Only jacks worth persevering

[twistedpro]

Hi, I am looking for a little bit of advice, i have just started on a new venue which i have visited twice. I had 3 jacks the first trip and 7 the second trip. Is it worth spending more time on the venue for a larger fish or do you think they might not be present? I was told of a 28lb fish 20 years ago

[Andrew]

Hi, I am looking for a little bit of advice, i have just started on a new venue which i have visited twice. I had 3 jacks the first trip and 7 the second trip. Is it worth spending more time on the venue for a larger fish or do you think they might not be present? I was told of a 28lb fish 20 years ago

im kinda in the same boat with the canal, jack infested. only once in a while does it throw up something worth note. If I was finding the same every visit on a small still water I probably wouldn't bother. might be worth giving it a few more tries, who knows

Welcome to the pit

[twistedpro]

Thanks for the help Andrew, its on a small piece of chalkstream and i think the area has produced in the past. Its a new river so was not sure if it was worth putting more hours in

[cookiesdaughtersdad]

Rivers by their nature generally produce smaller fish, I live and fish by the Great Ouse and in general think that you have to catch about 10 fish per double and about 100 per 20lber and so catching jacks will be common.
On small chalk stream I would consider a double as a target fish and a twenty exceptional.
Small rivers do throw up the odd "20" and to many on here a 20 from such a water would be the fish of a lifetime and so I suggest you should reset your goals for that water but if you are after a realistic chance of big fish then change waters.

Cheers Alan

[twistedpro]

Thanks for the advice Alan, i am happy to put some hours in on the venue. I have a couple of venues i am trying but i don't think any of them have had any pedigree for the last 10 years. Maybe with an increase in roach stock they might improve. I would love a 20lb+ fish but am just as happy with jacks and doubles

[Rob_Iasgair]

Where there are Jacks there has to be a few bigger females :) Might be worth shifting swims to get away from the jacks as the bigger females can be solitary.

I have fished rivers for a number of years and I have found bigger fish in the areas you would not expect them to be. Very often they are out in the main flow among the weeds, waiting and watching :)

And just to give you a little hope...a water I am a syndicate member on (all be it a still water) seems stuffed with jacks and my biggest fish is around 12lbs, but a local diving club have photos of large Pike swimming about. These fish would be a fish of a lifetime if hooked. It has produced 40lb fish which are stuffed and on the wall of the local estate house :(...but this was a good 50 years ago. I fish on in hope!!

[Mark Phillips]

If there's lots of small pike and almost no doubles, my advice is to stick with it a bit longer. On waters like that there can often be a handful of very big pike and the fact that there's only small ones in the water is because the larger fish are eating the jack population before they can grow on. I fished a pit two years ago where I knew it was full of nano pike. I went round it with lures and caught/saw nothing bigger than six pounds or so. Speaking to people about the pike fishing potential, they all dismissed it as a jack infested waste of time. My first fish out of there went 28 (pic posted in the catch forum), which aside from a 16 and a 19 I had, was the only large pike in there. Have experienced the same thing a few times, one of the pits at Landbeach Marina Park off the A10 was like that. Jack after jack, with one or two good 20's mixed in and almost no doubles at all. That's the clue, all jacks an no doubles. BTW, those lakes are now a Science Park

[suffolk si]

chalkstreams generally fairly rich environments so wouldnt dismiss it(are there trout/good feed fish present?), most waters i fish take a lot of work to get through to better fish and as mentioned above i think i am averaging over the last few years about 1 twenty to nearly every hundred fish caught in rivers, i would certainly give it at least a dozen or so sessions if not quite a bit more and try to enjoy the sport along the way.Good luck
(A decent double from a small stream is good going face)

[Fenlandesox]

my two cents would be to continue, if you were wanting to solely catch the larger fish in the river simply use bigger baits than you are allready and static deads. as we know that tends to select the larger fish when compared to roving lives for example,but might require some waiting. don't disregard large swim and jerkbaits either.

I was actually reading 'pike and the pike angler' by Fred Buller this morning and in the section regarding feeding habbits he mentioned an Irish study with the view to cull so preserving the trout and salmon stock. In this study they found that pike prefer to eat 15-20% of there bodyweight in one sitting but will swallow up to 28% . Its an old book but there are some great snippets such as that one, I upscaled my baits during last season and I was very happy with the results.

[CraigRenwick]

I used to fish a little water in summer with the fly and lures a few years back. It sounds pretty much the same, I always just saw it as a fun venue where you could catch about 15 fish of around 6lb or so in a couple of hours, I caught the same 25lber out of it 3 times, it was the only decent fish in it and as far as I know it's still there. No other doubles were caught from it.

I'd say you should move onto harder waters and keep it as a back up banker water

[Emma Hamilton]

Ive fished a number of chalk streams in Hants and never had a 20 + from any of them. Lots of small pike being the norm as these places with their feeder streams and man made back waters have fantasitic succesful spawning areas for pike. The big question to ask yourself and find out is who runs the fishing a mile or two upstream and down stream ?. If they are trout stocked / managed, are the local anglers / management pike killers ? If the answer is yes, then likely bigger pike are boshed leading to big fish being hard to come-by. These chalk streams do occasionally throw up a nice suprise so they are always worth a dabble at. Any big fish that has survived to decent size in these gin glear, shallow enviroments will be a "wise" old girl so tred quietly and blend in.

rob