Ad Swier is a Dutch artist, and journalist. Besides this he is a very keen flyfisherman for Pike. His fly patterns tied on the Partridge CS43, designed by himself have gained fame all over the World. Working with House of Hardy, he has also designed a purpose built Flyfishing rod for Pike. Ad lives in Zwolle, Holland and is founder and organiser of the famous Dutch Fly Fair.

Read about his new book:
Passion for Pike

Pike Flies
by Ad Swier

Why does a pike as a predatory fish attack a fly? A fly which is so very far away from a real living creature. Fluffy as most of our pike flies are, they are miles away from the silvery scales and soft and fleshy shape of the real preyfish. Not to mention the absence of the'lovely' smell of a real roach, rudd or trout. Plugs and spinners come far nearer in presenting the real thing both in movement and in shape. If you study the modern Rapala lures, these get very close to the real thing. But… is that really neccesary?

Why do pike set their body in motion to grab something? Hunger is the first and most logical urge that pops into mind, put simply pike have to eat to survive. I think if trout and salmon were more available, they would be high on the pike's food priority list,followed by the various species of coarse fish,frogs and other amphibians. On the opputunistic side their 'spring' menu will include all kinds of young birds, like coots and ducklings, and of course water rats and mice that venture for a swim. Any small animal that falls into the water near a pike is likely to pay the ultimate sacrifice. Pike will even consume their own offspring.

Aggression?
So do pike maybe grab a fly out of agression? Personally I do not believe that pike are as aggressive as we like to think or maybe even hope, or want them to be. Pike are said to chase other fish away that come into its territory. Is a pike agressive enough, I wonder, to swim twenty meters to frighten off something that came to close. I think that if a pike spent its time simply guarding its territory it would never rest. Lakes are loaded with other small and bigger creatures. To bite at eveything that they do not like would be impossible. The simple expenditure of energy would be tremendous. If pike were constantly chasing and attaking they would be simple to catch. But alas they are not. Animals hardly ever display any agression in the first place. Only we have that! It is a fact that pike only feed a short periods at a time. Pike are known to not feed for days sometimes weeks even. I believe that pike look far more agressive than they really are. With all these teeth, flat head, big body, and don't forget all these strange stories(usually dreamed up by humans!) about them.These stories have helped build the image of the pike as an aggressive killer.

Just a thought
Compare this behaviour to that of a trout. They do the same as pike. Their prey consists of larvea, small fish or flies that either crawl out of the water or fall in by mistake. Ask a 100 persons, which animal is more agressive a trout or a pike. I bet 98% of them without hesitation will answer pike. For trout look 'more' beautifull, they live in beautiful rivers and have a much better image. Leave alone this nonsense of that 'holy' dorsal fin. Don't get me wrong I love trout and fishing for them. In my profession I paint more trout than any other species.
Personally though I do not believe that one fish is better, holier or more beautiful than an other. But I am pretty sure it must be in our genetic strings for hundreds of years now; pike is bad versus trout is good (also see crow, magpie, hawk, wolf, snake, crocodile, shark and…and..)… And you will not easily change these prejudices. So, I wonder, could this thought be the true reason, the deeper background on the fact that pike are still treated as vermin in some countries. The pike deserves our admiration and respect not the vilification some give to them.

Interest
My personal believe is that pike grab a fly out of hunger (full stop). They think it is something to eat. Or if they are not hungry at all they grab it out of interest. What is it? As with sharks the only way a pike can identify food is to hold it in their mouth. Maybe 'taking short' is pure lack of interest, once felt the lure/fly is immediatley rejected. Pike are known to select sick or dying fish because of the erratic signals such fish send out, a thought to bear in mind when retriving our flies.This erratic movement will often trigger a feeding response from a pike. Our flies certainly can be designed to trigger this response.
Anyway I just wanted to share this one with you, and would love to have your opinion about it.

