Urban Terrorists

Ian Wakeford

When you think of river pike fishing, ones imagination tends to think of either bleak Fenlands, leapfrogging along the banks, or anchored up in weir pools trotting in the fast current. There are some interesting nooks and crannies on Britains major rivers, which are very often overlooked, and these can be prolific holding spots for pike. The interesting thing about these sites is that they are in major towns or cities and very often only have become accessible due to urban redevelopment. I am talking about urban marina developments.

Urban marinas are usually built around a previously existing feature, it could be an old mill pool, boat building yard or river docks. Now, the banks of these areas sprout very expensive housing, usually with the mandatory boat mooring and electric gates to keep undesirables out. However these urban marinas are connected to the main river and as long as the water is navigable from the main river, then anglers in a boat can legally enter the semi stillwater. (So says the British Waterway Board). However the land around the marina is private and so are the moorings, so you must not land or tie up to the moorings and you should generally try to keep a low profile.

One of the best ways to assess the potential of these urban marinas is to gently row around them with an echo sounder. The depths can vary, but they are generally 3-6 feet deep, and very muddy on the bottom. In addition to the mud there are also snags, often based around their previous industrial usage. It could also be that you have stumbled upon shopping trolley heaven, being en-route from the local Tesco store.

The signs that you are looking for on the sounder are large quantities of small fish, with the odd large fish. Clearly you do not know what species the bigger fish are, but you can often guess. What you need to determine is whether they are singular or shoal based and whether they look like they are just passing through or are resident. They could be carp, bream or chub, but they are very likely to be pike too, especially if they are singular, low in the water and not moving much.

  Could the biggy at 3-foot be chasing the tiddlers?

If you do not have access to a sounder, then you should look for obvious signs of pike. Are there bleak or dace topping? These will attract pike. Are there grebes hunting and catching? Again, a sign that the marina has a good stock of prey fish. Best of all, can you see pike striking at the surface?

The best holding places for pike will be where cover can be afforded to them. This could be a submerged shopping trolley, the underside of a moored boat or jetty, or under an overhanging bush or tree. One spot that should not be neglected is the entrance to the marina. Often pike will stand on sentry duty, hoping to gobble up small fish seeking refuge from the main river.

The depth tends to be quite uniform right up to the edge of a marina, to allow boats to moor, so do not forget to try the margins. The tackle you need needs to be very strong. I fish with 30lb Berkley Fireline braid, and 20lb wire. I know that if I snag, the braid is unlikely to give way, and I will probably straighten my treble hooks or snap the wire trace first. When it comes to rigs, I fish a straight forward sliding float rig, with a few shots above the wire trace. Livebaits are probably best, but small seabaits will work well too, of which sardine or sprat closely imitate a pikes normal quarry. Be careful not to fish too deep, I would advise keeping your bait at least 18 inches off the bottom, to avoid any snags.

When floatfishing deadbaits, it is best to try and achieve some movement in the bait, so I would recommend probably fishing only one rod, and giving it all your attention. By this I mean, twitch the float to raise the bait slightly in the water and gradually retrieve the bait back to the boat. If you get no takes after half a dozen retrieves past a bush or moored boat, then move on to another likely looking feature. I find the pike to be quite opportunist in a river, if the pike sees the bait, the chances are that it will grab it.

If you have never caught a river pike before, then you are in for a surprise. They take off like torpedoes after striking, and will give a fight to remember. However they do seem to be a lot smaller than their stillwater relatives, 4-8lb is a typical river pike, and a mid double is a very good fish indeed.

These marinas will always have a permanent residence of some pike, but certain conditions will definitely pack a higher concentration of pike than others. When the river is in flood, weir pools will probably be too fast flowing for most pike, so they will drop back into slack water, like marinas. Also in February, pike will be looking for quiet backwaters for spawning. Again marinas can experience a positive pike explosion at this time of year.

I’ll describe a trip that I recently made to the Thames to act as an illustration of the above. Finding a public launch site can be quite tricky, so in this particular case the boat was dumped into the water down a grass bank onto a Thames backwater. It was then a very short row into a marina, which was no more than the size of a tennis court, and hemmed in by three storey 300 grand abodes. Can you tell this is the Thames? I switched the sounder on and we had a quick row around the area. I could see the depth was about four feet all over, with a slight deepening at one end to six feet were an old mill stream came in. The sounder showed that there were teems of small fish about, many in the surface layers and bleak were also topping. While I was tackling up I saw two pike strikes at the surface hammering the bleak. I started with a single rod on a sardine deadbait, casting to the place that I saw the last pike strike. On the second retrieve, the float started to slide sideways, I struck and briefly connected with a small pike. I recast, this time with a roach deadbait and again within a few minutes I had another take. I readied myself to strike and the float stopped it’s erratic journey. The bait had been ejected. This happens a lot I have found; you are dealing with a small pike community and they seem to be unhappy towing floats around and will often reject baits surprisingly quickly.

We moved the boat to a new spot, between some boats and some jetty ends. On my first cast I hooked and actually managed to land a fish. It was about 8lbs, and as you’d expect from a river fish, very lean. After trying different places for half the morning we concluded that the pike in residence had either already had their breakfast or we’d spooked them. So we took the boat out into the main river up towards another housing development we knew of.

This marina was really a 100-yard long cul-de-sac off of the Thames. Boats were moored along one side backing onto the gardens of a new development. The sounder was not showing many bait-sized fish and no large shapes at all. We concluded that things were looking rather patchy, but half an hour was spent casting to the boats to see if the sounder had missed anything. As we expected, no takes. We then took the boat further upstream in the main river to a weir. The current was so strong that the closest we felt safe was about 80 yards downstream. The sounder had not showed any fish at this range, the bottom was boring and fish-less so it was back to the first marina to see if they were feeling hungry again. I left the sounder on all the way and picked up an interested hole of 13 feet along a straight bank. This was bazaar as the rest of this stretch was only 9 feet deep. The hole showed a mass of big fish shapes, which I would guess was a shoal of bream. Interesting, but not that interesting! As we turned into the complex, shoals of baitfish immediately started to appear on the screen and about half a dozen larger fish along the initial stretch, i.e. just off the main river.

It was now about midday. We had a few livebaits, so it was time to try one out. I cast the bait out between a moored boat and a half-sunken bush. Some time passed, but the float did eventually shoot straight under. This was a positive take, the float never reappeared, so it was clearly not a finicky jack. On strike, this was a very spirited fish and I needed to play this bigger fish very carefully. It made several runs to try and wrap me around various jetty posts and sunken ropes but eventually after ten minutes (yes, 10 minutes) it gave up. She went 15lb 5oz. OK, not a monster but a very good fish for the Thames. The rest of the day was relatively uneventful, with a few shy dropped takes. The wind got up and it was a cold Northerly, so it was time to pack up and listen to the football results in the car.

A mint fish, and what a scrap!  15.5.

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