Essential Gear for Pike Fishing: A Catch & Release Focus

There are some fundamental accessories that should never be missing during a pike fishing trip; accessories that are indispensable to guarantee our safety and that of the fish.
Personally, I think it's inconceivable to believe that you can perform Catch & Release correctly without having these tools at hand, if you forget them at home it's a big problem!
Among the essential accessories we have: long-nose pliers, wire cutters, and a landing net.The pliers for unhooking the pike must be at least 25/30 cm long and must be robust.
It is precisely these that will do the bulk of the work, allowing us to quickly free our prey from the hooks.
If they are not long enough the main risks are two: there is the danger that our hand gets too close to the pike's teeth with the risk of getting hurt, and there is the risk of not being able to reach the hook well if it is too deep. 
Wire cutters are useful in cases of deep hookups or "sewn-up mouth" by a hook (or worse, by two hooks). In these cases, unhooking operations can be particularly long and complicated and, in order not to compromise the health of the fish, it may be convenient to cut the hooks, especially if they are barbed.
In this regard, my advice is to crush the barbs with pliers; it will be easier to unhook the fish and in case of an accident we will also risk less.
A 3/0 hook with a barb stuck in some part of the body is never a pleasant thing!Like pliers, wire cutters must also have similar characteristics of length and robustness, those used in mechanical workshops can also be fine, as long as they are long enough.
It must be remembered that some lures mount hooks of large dimensions, very difficult to cut if the wire cutters are not robust enough. If the hooks are well planted in the mouth of our pike and if they are still barbed, cutting is certainly less painful than a complex unhooking with pliers. 
The landing net. Extra Large XXL is the imperative when choosing a pike landing net.We must remember that the pike is a fish that can reach 140 cm in length, so it is essential that the "mouth" of our landing net is enormous.
Not only that, with a large landing net we can keep the fish in the water, straight and in position, waiting to prepare the camera for the usual photo.
Personally, I perform most of the unhooking of pikes inside the landing net. If the lure has not gone deep or near a gill, I prefer to unhook the fish without pulling it out of the water.
When fishing from the shore, especially if you have to make long trips, a large landing net can be uncomfortable; however, I strongly advise against replacing it with the Boga Grip, it's better to do without and unhook in the water.
I prefer to risk a pike escaping from my hand and regaining its freedom before I managed to photograph it, rather than causing damage to its mouth with the steel grip of a Boga grip.Learning the opercular grip is mandatory, and when you master this technique, the Boga Grip becomes a totally useless accessory.
An accessory that years ago was considered indispensable in pike fishing is the mouth opener. This tool consists of a spring-loaded spreader capable of keeping the pike's mouth open.
In my twenty years of experience, I have only had to use it once, but it can be very useful when these situations occur simultaneously: you are alone, the fish has swallowed the lure deeply, the fish is restless and struggles or tends to clench its jaws.
It is preferable to use it only with the pike resting on the mat, and it should not be used on small pikes. 
The mat is one of the tools that allows us to do a healthy Catch & Release, allowing us to place the pike on a surface that does not ruin its skin.
It is important that it is wet before use. It can be used to rest the fish during unhooking operations or cutting of hooks, and moreover, thanks to the printed meter that almost all mats are equipped with, it makes it possible to measure our pike with extreme precision. In the modern conception of pike fishing, the ultimate goal of the angler should be to experience great emotions and to take home a beautiful memory of the fishing day, a photo or a video of our prey, in the best possible state of health.
The photo that we will keep in our album, on our phone or framed in the living room, will acquire a special value when, looking at it, we will think that that animal still lives free in its environment.
In this regard, it is necessary to have photographic equipment suitable for the purpose.
A good mobile phone may be enough, but for the more demanding a good camera is mandatory, preferably combined with an Action Cam that I use a GoPro, it will allow us to take photos and videos even underwater, so as to be able to document the release of the fish. 
Other things that should never be missing in our bag (or rather bag when it comes to pike fishing) are: a split ring pliers (useful for replacing hooks), split rings and spare hooks in various sizes, spare terminal cables and for the most careful a spare spool of braided line for the reel. When it comes to cables for pike, debates often arise about which are the safest or the most versatile, so it is appropriate to analyze them in detail.The use of a good cable to connect the braid to our lure is fundamental and indispensable. The cable must ensure that the sharp teeth of the pike do not cut our line. It is unthinkable to fish for pike without using a cable. I emphasize this aspect because unfortunately I have come across pike fishermen who were not equipped with this essential accessory. Both nylon and braid, even a robust 80-100 lbs braid, are extremely fragile between the teeth of the pike. Although they can withstand frightening tensions, even the best braids break very easily if rubbed against a sharp surface.