Flies
Why fishing for pike with a fly? Since it is far easier with live or deadbait, plugs and jerk baits.Well I do not think I have to explain this to you guys. For flyfishermen are a wee bit daft in the first place. We pikeflyfishermen? ….well I don't know.. but we are the worse kind of nutcases. Fishermen that only count their 30's and 40's and do not consider the way they caught them is not the way of a pike fly fisherman.
Pike fly fishing is the best way of fishing I know of. I love it.
Talking of flies for pike you have to think in categories. Of course your country is different to mine, but I think the waters are more or less comparable. So we use specific flies for smaller drains and canals, waters where a 15 pounder is a very good fish.We have other waters where we can expect a bigger fish. For these smaller waters I use flies tied on 4/0 hooks. They are about 12 to 15 cm long from head to tail. But when I go out with my pal Henk Rusman to a lake called Vinkeveen, or any other larger lake, the size of the flies we use is different. The lake I am talking about here holds a big head of large pike. We also know that the pike there really do like big things. And since we are always rather willing to please the pike, that is exactly what will be on the menu that day. BIG flies. So we use big tandem flies that easily measure 25 and even 30 cm in length.It is really beautifull to use your imagination brewing up flies like these. Thirty centimeters!… Are you nuts Ad? Sure always have been, never even tried to really argue the point. Artist you know, so crazy big time!

How big is BIG?
In the strong belief that a large fish will often only chase a large prey fish because it returns the best benefit in energy expenditture verus energy gained. With this 'knowledge' I started to tie these big creatures. Thought of as a weirdo in the beginning, over here in Holland loads of flyfishermen use these flies today. And every now and then I hear someone say: "You still are a weirdo, but you were right in the first place". "Thank you".
Well friends this was my idea on pike flies. The thought on the matter changed over the years, and it will change in the future. Because we learn every day that we are out on the lake or at a river. So I hope our learning will not be over for a long time.
Have fun.

The technical part
To cast flies like these we use fast and strong 10 weight rods and slow sinking lines. And every now and then we get lucky.
I use my own hooks, the Partridge CS43 in 4/0 and 8/0, it is a barbless hook. The materials I use in these flies are the following:
Bucktail, Icelandic sheep hair, holographic Fly Fibers and/or Flashaboo, long saddle hackles, marabou, zonker strips with hair from Rabbit but even better from Artic fox, strips of shiny stuff, old fly line for the connection and mylar piping to make it look nice, eyes and epoxy glue. My vavourite colours are: Green and yellow (mixed). A white body with a red head, Black and white or red, Pink and red, white or black. A yellow body and a red tail. Yellow and black. For the divers I used to clip them out of deer hair (the Dahlberg divers) they were ruined easily though, so nowadays I use the foam from Edgewater of the US. Beautifully made stuff that is easy to work, it is very strong and it floats like a duck. It comes in all kind of forms, colours and sizes. Also in blocks out of which you can cut your own diver. The cone like shaped heads for instance are hollow at one end, so you can use them as a (very) noisy surface popper or, used the other way around, as a sliding head up front of a load of hairy stuff. I like it a lot. I colour the foam with Pantone markers , add funny looking eyes and varnish the whole body after that with Softex. You can also 'needle' some these special coloured elastic bands through the body to add…well you tell me. Anyway the possibilties today are endless and with some creativity and ofcourse trust in what you are doing, well you can have a lot of fun already in just the tying of the streamers itself.

When I tie my materials in I always varnish what I just tied. A new bunch of hair or a feather, varnish. To tie these flies cost you quite a bit of time and material. I have seen guys playing a fish or even just losing it after a minute, to find the material of the fly floating all over the place. So I use simple white nail varnish to do just that, it is rather cheap, it dries quickly and does the job perfectly. The head of a streamer I normally finish with stuff called Z-poxy, specially when eyes are added. But normal two component glu (fast drying) will do the job as well. (If the glue does not run smoothly, keep it close to the lamp.) There are special machines available today that will turn your fly (and keep the epoxy where it is ment to) for as long as needed, but you can also walk a round for some time turning the fly by hand. That's up to you. Have fun kids!

Ad.