I say a “Poor Man’s” in the title. According to my wife it should be a “Cheap Man’s”. But that’s details not important to this post. This idea was actually more necessity driven than budget driven.

I had an out of town buddy come join me to go fishing at my cabin. We are both fly fishing fanatics. I spend a week at his place in southern Alberta chasing Browns and Rainbows and Brooks near the end of Summer and he spends a week at my place chasing Pike and Walleye in late Spring. This past Spring, just a couple months ago, we were determined to get him a Pike on the fly rod. He’s had a few on, never landed. (Having the opportunity to fly fish for Pike at the lake at my cabin, I have caught more than I can count.) So the evening of arrival I passed him my spare fly line Pike leader with the last 10 inches of braided steel to counter the sharp Pike teeth. We hopped in the boat and headed out the next morning, Pike leader left on the coffee table. So I took my other Pike leader off my fly rod and passed to him. That left me with my gear chucking rods to toss spoons and jigs at the fish.

Despite some dazzling Perch imitation streamer flies he got from a fly shop owner in Lethbridge, the Pike were not his friend when waving his fly rod at the water.

With the trusty Len Thompson 5 of Diamonds and the Red and White, I was having a good time hooking, netting and releasing some feisty Pike. He had a few bites, a few on the line, enough to see the head shake, confirmation it was a fish and not the aggressive weeds of the area. The days were fairly windy and that made fly casting pretty difficult, so we opted for spoons and jigs mostly with some attempts with the fly rods during calmer periods.

We did stop at a spot I refer to as the “Last Call”, a little Perch haven where it’s hard to not catch a fish, just so we could lay down the claim to have caught fish on fly rods those days.

But to get to the point, the first Pike fly leader, on the coffee table at the cabin, went in his fly vest, to be traded for the other one on his line, so I could put the other one back on my line. Didn’t happen. Windy days meant more spinning rod action, which was quite successful. Lots of Pike and a few nice Walleye.

My fly leaders? They made the drive back home with my buddy, one in his fly vest and one at the end of his fly line. The very next weekend, out on the water Saturday morning, it was calm with sunshine. A must day for tossing streamers at Pike, but no pike leaders. So I dig into the tackle box, finding a spool of 10 pound line, and a 9″ steel leader. With a quick loop end tied to about 9′ of line and the steel leader tied at the other end, I had a makeshift fly line Pike leader. A few tosses and a sharp tug, followed by the tell tale signs of a Pike head shake. The first test was a successful test. A delicate presentation of the fly/streamer is not the same necessity as when tossing hoppers to stream dwelling Brown Trout. The ability to withstand the power and teeth of a Pike or Walleye is the priority. What I learned, after continuing to test my new leader rig is that the 10 pound line is not enough, but it was what I had in my tackle box, what I have rigged up on my Walleye jigging rod. Hooking a strong fish one day, a good fish I was sure, disappeared with the snap of the line above the 9″ steel leader. I saw a glimpse of it, 15′ to 16′ out from the boat. That was gonna be a good fish. I wish I had at least seen it clearly, up close. Not having any other materials, I tied another of my new found leader rigs with 10 pound test as the leader. Back to my nature of being cheap, that was gonna have to do, even with a few opportunities over the next week to stop at a store buy something stronger. Then, during a late July week at the cabin, came the pull of another really good fish on the end of my fly line and a strong bend in the rod. Remember the Perch imitation streamers I mentioned above? Turns out these are delicious looking. I have since tied a few copies as I have now lost both of the Perch flies, professionally tied, to broken leaders.

The financial comparison is simple. A Pike/Musky leader from a fly shop is $12 to $15. Eventually they will break, but I have used the same leader for a couple years of fighting twisting, shaking, sharp-tooth Pike so the expense per fish is down to mere pennies. Most often, it is the clasp at the end that fails before the leader. Now for the Poor Man’s version. A small spool of 20 pound mono is $10. Enough to make 30+ of these leaders. A 12 pack of typical 9″ wire leader is about $8. So my Cheap Man Pike Leader is less than $1.00.

