The Future – Niall Finnegan
“Favourites”
Issue 18 (Sep-Oct 2017) Niall Finnegan
Simply put, kids are the future of everything – politics, business, sport, the environment and, of course, fishing. It is up to current generations to nurture them, to encourage them and to teach them. However, some young anglers appear to need little coaching and are already way ahead of their years in terms of ability and knowledge. One of the up-and-coming pike and coarse anglers in the Irish midlands is Niall Finnegan, a young lad who is totally addicted to angling, very passionate and determined to catch as many fish as he can! The stories he tells here about his favourite species to catch are ones I am sure many of us can relate to. Over to you, Niall…
I was honoured when I was asked to write an article for Off the Scale but was not sure if I wanted to do it as I thought I’d be too boring or not have enough to write about! With it being a great (and free!) magazine, I decided to give it a go. I was told it was best to choose my own topic but with most things fishing I couldn’t make up my mind so I got the Editor to give me a few options; I liked the idea of writing about my favourite fish and favourite methods for them but once again I couldn’t just pick one, so I’ll write about all the methods – lure, deadbait and fly – I use for my favourite species, that being pike.
Lure fishing
I started off lure fishing when I first picked up fishing about three years ago and it’s definitely one of the most commonly used methods – it’s easy to tell why. Whether you throw small lures or troll big lures, most anglers can’t deny that the hit off a pike on an artificial bait gets the heart going and the adrenaline pumping! It’s hard to beat lure fishing either on lakes or rivers, and when you get that strike you don’t know what it could be and that’s what keeps us going. The next hit could be 2lb jack or 20lb plus pike, or even a 30 if you are lucky!
So, let’s go back to where it all started for me. My friend randomly asked one day if I wanted to go fishing. Before this I had never even thought about it and my reply was “sure why not!” Weirdly, he himself wasn’t an angler either but his Dad did fish a small bit I believe. So, we set off to this big trout lake that had pike, trout, perch and probably few other micro species. It was a hot day so we waded through the margins and shared a rod, casting a small spinner around. Although we caught nothing at all for hours I was hooked! I loved it right away, even if I didn’t see a fish that first outing.
The very next week I got my first lure rod for €20, reel for €10, some 15lb mono and few spinners and spoons. The next session was fished with my new little setup on the river with the same mate and another friend for company but once again we caught nothing! I loved it though and the only reason we stopped fishing and went home is because I fell in the river – ha ha, of course that would happen!
Soon we started to try and find new places to fish. A lad at school overheard our conversation about a lake nearby and now we are friends, too. Maybe we wouldn’t have been without fishing? I ordered some new little soft lures online, thinking these were some fancy, high-tech baits that were sure to catch me my first fish! Oh, how silly I was back then! Anyway, we headed off to this small lake where we fished for a while without much happening. I quickly lost a couple of my new lures and was getting pretty annoyed but after a while I felt a strange bump on the end of the line and struck! I shouted to my two friends that I must have a little pike on. I knew it was tiny from the lack of fight but still felt so thrilled to catch it. I released that little fella after a quick photo to prove I did actually catch something and the lads went back to their spots. A few casts later and “bang” – again I shouted the lads and they arrived to see me land my first perch, too. What a day! I was over the moon and I didn’t care at all that I caught nothing more.
I have plenty of other stories about lure fishing, especially since I got my new rib-style boat and started lure fishing a lot more seriously, but the feelings of happiness from that very first day will stay with me forever.
Deadbaiting
Deadbaiting is another method all of us hard-core pikers love and it’s been a deadly method for big pike over the years for many anglers. There’s many ways of deadbaiting, which I think is why some anglers may stick to bait fishing only – you can float fish, deadbait on the bottom or drift deadbaits, sink and draw and and many more.
My favourite deadbaiting story all started the morning after the night before; I’d been down in Limerick and had gotten home late that previous night. Wanting some much needed sleep, sure enough one of the lads messaged me and asked me “do you fancy deadbaiting in the morning?” I said no straight away as I was wrecked but it’s hard to refuse a fishing trip as I’m sure you all know and half an hour later I replied “gone on, sure why not!” I got the gear ready, like the lads, and with the excitement of the session ahead I couldn’t sleep. I think I managed to scrape a few hours in the morning before getting up at 8am and heading off an hour later. I picked up my mate and off we headed to the lake and arrived only to notice that our other mate was clearly not there as he said he would be. Maybe he’d had a late night too! We carried on anyways and hoped for the best.
