Creasing The Surface With A Jack Glider
Well the (mild) cold
months have finally arrived and the drop off's have been dusted off
and new traces made. Over the last month or two I have been targeting
pike using lures, admittedly something I haven't done a lot of in
previous seasons.
So late August I set
about looking for a selection of lures that could be used on a fairly
shallow river 8/9ft max and the majority probably only 5/6ft.
Throughout summer I had seen a lure builder call Mark Houghton
popping up on my facebook news feed with friends sharing his work and
the lures he was producing were stunning. Getting in contact with him
I placed an order for 3 types of lures in natural patterns- roach,
perch and pike. Receiving them a week or two later and receiving
updates every couple of days of the spray progress was fantastic and
credit to mark for sharing the step by step process he goes through
to produce these custom lures.
The main lure I was
looking forward to receiving has a Jack Glider, shaped and precisely
sprayed to replicate the olive, yellow, green and cream markings of
the pike. This balsa lure is 8 inches in length and weighs in the
region of 100g. The action varys depending on depth, on the surface
the lure darts from side to side in a long and wide glide arc with each flick of the rod tip. Letting the baits nose drop and slow sink
retrieving at a depth of 2ft the horizontal movement is reduced but
the lure flicks and rolls giving flashes of the cream belly and the
olive 3d foiled flanks. There is still horizontal movement but its
some what reduced compared to on the surface. This however allows you
to work the lure in 2 very different ways and as you will read
shortly I have had follows and takes on both methods.
Having never used a
glider lure before I set out to give it a chuck and master how to get
the most from it. I had a wander down the river and stayed downstream
of an area I had prebaited a day earlier. Casting the lure to the far
bank and retrieving slowly leaving creases in the water behind, it
didn't take long for a pike to flash beneath the lure before
exploding vertically clean out of the water with flared gills. The
lure rose out the water with the fish but fell short as the pike
continued its flight path before chaotically landing back in the
water. Flicking the lure to the middle of the river probably only 4
meters I worked the lure again before the same fish followed and then
in almost an identical deja vu moment erupted from the dense cabbage
cover and nailed the lure vertically again.
But once again I failed
to make contact and I can only put this down to the fish hitting the
lure too hard.
Not wanting to over do
the swim and let the pike get too many looks at the lure I called it
a night. Returning the following day the first cast brought a follow
and the next cast brought the killer blow! Another explosive take and
the Jack Glider hit home, stripping line off a tight drag the pike
made several lunges dramatised even more on braided main line. Bring
the fish to the bank the first pike of the 2014/15 season was landed,
roughly a low double and nailed on the Jack Glider!
Over the next week or
so I covered an area of river mainly using the Jack glider and it
made for some exciting fishing whether I worked the lure 2ft below
the surface or on top I was confident it would gain interest. If
anyone is looking for a suitable lure in these mild conditions I
would suggest considering a Mark Houghton Custom Lures Jack Glider.
Equally I believe this lure may do some damage towards the back end
of the season when the pike start to move into shallower water to
spawn and the big girls are surrounded by jacks!
A link to the Jack
Glider on Mark's website is below:
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