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feathers5

Rigging For Pike

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I'm going to be fishing for bass in the same water that I could also hook into a pike or muskie. What kind of leader and tippet will I need? I've never thrown flies for largemouth bass or fish with teeth.

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The bass aren't an issue, I use straight 8-12 lb test Maxima Chameleon myself for both large and smallmouth bass. I have and old butt section of a leader I cut back to not much morre than a tag with a loop tied in and attach my straight mono to that. Bass aren't very line shy.

 

For the pike you might want to consider something like this or I suppose you could use this for both species:

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When I go up to Northern Ontario, I'm in the same situation. The lake's known for it's walleye and smallmouth but it does have a good population of pike. My main target with the fly rod is the smallmouth but the odds are at some point I'm going to run into a pike. Typical set up for my 6 wgt is.. For the floating line. A heavy thread furled leader with 5 or 6 feet of 25# fluorocarbon tippet. Intermediate line set up is a furled fluorocarbon leader that tapers to 40# and 5 or 6 feet of 25# fluorocarbon tippet and for the sinking line just a straight 6 foot 25# fluorocarbon leader. The time of year I go up is usually late July, early August and the odds of hooking a big pike aren't very good. Over the years the biggest pike I've landed on a fly rod is 28". I've had a few bite offs but not enough to switch to wire. One of the tricks that helps is I tie my streamers on hooks similar to the Partridge Predator in Dave G's post though I seldom tie larger than 2/0. The shanks are 2XL, sometimes 3XL which provides a bit of a bite guard. This is what one of my pike/bass streamers look like.

 

post-309-0-77096500-1499741581_thumb.jpg

 

Another possibility is to tie something similar to this where the fly is tied on the back of the hook leaving the shank to act as the bite protector.

 

post-309-0-64499000-1499741829_thumb.jpg

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Although I rarely fish for pike any more what I like to use is a 12 inch nylon coated 20# wire leader hooked to my fly. I don't know anything about bass but pike a certainly not leader shy, and your casts rarely have to be that perfect. Then you could also use what Dave G suggested - a short section of 12# running line from your flyline. I generally would use an 8wt rod.

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