Years ago I came across a pike with a piece of braid sticking out of its esophagus; it had obviously been fished without a cable and had cut.Its luck was that it had not been hooked with an artificial lure and probably had a single hook in its throat, I hypothesized this from the fact that it continued to feed, in fact I had just caught it with a large swim-bait.
Leaving a lure in a fish's mouth is, in 90% of cases, a death sentence.
Especially if the lure is large and if the pike is well hooked.It is the duty of every pike fisherman to minimize the probability of cable breakage, even at the cost of fishing with extremely oversized cables.In many years of pike fishing, I have broken the cable three times, fortunately two breaks occurred inside the landing net and the third did not result in the loss of the lure, but only of the hook.In the case of the first two "breaks" the hooked fish twisted on itself like a crocodile, or made powerful headbutts, cutting cleanly once a 100 lbs fluorocarbon (FC), another time a steel cable mounted as standard on a large soft bait.I was stunned! Especially for the breakage of the steel cable (photo of broken steel cable), evidently too thin for the teeth of the 110 cm pike that I had caught.
The third break unfortunately occurred with the fish under the boat, but still out of reach of the landing net. Fortunately, an assist hook steel crimp jumped, leaving only a hook in the pike's mouth, recovering the bulky rubber lure.These three episodes made me think a lot about the safety issue of cables.
The fear that steel or FC could be cut or that a crimp could break, led me to make my own cables, using only materials of proven quality and very high resistance.
Steel or titanium cables from at least 80 lbs, FC cables from at least 120 lbs, or better yet monowire (with rigid monowire the risk of breakage is practically zero),high quality aluminum crimps, swivels and snaps with a breaking strain at least 20-30% higher than the resistance of the cable used. 
My pike cables.My favorites are the F.C. cables, regardless of the technique I use. To make them I use a 60 cm long piece of high quality FC,I usually take some Japanese FC for Big Game tuna, 1.30 mm in diameter, with 130 pounds of tensile strength, at both ends I block with two large aluminum crimps,a swivel on one side and a BKK snap on the other. I use specific salt water swivels, with a bearing, with a breaking strain between 130 and 180 Lbs.,also for the snap hook itself range of breaking strain. It is essential to use a good "crimping" pliers to close the crimps on the FC correctly without damaging it, always paying attention to tighten only the central part of the crimps and leave the ends wider (or "crimping" them with less force).
In this way, you do not risk that the edge of the crimp will damage our FC.
I always prefer to use FC rather than other materials because I fish in a lake with crystal clear water and I believe you can make more catches using a transparent cable. A similar procedure can be adopted for steel or titanium terminals, bearing in mind that the crimps must always be proportional to the diameter of the cable. 
Other Accessories: Polarized Sunglasses. In certain situations, our target fish will simply chase the lure without attacking it. This is a fairly common behavior that often surprises us at the last moment. In fact, it can happen that the pike decides to eat our lure in the last few meters of the retrieve, near the shore or under the boat.
In these cases, a good pair of polarized sunglasses can radically change the outcome of our fishing trip. Very often, in fact, we don't even realize what's happening in the water below our feet, sometimes because in the last meters of the retrieve our concentration drops and we're already thinking about the next cast, sometimes because of the poor visibility underwater, due to the mirror effect of the surface.
By being able to see better, we can notice the chaser and try to tease it with a "stop and go" of the lure, or a "figure eight", and in any case be ready for a hookset that would otherwise be delayed. 
The best times to target pike often coincide with adverse weather conditions: cold, rain, wind. Most of my fishing trips, whether from a boat or from the shore, are often characterized by adverse weather, so it is vital to wear technical clothing and suitable boots.
Unless we are fishing in the summer, our clothing should have waterproof and heat-retention properties. There's nothing worse than fishing wet and cold. The fun is ruined and you risk getting sick.
Boots, when fishing from the shore, take on great importance. Even if the spot allows you to always fish with dry feet, waders are always recommended.
A critical moment, with the need to enter the water to release the pike, can happen anywhere, lake or river.There are various types of boots on the market, made of breathable materials, PVC, and neoprene. Those made of breathable material are the most comfortable.
Boots are also very useful during fishing, when we have the fish on the line and especially during the release; moreover, photos in the water are always more beautiful!