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The Pike in Ireland |
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The Pike
is known worldwide, a species of the family Esocidae, have been
around on the Earth for at least 80 million years. Until relatively
late in time Esox lucius evolved and spread across the upper
latitudes of the northern hemisphere to North America by means
of the Bering Strait land bridge. This had been under the ocean
since the drifting apart of the continents began around 60-70
million years ago, but the ice age of the Pleistocene epoch
caused a lowering of sea levels making the land bridge possible
again. Back in 1980 a fossilised skeleton of Esox was discovered
in Canada, which dated from at least 62 million years ago. |
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The introduction of the
Pike into Ireland was believed to have been by the monks around
the fourteenth century. The pikes appetite has been the inspiration
for many an old wives tale, throughout history, most of man's
dealings with Esox have been dominated by myth, superstition
and his resulting fear. The pike is depicted as vermin to some
fisheries, and so the legend of the water wolf, the pond tyrant,
etc, begun. Man's knowledge of the natural world expanded over
time and almost all of the myths, and half-truths have been
laid to rest by scientific research. Even with all the weighted
proof the pike still commands disrespect & persecution.
Many people still prefer to believe the fairy tales passed down
by old stories from generation to generation. Stories continue
to fester of the pike who devour dogs, ducks and swans, while
there is a little truth that pike do on occasion take ducklings,
rats and voles, it should be stressed that these make up less
than 1% of their total food intake. |
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The pike is one of the
most widespread of Irish fish and pike fishing is as old as
Irish angling. Pike are predators, but a big pike is perhaps
the greatest predator still living in the wild in these islands.
Its physical make up - the smooth enameled body, the great head
- has a beauty which no one appreciates more keenly than the
pike angler. |
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Many of the stories of
great Irish pike are well-founded and far bigger fish swim in
Irish waters than have been caught on rod and line. Sometimes
they are seen - by an angler during a brief contact, or while
taking wildfowl from the surface, or perhaps in the shallows
of a lough in spring when the big females spawn. Such incidents
start legends, and stories of great pike are often associated
with very large waters such as Lough Ree or Lough Derg. So when
the angler is afloat on a wild lough or on the banks of a wide
river the idea of a big pike has a special power, because it
is here that such a pike can grow quickly and remain unseen
until the day it takes the bait.
It is said that pike thrive on neglect, and in Irish waters
they have every opportunity. Ireland is still a pastoral country
of farmland and peat bog with a very low population by European
standards. The land is drained by a network of rivers (there
are 7,000 miles of riverbank for the pike angler) and there
are hundreds of loughs varying in size from a few acres to thousands
of acres. Many loughs, for example the bigger loughs on the
Shannon system, such as Lough Allen, have preserved their wild
qualities. They can be difficult to approach from the bank because
of marginal reeds growing in deep water, or because the shores
may be rocky or boggy. And even from a boat, one angler would
not be able to fish all of just one of Ireland's bigger loughs
in a lifetime. So pike have been able to flourish and many fish
will not even have seen an angler's bait.
This quality of habitat is one of the attributes of Irish pike
fishing, and because of it the pike angler in Ireland can expect
an excellent general standard of angling. But pike anglers hope
for more than this. Ireland's wild windswept waters have produced
pike of legendary size, several of them exceeding 50lbs. It
is the chance of meeting a very big pike, in a river or lough
little changed from the time when its ancestors first swam,
which really fires the imagination of the pike angler in Ireland.
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