On the double!

Last saturday Sander and I set out for some piking in one of the few waters that still has a liquid surface. In the car we had a discussion about how deep we would have to fish the streamer. Sander argued that the pike would come and get it from almost anywhere, where I thought it would be necessary to go deep and wake them up. And because we're both not the kind of guys to give in lightly, we came up with an experiment. Why not fish with two streamers, one that goes down and a lightweight on a dropper?

We already had been thinking about this for a while as a way of improving our chances during the tournament. The rules just state that we have to use single, barbless hooks, but not how many. So it's fair to conclude that we can use as many single, barbless hooks on one line as we want.

We decided not to push our luck and start off with two streamers. The rig needed to be both fishable and (somewhat) castable, so we came up with a simple construction. Starting from the tip of the fly line, we first took about one meter (of course depending on water depth) of 0,80 fluorocarbon to keep things stiff and hence facilitate turnover, with at the end a swivel. Then we simply put about one and a half meters of 0,65 stiff mono through the eye of the swivel, measured 20 cm. for the dropper, tied a stopper knot in the mono and after that tied a stopper knot in the mono on the other side of the swivel eye so the mono couldn't move anymore. Then we tied a bucktail-zonker combination at the end of the mono using a heavy wire, and a lightweight EP Fibers streamer using a lighter wire. In the end it looked like this:

Of course we didn't expect this rig to cast very well, but we were pleasantly surprised. Granted, you'll not be able to cast as far as you would with a single streamer, but without too much wind 20 meters turned out to be quite possible. And it didn't take long before the first pike showed interest. It went for the dropper, missed and left us with nothing more than a big swirl to stare at.

O.k., the pike were in for it. So with even more confidence we launched our two missiles over and over again, until Hajé hooked a pike. This one took the bottom streamer. And while Hajé was gently playing the fish, it happened. Suddenly, out of nowhere, another pike came up and took the streamer on the dropper. It went down immediately, hooking itself along the way, and leaving Hajé with the challenge to land two pike in one go. Miraculously, this turned out to be quite easy because the pike took different directions and thus basically played themselves. Sander tried to take some pictures of the action, but when the fish came in close, he deemed it wiser to help Hajé landing the two pike. So this is the only pic we've got of the double hook-up:

It's funny to see how things get totally different when there comes another pike into play. First you have to decide who's going to get which pike, then there's the removal of the hooks, and after that you realize someone has to take a picture so the other one has to hold two pike. Ever performed a gill-to-jaw-grip with the other hand? Probably not. But, eventually, we managed to take a picture of the two pike without them touching the ground:

Thanks to the rugged rig of 0,80 fluorocarbon and 0,65 mono we managed to land the two pike. And although we never want to intentionally hook two pike at once, this technique with two streamers undoubtedly increases your chances and therefore might turn out to be a winner in Finland. So how about three........?