Expert Fishing Tackle Reviews & Advice
There’s a particular kind of quiet that settles over a canal towpath just before a perch takes a drop shot lure — line gone still, rod tip barely twitching, and then that unmistakable rattly tap-tap-tap that separates a genuine bite from a snag on a shopping trolley. Feeling that bite in the first place is … Read more
You don’t need to spend £150 on a Japanese blank to catch perch. Some of the scrappiest, most aggressive stripey takes you’ll ever feel come through a rod that cost less than a decent pair of wading boots. A good perch rod under £50 genuinely can deliver most of what a premium rod offers for … Read more
There’s a particular thrill to feeling a perch inhale a lure — that tiny, almost apologetic tap on the rod tip, followed by a stubborn, head-shaking scrap that punches well above the fish’s actual weight. Get the wrong perch fishing rod in your hand, though, and that same bite can vanish completely, swallowed by a … Read more
There’s a particular kind of despair that comes from watching a pike mouth your bait, hold it for three agonising seconds, and then drift off into the reeds untouched. Nine times out of ten, the post-mortem isn’t about your bait choice or your rod angle. It’s about the two little bundles of steel sitting under … Read more
Somewhere in a tackle box drawer near you, there’s a tangle of treble hooks that have seen better days — dulled points, a faint bloom of rust creeping along the shank, a barb that’s been flattened one too many times with a pair of pliers. Treble hooks for pike aren’t glamorous. Nobody buys a rod … Read more
There’s a specific kind of heartbreak in pike fishing that has nothing to do with missed takes: you finally connect with a proper fish, get it thrashing at the net, and then notice your trace has coiled itself into a tight, useless spiral. Choosing between a titanium wire trace and a steel wire trace for … Read more
Lose a lure to a pike once and you’ll never fish without a proper trace again. Wire traces for pike exist for one blunt reason: a pike’s teeth will saw straight through mono or braid in seconds, and what’s left behind is either a lost lure or, worse, a fish swimming off with a hook … Read more
Ask ten pike anglers how to rig soft plastics for pike and you’ll get eleven opinions, half a dozen contradictions, and at least one story about the “one that got off because the jig head was too light.” That’s not because soft plastic rigging is complicated — it genuinely isn’t — it’s because most anglers … Read more
There’s a particular kind of silence right before a pike hits a shad. The rod tip’s doing nothing, the retrieve is lazy, and then the water just… opens. Soft plastic lures for pike are the reason so many UK anglers have quietly binned their box of hard jerkbaits and gone all-in on rubber. They’re cheap … Read more
Stand on any pike-fishing forum for more than five minutes and someone will be mid-argument about jerkbait vs swimbait for pike, usually with the quiet certainty of someone who’s never actually lost a fifteen-pound fish to a badly chosen lure. The truth is less dramatic and more useful: both catch pike, brilliantly, in different conditions, … Read more