to save the rest thanks for watching I'm going to do another vlog before then Merry Christmas sorry I've not done any bait fishing I don't have the patience for it at least with the lure you're doing something