Thanks for visiting
my site!

Pike on Poppers and Sliders

CS As a novice pike fly angler you're likely to have the most success with sub-surface streamers. But eventually you'll want to try luring a feisty pike with dry flies, or, more correctly, floating flies called sliders or poppers.

Although pike will attack floating flies under a wide range of conditions, they seem to hit dries best when the water is smooth.

CS Pike eat primarily below the surface and presumably have not developed the ability-as trout have-to pinpoint the exact location of a floating object. As a result, you may find that even a 1-inch chop is enough to stop pike from hitting surface flies. In which case you may want to switch back to subsurface streamers. Some dry-fly pike anglers have found when the water is rougher that pike will strike floating flies that make lots of noise when stripped. Popper flies, with flat nosed heads, make an audible "sploosh" when stripped and are recommended if the water is less than smooth.

DR I have experienced similar situations as Clive but also have seen some very different behavior. One trip for example we were caught in a storm so anchored just tight to a weed bed as it was breaking up the waves. There was a 6" chop on the outside of the weed bed and we were in about 5' of water. There was 2-3" of water on top of the weed bed. We tried fly-fishing out from the weeds into the deeper water, down both sides and not a sniff. I noticed a swirl out in the calmer weed bed. It had about a 2" chop on it.

We decided to put on poppers and try it. What we saw was just incredible. I used this technique. As soon as it hit the water I let it sit for about 10 sec and then gave it one hard jerk making a big gurglunk noise. It moved about a foot, let it pause and watched and Wow it seemed like the weeds were parting and moving from up to 100' away. It reminded me of those war movies where you see the torpedoes coming through the water right at the spot where I had jerked the popper. I then jerked it in a series of short moves and watched them turn and hone in on the sound. That lasted for about 1hr and we hooked into over 40 pike averaging up to 10lbs. In this lake a 10lb is a very nice fish, there are larger but not seen that often. Since then I have used this method on many a weed bed with great success, we loose most of them to the weeds as we use barbless hooks.

CS You also might find that pike will hit floating flies more frequently when the sun is low in the sky, which for most of us is toward sunset-versus early in the morning.

DR Up north sunset is at 3am in the morning. I have caught pike on poppers at 1am in the morning. That's about the limit for me having been on the water at 9am. Makes for a long day, but worth it.

CS If they are not hitting the poppers or sliders you are using, tie on a larger popper, one of different color, or one that makes a louder noise when stripped. Then if you still are not catching pike on the surface (and know the pike are active because other anglers are catching pike with subsurface lures), then change to a streamer that sinks.

Floating pike flies have two basic parts: a tail/body section and a foam head. The 5- to 8- inch body/tail consists of a few strands of feathers, frayed yarn, "fish" hair or some other suitable willowy material like Icelandic sheep wool. Flies should be dressed lightly so they don't absorb too much water, which interferes with casting. If you tie your own flies use yellow, chartreuse, or orange materials in the body and highlight this with gold, pearl or silver flash strands.

DR I use a lot of 6-8" neck or saddle hackles for my tails and have found them to work well, I add lots of flash to make them even more desirable, and gives a longer profile.

Local experience may dictate that other color combinations should be tried first.