There have been some icy conditions recently – scraping a layer of ice off the car in the pitch black to get out for a deadbait session is a winter tradition and I still love every minute of it.
It’s guaranteed to be more rewarding than tramping around your local shopping centre in Christmas crowds or being a couch potato in front of the TV.
It’s not necessarily about catching fish but they certainly make for a better catch report than some nice wildlife photos.
So when conditions are like this you’ll need something different to tempt fish.
Pike are cold-blooded so their metabolism is slow, they need little food to survive and this means they do not have to feed very often.
A large pike probably didn’t get that way by burning off all its energy-chasing small prey.
It’s getting a good nutritional return for the energy spent, suggesting an easy food source such as in a trout reservoir or it’s eating big meals of easy targets, spending most of its time laying up to digest its meal.
This means targeting big pike will see you pursuing a non-feeding fish a lot of the time so you’ll need to provide them with a tempting meal at the right time and place.
When you’ve found the swim, access to deeper waters where the baitfish shoals have retreated is a good shout through November and December.
You can use a pike’s superb sense of smell against them.
Some anglers get an edge by injecting oils or applying additives as well as oily fish to add scent trails in the water but if you can get them, lamprey can be a killer bait.
Although still relatively new to the pike bait scene, lamprey have made a huge impact over the last few years and have accounted for a lot of fish.
Lamprey are members of a primitive jaw-less fish family (Petromyzontiformes), that feed by sucking the blood from other fish.
Their diet means they contain a huge amount of blood that simply oozes out of a cut bait.
When I’m fishing, I’ll cut it in half and puncture with a baiting knife as well as the hook points so the blood and scent are released into the water around the hook bait, creating a larger scent in that area.
In cold water and coloured water, this scent trail can make all the difference so if you can get them, try lamprey as a change bait.
They’re tough as old boots. My friend proved the point by out-catching me over a three-day trip and keeping the same lamprey on one rod and popping it back in his cool bag at the end of the day.
