Taking a closer look at pike flies then and now

Over the past week or so, I’ve been dreaming of spring and open water, and tying pike flies.

If there is a problem with pike flies, it is their size. Some of the ones I tie are close to a foot long. This is only an issue because it forces your angling buddies to comment that the flies you are tying are bigger than the fish you catch.

You can tell a lot about how optimistic an angler is by the size of the pike flies they tie.

Pike flies are an exercise in futility. When I was young and new to fly tying all we did was tie a bunch of white buck tail on a hook that had silver tinsel wrapped around its shank. It wasn’t pretty but we caught fish.

These flies had the added benefit of not having too much time or material into them. This was important because their lifecycle went something like this:

Phase one: young, idealistic and naive, and I’m talking about the flies here, they set forth into the watery world deliberately looking for a fish that possesses up to 700 razor-sharp teeth and a dire need for orthodontic treatment. Phase two: they eventually found the fish, provided they avoided losing the fly to trees, underwater stumps or friends that moved into the way or your cast – or did not have the common decency to move out of the way when you tried a different delivery route. Phase three: they hooked a pike and a fight ensued. Phase four: they landed the pike and either put it on a stringer for dinner or released it. Either way, the fish survived longer than the pike fly did.

Then, a new generation of talented fly tiers went and ruined everything. They started tying flies that were wonderful impressionistic imitations of the food pike eat, which were complex to tie and filled with expensive and varied materials.

The lifecycle of those flies went something like this.

Phase one: young, idealistic and naive, and I’m talking about the flies here, they set forth into the watery world deliberately looking for a fish that possesses up to 700 razor-sharp teeth and a dire need for orthodontic treatment. Phase two: they eventually found the fish, provided they avoided losing the fly to trees, underwater stumps or friends that moved into the way or your cast – or did not have the common decency to move out of the way when you tried a different delivery route. Phase three: they hooked a pike and a fight ensued. Phase four: they landed the pike and either put it on a stringer for dinner or released it. Either way, the fish survived longer than the pike fly did.

Yes, the lifecycle of the fly was essentially the same.

So why use these big complex flies, you ask?

Well, if I am to be honest, it is because they catch more pike than the old white bucktails we grew up using, and generally bigger pike too. But, more importantly, they looked better in the fly box and in the water.

That is to say, when you step into a boat or fish with a bunch of well-tied modern pike flies, you into the right head space.

And you wouldn’t feel too bad if a trophy-sized pike rearranged one of your flies into something that looked more like a regurgitated rat, though it’s a little more painful when this is done by a mediocre fish.

So you make your modern pike flies as bulletproof as possible – and then use the white bucktails when no one is looking.