I headed out with another fishing buddy and tested these (all in the name of product testing) a couple days ago and the casting is the same. A heavy streamer at the end seems to overcome the need for any special leader performance or tapering requirements. First strike was a pretty good Pike. Netting, hook removal, quick measurement, and release of a 32″ Pike made for a good start to the day. A couple more Pike, smaller than the first, assured me this was as good as the previous version. The real test was another good Pike, I performed poorly on the retrieval and lest it weed me. So I had to hog it out, pulling a few extra pounds of weeds, and the leader held. My only revision to my set up is that I would shorten the length of the mono from 9′ to 7′ to make casting under windy conditions a little easier and avoid pulling the fly line / leader loop to loop connection through the rod end eye when netting the fish.

I would not recommend this for fly fishing when a dry fly dropping silently on calm waters is the goal (although I have had to MacGyver some heavy to lighter tippet-as-leader replacements in the middle of a Southern Alberta stream). For the tossing of heavy streamers to the aggressive ambush feeding activity of Northern Pike, it seems to be an excellent and inexpensive use of commonly available tackle.

Back in March I published an article on Killer Flies for Pike in which I described the Go Go Ray fly pattern. I have been using this fly for a few years now and after another summer of pike fly fishing, it’s time for a few improvements to the pattern. The more I fish this fly, and another fly I created, the Iron Butterfly Minnow, the more information I can gather and put towards building a better fly.

This summer provided me a few days of stark contrast. One relatively calm day I was standing on the back of my boat casting the Iron Butterfly Minnow in the hopes of hooking a few pike.

Another boat trolled by and ask me what I was doing and if fly fishing actually caught fish. I told them fly fishing was my secret weapon, when spoons and jigs aren’t working, I pull out the fly rod. Just then, Wham!, a pike hits the fly and the rod bends. Timely proof delivered on cue. However my proof was short lived, lost the fish 10 feet from the boat. That was followed by a few more episodes of the same thing, a strike, pull, head shake, fish gone. I knew the fly pattern was good, I was getting fish to bite aggressively, but landing none. I switched to the Go Go Ray fly, one tied a few years ago that had a few battle scars.

Next hit from a pike, hooked up, netted, landed, released. Again, hooked, netted, landed. I fished for another hour, caught a few more, until the poor Go Go Ray pike fly was battered and torn apart. I retired the fly and with the sun already set, headed in for the evening.

The following weekend I was back out with one of my sons, a newly tied Go Go Ray on the fly rod. The next 5 pike strikes, back to the old pattern, a strong hit, a strong pull, a head shake, and the fish was gone. The saving grace of that evening of fishing was landing a nice walleye on the Go Go Ray.

After close inspection, I have a pretty good idea of why i have gone through streaks of losing fish and streaks of landing fish. Last summer I recall that I had a few short streaks of losing fish I felt I had well hooked. At that time, the Go Go Ray and the Iron Butterfly patterns were tied with two hooks, one facing downward, one facing upward. Still I was losing fish. So for 2020, the pike flies I tied had just one hook. Based on results, seems like a bad idea. Examining the beat up Go Go Ray fly that was my most successful fly of 2020, I noticed that although it was the two hook version which means it would have been tied in 2019. But more importantly, one of the hooks had been rotated 90 degrees, so I had a downward facing hook and a sideways facing hook. Think of a treble hook with only two hooks. My theory is that the single and double hooks were somehow laying flat in the mouth of a pike and pulling free without hooking in when the pike did the head shake.

The solution was simple for those flied with two hooks, simply grab one hook with one set up pliers and use another to rotate the other hook 90 degrees.

For flies I tied in early 2020, they flies with the highest lost fish ratio, I have taken them back to the tying vice and added a second hook, turned at 90 degrees.

One more trip out on the water this coming weekend will be the test.