I put a jack herring on my left hand rod and chose the old reliable, half a mackerel, for the other. I waited and waited, and waited some more. All the time it was raining a lot so it was a bit depressing to say the least, sitting there not catching anything. After waiting for few hours more in the little lakeside shack, I went to make sure my alarms were still on (always a desperate sign) and my mate followed behind me. I checked the first rod (left hand) and pulled the line a few times to sound the alarm and as soon as I stopped we both heard my other rod go off. We were confused for a second until we saw the swinger move and we knew that fish had taken the half mackerel.
We thought it was an eel or tiny pike at the start as it was just messing with the bait and was not moving off with it at all but I thought I better strike in case so as to not risk deep hooking the fish. Not expecting much, I calmly walked down the pier, wound down and struck and knew straight away that I was into a nice fish – maybe a low double by the feel of it.
After a nice little fight my mate went to the front of the pier while I walked backwards to get the fish into the net and he landed it with no hassle. He had a look at the fish and said, ‘Niall, I f***ing think this fish is over 20lbs!’. Of course, I thought he was messing around but he insisted he was being serious. Once we got it on the mat I could see that he wasn’t trying to wind me up – it was a big fish! We were praying that this was my first 20, and after all those boring hours in the rain, soaked to the skin and with the lake in flood, we weighed the fish at 20lbs 4oz. I was delighted as you can see and was trying to hold back my huge smile in the picture!
That was another day never to forget. I don’t think we had any other fish that day bar a jack for my mate on the head off my half mackerel that I had just had my 20 on! A lucky mackerel? After a few more hours of no action we packed up and I was buzzing for a week or more afterwards, which I am sure a lot of you can relate to.
Fly fishing
I think the method of fly fishing for pike is very under-used, although it is more practiced these days than it used to be. It’s not as simple as most methods but for me it’s far more rewarding and a really exciting way to fish. I just decided to randomly order some flies one day and got a nice little ‘tinsel fly’ (don’t think it has a name) which I decided – randomly again – to try out on my 6 weight trout rod. So, just looking for a bit of fun from some small pike on this very light set up, I visited one of my local lakes and had a take on only my second cast! Sadly I lost him so I threw the fly out again and had the same jack come for it a total of six times before I finally hooked and landed him after a great scrap. This was all it took for me to become hooked on another method of pike fishing.
After a few more sessions using the 6 weight, I got a proper 8/9 weight pike fly rod and some sinking line. I got my new fly setup in the mail and, like most anglers know when you get some new tackle, I had to get out and use it as soon as possible. My mate and I said we should try the same lake I caught the jack from for a quick session. Sensibly, he had waders but I didn’t, so I got pretty cold and wet again standing in the water. I seem to always get cold and wet when out fishing!
Even though my mate managed a few takes early on, he got no hook-ups and I hadn’t had a touch. I started to wonder why I hadn’t had even a follow from a pike and, just as I thought it, I felt my slowly-stripped line lock up solid. For a second I thought yes, here we go but I soon realised it must be snagged on some weed or something as the weight was too heavy for a fish. I yanked the line but then suddenly the so-called snag took off and nearly burnt my finger with the fly line! Maybe it was just a jack after all, I then thought, but after a long fight I started to realise it wasn’t. Eventually we got the fish on the bank and weighed her at just over 13lbs. What a fish to break in the new fly rod!
For those that haven’t tried it yet, the feeling when you hook a pike on a fly rod is something else and you really get to feel the true power of the fish, hence why it has to be my favourite method. No, it’s not easy and I still am very bad at it but I still manage to get some fish and have lots of fun doing so. Having a pike pull the fly line out of your hand is great and I’d highly recommend that more people get out there and try it. In fact, just try some more methods in general. Fishing is fishing and it’s all great fun!
Hopefully some of you enjoyed a few of my stories and how I started fishing, and that it wasn’t too boring.
Tight lines,
Niall Finnegan