There are few angling encounters more exciting than the heart-stopping, golden-green flash of a big pike as it lunges, like lightning, to seize your bait.

Tactical Pike Fishing, a book by Mike Ladle and Jerome Masters, uses data from scientific experiments along with personal experience to demystify and explain the essential facts of pike behaviour. The book delves into the pike’s biology in a way that takes you right onto the muddy riverbank or reed-lined lakeshore.

This book will provide you with information that will help you to understand the pike’s behaviour so that you can apply this knowledge to your own fishing.

At first I wondered where all of the technical information was taking me. Tactical Pike Fishing does not begin with the usual ‘Tales of how I caught big fish’ stories. The first nine chapters, more than half of the book, take you through different aspects of the habits, behaviours, preferences and life cycle of the pike. All of these are viewed from a scientific perspective and then discussed in a way that allowed me to consider how I could change and improve my own approach to pike fishing.

One thing that does come across is that pike are just as mysterious to the scientists as to to the anglers. There are no hard or fast answers, just ideas that, to many pikers, could be confirming something they’ve already learned from their own fishing.

The final chapter, just less than half of the book, contains some of those tales of pike fishing that are more typical of angling literature.

If you are new to pike fishing and you want to learn all about methods and tactics then this book is not for really for you. If you are more experienced and would like to explore about some of the pike studies and what is currently known about the pike’s behaviour then you might find enough in this book to keep you interested.

It is clear from this book that the authors take a great amount of pleasure from pike fishing. What really comes across is that they really want to understand and get inside the mind of Esox Lucius, and to share this knowledge with pike anglers. Do they succeed? I’ll let you decide.

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Topics covered by Tactical Pike Fishing

Some of the topics covered by Tactical Pike Fishing include:

• Where you should put your bait and cast your lure
• The habitats favoured by pike and the results of scientific investigations on this and related matters
• Which waters are most likely to produce pike of different sizes and ages
• The natural history of the pike, its camouflage, muscle power, speed and what its needs and preferences are
• The prey on which the pike feeds and seasonal changes in the abundance and availability of prey
• The movements and migrations of pike
• Fascinating accounts and reminiscences of the capture of pike

Take a look inside Tactical Pike Fishing

Technical Details

• Author: Mike Ladle and Jerome Masters
• ISBN: 978 1 84797 139 5
• Published: 2009 by The Crowood Press
• Pages: 144
• Pictures: 112 colour photographs and 11 diagrams

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Chapters

1. Choosing a pitch
2. Getting to know your fish
3. What pike like
4. Where to catch a big one (or a small one)
5. It’s a pike’s life
6. Red in tooth and fin
7. Grub up
8. Movements and migrations
9. Treat ’em or eat ’em
10. Tales of pike fishing

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