Ireland has a reputation for fantastic fishing, and whether you want to catch big bags of bream and roach or go fly fishing for fin-perfect trout on wild venues, it really has it all. One of the most impressive species Ireland has to offer anglers are pike, and judging by the size of this croc, the are some real giants inhabiting the enormous loughs dotted around the country.
They say that big lures produce big pike, but Marc Wilson proved that sometimes the opposite can be true when he tempted this 38lb 9oz giant from a large Irish Lough using a small lure.
After a 6am start, Marc’s day started in less than ideal fashion when he found that the battery on his boat’s engine was dead. He managed to find some cables and charge it up, but it wasn’t until 10am that he arrived at his first fishing spot.
Soon after, he spotted a very large fish sat in around 14ft of water. After running two of his trusted lures by it without sparking a reaction, Marc switched to a small Ryuki Spearhead – a jerkbait that he usually uses for trout. Casting out and retrieving with small erratic twitches, Marc saw the fish immediately lift to the lure, at which point he got a true sense of its enormous size!
It followed the lure until it was just a few feet under the surface, at which point Marc paused and twitched it. The fish grabbed the lure and then ‘all hell broke loose’, with the pike giving a powerful fight before he managed to slide the net under it. The fish measured 119cm and is a wild Irish specimen that he’ll remember for the rest of his days.
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