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River pike can be caught using either of these two basic approaches just the same as any species of fish, but in my view a combination of the two is the best way.
For years I fished for river pike by default, in that my serious efforts were directed at roach, dace, chub or barbel, and a pike rod was stuck out ‘just in case’. If I caught a pike it was a welcome accident, for the only effort I put into its capture was to hang a bait on the hooks and leave it to fish for itself to one side of my swim. Usually the bait was a deadbait and the indicator an electric bite alarm. It was a set-up you could virtually ignore until the bite alarm sounded to let you know a pike had decided to oblige.
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Eventually, I decided I would have days on the river when pike would be my primary target rather than an afterthought, and set out for the river armed only with pike rods and deadbaits, and occasionally caught livebaits when rules of the fishery permitted this.
When my chosen lengths of rivers were being used by few other anglers my approach was always the same: I would establish a base camp on a hot-spot, where all my tackle and bait would be left, then I would wander the river with one rod and a landing net, and fish every likely spot all along the length, fishing a free-roving live or dead bait. Then I would return to base, and fish a second rod, usually a legered deadbait, alongside the free-roving bait rod, in the hot-spot, for as long as it took me to have a fairly long and leisurely cup of coffee. Then the pattern of roving with one rod, etc, would begin all over again, with some variations of course, according to whatever happened along the way, ie, a missed run would obviously call for a longer visit in that swim to try for a another run.
For several years I was very successful, banking my fair share of fish to over 20lb.
Then a friend and I began to fish a stretch of the river Wye on a fairly regular basis, where we often used that well known technique of leap-frogging each other from swim to swim from the base camp, ie, my friend would pass me to fish the next swim, then I would pass him to fish the next swim, ad infinitum. That is, we used the leap-frog technique when there were no other anglers along the bank we were fishing, which was the case about 50 per cent of the time. When there were other anglers around we would choose a known hot-spot each and fish one rod on a free-roving livebait (or with a suspended and anchored livebait) and one rod on a legered deadbait.
We caught a lot of pike from the length, which was almost a mile long, with fish falling to both the static and roving approach. It was a very prolific pike stretch, holding far more pike than I would have thought possible and yet still grow them to over 20lbs. There was a great range of sizes, from jacks, through all the doubles, to the biggest, which was supposed to be about 30lb, although the stories varied according to how long they had been passed along the grapevine. I shouldn’t really have been surprised at the large volume of quality pike along the stretch, however, for there are several big shoals of bite-size roach along there, and without exception, wherever I’ve come across good shoals of roach - and pike have been present at all - they were present in both quantity and quality.
So on this mile-long stretch of river we accumulated a fair amount of experience in both the roving approach, and the static approach for pike. Three things, above all else, became very clear, at least as far as this stretch of the Wye is concerned.
1. The bigger pike have a distinct preference for certain quite limited areas, and can very often be found in a specific swim.
2. The roving approach was best when the pike were not too inclined to feed and, therefore, not inclined to go in search of food.
3. On those days when they were well on feed the bigger pike moved out of their favoured areas and hunted along almost the whole extent of the stretch and perhaps even further.
This is the beauty of being able to fish a length of river (or drain and canal) that holds a great many pike, for even on poor days it is possible to catch an odd fish or two and therefore more easily establish the feeding pattern of the pike.
We knew, for instance, that on a good day, when there were other anglers on the water, that if we fished within 50yds of a swim where a big pike had been caught in the past, we would have a good chance of catching that pike, sometime that day, during the course of its hunting foray. The closer we could get to the swim it apparently resided in, the better our chances of catching it. But some known fish were caught, as I said, up to a mile from their ‘homes’.
What we didn’t find any evidence of was the hot-spot, or lair theory. That red hot, but comparatively small area where the vast majority of the pike along the length are taken from. But perhaps this particular length of the Wye was one big lair, for each end of the stretch had fast, very shallow water that was totally unsuitable for pike and their favourite prey, roach.
But as for the question of which is best, a roving or static approach when pike fishing, the answer has to be, at least as far as a prolific stretch of river is concerned, that it depends on the day. When they’re well on feed, fish as close as you can to a known hot-spot and stay put. When they’re being difficult, go for the roving approach.
But the approach we enjoyed most of all, and which gave us the most success, was to establish a base camp, fish a legered sea fish deadbait set-up on one rod, and a legered livebait on the other rod, fairly close together, then take it in turns to wander off with another rod, fishing a suspended live or deadbait in all the known pike swims along the stretch. That way we had the best of both worlds, and also the best way of learning about the movements of the pike, their preferences as far as type of bait and the most productive method of presentation (which was not always the same on every visit).Briefly, it worked out that live roach, fished suspended under a float, no more than a foot off bottom, and allowed to swim as close as possible to the snaggy lairs the pike lurked in, was without doubt the most killing technique for all sizes of pike. A legered live or dead roach, popped up off the bottom or lay on it, was the next best method for numbers of pike. And the most selective method for the bigger pike, but caught by far the fewest fish, was a legered sardine.
On less prolific waters it can take years to reach even tentative conclusions, and there is a danger that what we learned on the Wye - or some of it anyhow - could be misleading anywhere else. But it has worked out so far that the patterns that were established on the Wye are very similar to, and in some cases exactly the same, as the patterns established in the past, and coming to light at present, on other waters.
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