TECHNIQUE
How To Build
A GREAT
Northern Pike and Muskie Leader
By Fred Telleen
Esox lucius, pike, northern, jackfish, gator, or water wolf. Whatever you call these streamlined fish, they are a ruthless predator. Though they attack a fly, lure or bait, I prefer to feed them a fly. Big pike on fly tackle are a blast. Takes in shallow water can be explosive and fish from 25 inches to 40-plus inches are regularly landed. When compared to the average size of trout, these pike are giants and ultra-fun to fight on a fly rod.
We know pike and get a lot of questions about how to set up for pike fishing on the fly. Chasing pike is a bit different than chasing trout. You can catch smaller pike on a standard trout setup, but for serious pike fishing, you’ ll need an 8 or 9-weight rod to throw the big, meaty flies pike love to crush. Pike flies are often constructed with long, magnumsize rabbit strips, like the Alter’ s Pike Slider fly we approve of. While these strips provide great action in the water, casting them is like throwing a wet tube sock.
LEADER MATTERS Regardless of what weight rod you choose, or how large for fly might be, you’ ll need a special leader setup because pike teeth will shred a trout leader. Unless you want pike to swim off with your fly as their trophy, you need either a wire bite tippet or a heavy fluorocarbon bite tippet. A relatively short and heavy leader is also preferred to turn over bulky flies. Scientific Anglers offers a lineup of pretied Toothy Fish leaders. We like the 7.5’ tapered 20 # leader, finished with single-strand titanium or 80 # fluorocarbon and a Size 2 Stay-Lok snap. These are an easy choice to get set up quickly. The snap also allows you to make no-fuss fly changes.
BUILDING YOUR OWN PIKE / MUSKY LEADERS At some point you may want to build your own pike leaders as these fish are tough on gear and pretied commercial pike leaders aren’ t cheap. Tying great pike leaders isn’ t difficult and you should see immediate success if you follow these simple instructions.
Start with three feet of 40-pound Maxima Chameleon leader and blood knot it to two feet of 30-pound Chameleon. Finish by blood knotting an additional 18 inches of 20-pound Maxima Ultra Green to the 30-pound Chameleon. This will set you up with a short and powerful tapered leader, stiff enough to turn over those“ tube sock’ flies.
The next ingredient is the“ bite tippet.” Our favorite bite tippet material, which we use to finish off our pike leaders, is Rio’ s Powerflex Wire Bite Tippet. This is nothing like the Rio Flouroflex Plus or Powerflex mono tippet in the 3-5X range that we prefer for trout. Rio says that Wire Bite is,“ tough, flexible, nylon-coated wire ideal for sharp-toothed critters like pike.” It is very easy to work with, but many anglers are unsure of the best ways to use it. Here is how I attach Wire Bite Tippet to my leader, and then tippet to my fly.
Peel off a foot or so from the spool and put a double overhand knot in the material. Leave yourself an inch of tag to work with. Draw the double-overhand into a figure eight. Run the tip of your 20-pound mono through both loop openings in the figure eight. Draw the figure eight tight without pinching the mono. Give yourself about eight inches of mono to work with for the next step.