Smart and suspicious
April 18, 2025Opening pikes
Text and photographs by Marco Altamura
In fact, this 2025 is very different from other years in that, due to the much reviled climate change, the end of the pike halt period on my beloved Lake Maggiore has been postponed to May 31; an extra month of halt deprives us of a magical time to bait our sharp-toothed friend.
In May, when the spawning season is over, it is not difficult to find below the shoreline, and thus within reach of our artificials, large females lingering a short distance from the shore to hoard forage fish, driven by the need to regain strength quickly.
So, playfully, this report refers to past openings with photographs of exocids caught in this magical period.
This does not prevent me from refreshing my memory a bit to my spinning friends by giving broad indications regarding the equipment I personally employ for this spinning aimed at pike. I consider myself to be a "generalist" spinner, that is, I am dedicated to chasing several species of predatory fish during the different seasons of the year therefore to the "purists" of pike spinning the equipment I am going to describe will make their noses twitch. The rod is a two-section of mt 2.40/2.70 (depending on the environments that are going to be faced) with an effective casting power identified in the range gr 15/40; I combine a reel size 4000/5000 loaded with a super braided line of thickness mm 0.15 of dark green color to the top of which I am going to connect through a knot Double Albright well executed a piece of about a meter and a half of fluorocarbon thickness mm 0.30/0.32.
In the present case, I use, in my opinion, the best braided wire on the market for this type of research: the Asso 8XPE Perfect Storm which combines a near-zero elongation with a truly exceptional resistance to abrasion and extreme reliability in case of fights with the heavy weights of the species; as a terminal the equally valid Asso SuperFluorocarbon which possesses extremely high strength qualities together with complete invisibility in the water.
I consider this "combo" the best possible for this type of spinning that is capable of giving great satisfaction. As for artificials, I am leaning without hesitation on minnows with a sinking or neutral set-up such as the 9/11 cm Rapalla CDs further weighted by means of a listerelle of lead in the belly or Storm minnows.
I am not a thrower using baitcasting rods and reels and lures weighing 100/200 grams, but I can equally boast of respectable catches of exocids, with several specimens exceeding even 10 kg and "over meter" in length.