Autumn is finally here!

 October, a month that resonates with all pike anglers! 

With the Covid situation the lodge is still closed at the moment. Tonight at midnight the whole country is passing to level 3 of restrictions. So we are not supposed to leave our county of residence, and the lodge cannot welcome people from outside the county...Again lucky for me i have loads of free time and plenty of water to fish!

With some early frost and sunny days, the weather was shaping up to be perfect last week for some fishing.

This is when you need to get out!

I decided to start dusting off my trolling gear and start tuning in the boat for this winter.

The lunar calendar was spot on, with a very wide major for the day i picked. Weather was for a cold start, fog and then sunny with an approaching front given for the evening. To add to all this the barometer was dropping slowly or the last 16 hours.

As you can see on the pics big lures where on the menu, 35 and 40cm was the winning combo!

Also check the sonar captures, you can clearly see the pike and the baitfish ball on each pictures. One thing to notice is also the configuration , look at the depth and the picture, they both look identical, but both are from a different spot and at a different time!

When you get so much information like this, there is no excuse not to fish at the right spots! 

The JerkMate

 This is a keeper, i have tried and tested this fly over the summer  months and i just cannot wait for the autumn season to arrive to really have fun with this one!

The foam in the head helps give hanging time , the hard head aids in cutting water and change in totally random directions. Body in magnum rabbit pulses and keeps moving during pauses and on the drops.

The added stiffness of the body and base of the tail due to the gluing helps with keeping the tail away so it doesn't foul itself on the hook.And i thing the stiff body helps keeping the bait on track after each strip.

Talking about strips... I like to vary my retrieves, but sharpish small to medium strips followed by good pauses drives the pike mad, very much like playing with a cat, there's only so much teasing they can take.....

I tried to make an "easy" cranked version with lips attached to the bottom of the head, but even with two dumbells tied on the hook and shank this version was very tricky to balance properly to have a cranked effect to it. It needed multiple lip cutting, and even adding so much weight that it was not an "easy" tie anymore. So i gave up on the idea ( they did look good). But to be honest i rather use this jerky version, so much more fun to fish. Try as well to tie them without the shank, they will will hang even more! Put it on a floating line and its such a visual fly for the angler, pure pleasure and fun to make a pike rise to your offering.

Also an other version to add even more hang! Tie without the head , and finish the head with lightly packed bucktail, works wonder on an intermediate or sink line.