Musky Mania Squirrely Burt

Long time readers will have heard me talk about the Squirrely Burt before. A favourite lure of mine after being put on it by Woody. I also know this lure to be a favourite for Neil too. It accounts for plenty of fish between us and for me personally I know it's bagged me hundreds and hundreds of fish over the years. However some people are totally unaware of its existence while others own the lure but struggle to catch anything with it.

The thing with Burts is that they are often a little random out of the box. They aren't perfect and sometimes you have to tinker with them. I recently covered this in an article where I explained how I re weight my Burts. That is the one thing you need to do, take a bit of time and set up your Burt to suit your water. Having a few Burts, in my case usually at least half a dozen, I can set them all up differently to help me tackle lots of situations. Now when you add this to different retrieve styles too you have a lure that can do so much. You just need to spend time setting it up and getting to know both the lure and your waters.

After writing that re-weighting article I got out and fished. First time out I did some instructional work, capturing it on video and then went and caught a nice low double pike within minutes. I was all set to make a nice video when somehow I managed to delete all the files. This meant I had to wait a few days before I could get out to do it all again. When I did get out I had an even better time with the fish so the video ended up being split, a tutorial and one just full of pike action and a surface Burt video as a bonus.

I believe that with the article I wrote before, and the videos I made I have pretty much covered everything with the Burts. Spend time reviewing this information and watching the videos and I'm sure your dust covered Burts will be catching you plenty if you give them the time in the water they deserve.


This first video is the tutorial. Use this, along with this article, to set up the Burts to suit, and then get out and practice with them.

This second video is all the proof you need to give you the confidence that they do work, especially after having a tinker.

Finally, the third video shows you another way to use the Burts to have some fun. Straight out of the box, these lures are often a great surface bait.

Grabbing a chance while we can - Make time for fishing.

I'd not fished with him for a few months and then I heard he'd not even had much of a chance to get out and fish. So I dropped Neil a text to try and sort something out. We needed a catch up and a chilled out couple of hours on the bank and since the weather was cooling off a little we fancied some pike. We'd had some rains a few times and the waters were cooler and had even been up and down a bit a couple of times so we fancied a chance of a pike or two. Getting to the chosen swim was a little tricky as it was well over grown so we had to hack our way through. Neil sent me first to trample down all the nettles and find out where all the hidden trip hazards were. I think we both stuck on a jerk bait to start with and I chose one of three I'd had made by Mark Houghton and not had a chance to use yet.

Chatting and casting around and it wasn't long before we had some attention. Neil had a follow which he only spotted right at the end of the retrieve when the pike turned away then a few minutes later I had a pluck but missed it. I can only put it down to being a bit rusty. It wasn't a proper hard hitting take but I was a little slow reacting and failed. However not too long after, possibly the same fish, hit again in the same spot. Though this time a combination of it hitting harder and me reacting faster meant I was in. A nice bright fish that must have been easily a low double and the new lure from Mark was now a proven fish catcher.

Back fishing and chatting and we were switching things around and trying to get another hit. I thought we'd have had at least another jack by now as time had moved on a little since the last fish, but no luck. Neil chose a smaller Fox Replicant and lobbed it out. He could get this lure down a bit deeper and hope to run it past a toothy predator. The tactic worked and I heard a noise as Neil shouted that he had one on, ah no, then off. Wait, no it's still on. The fish steamed right at him and at first he thought it was off but then quickly realised what was happening so wound like mad to try and get some line back in. Once back in contact with the fish he got it under control and after a head shake and a jump, it was in the net. Again this fish was a nice low double and we were both happy at that. Both of us off the mark on the night but also just great to be back catching a better stamp of pike. Summer ultra light fishing means we still catch pike but on the whole they are small fish. Being back out with the big lures means bigger fish, and we do love pike.

We worked hard, moved pegs a few times and switched lure types and styles to try and get something else but a lively start ended with nothing much more. Just one more fish came and that was to Neil, and again he bagged it on the small Fox Replicant. This time a smaller jack of five or six pounds but we were happy enough. For me I was happy to be back on the pike and I'm sure Neil was just glad to be on the bank after his limited fishing in recent weeks. I know he got out with Matt not too long ago for a frogging session and they had a few fish and even more recently he got out on the boat with Woody for some fun. We all work and have other things to do so sometimes you need to make time for a bit of fishing. It's easy to get out of the habit and not fishing often leaves you not thinking about fishing. I'm sure we'll be out again with the jerk baits now it's much cooler for those hungry pike.

Since Neil hasn't really been out fishing he's not featured in any of my videos yet so I thought I'd knock up a short video from that evening. RiverPiker welcomes Neil to Youtube, I'm sure there will be more to come in the future.

Re-weighting Squirrely Burts

A couple of new Burts have arrived, thanks to Lure Lounge for super quick delivery. Two shiny new Musky Mania Squirrelly Burts. All my others are a mess with so many teeth marks. A super lure that bags me so many fish. But the thing with Burts is, not all Burts are the same. There are un weighted and weighted versions. These two are weighted. However, you usually need to tinker so that you can set them up to suit. That part is the fun part and also the most useful when you are on the bank. Because you can have four or five Burts that do different things. Now these two Burts I have already tested, bagged one fish, lost two and had a load of interested from fussy pike (coming up and rolling but not taking....aaaargh! lol). 

Both these Burts are shallow and didn't go down too far, may be two to three feet but that was hard work. The aim of a Burt for most people is to set them up so the tail is in the air and the nose is pointing down. On the down stroke of your rod, this will push the lure down in the water and you can work it to the required depth. With multiple Burts you can then add more or less weight so they sink, suspend or float on the pause. You can then have them set up to work varying situations you will encounter. I also keep one of these weighted Burts as is, so that it just works that 2-3 foot depth and this lure is perfect for shallow bays. Also don't forget the surface Burt, a slow retrieve of a Burt on the surface is a killer!

My two new Burts I wanted to add some weight to help set them nose down, arse up. One way is to drill the lure and pop some weight in, but I'm not going to cover that as I'm too impatient and I'm also usually pretty crap at things like this so I'd end up ruining a Burt. So the way I do it, and others, is to stick a bit of lead on. Simple as that.

The first thing you need to do is get some lead. Cut it up in to small random pieces and then it's trial and error to get the lure to do what you want. An easy way I find is to just tape a bit of lead to the nose of your lure and pop it in some water, luckily for me I have a garden pond so testing is easy. When adding some weight, you need to remember to add a wire trace and also consider that you will be using epoxy to fix the lead in place too. These two Burts are now ready to test.

In the water, these two are perfect for what I want. Nose down, tail up and floating. On the down stroke they will dive deeper, tap again and they go down again. On the pause they will slowly float to the surface. For me this is perfect for 6-8 feet deep water that could be snaggy. You can get it down but also know it will come back up out of harms way. The photo below shows how they sit in the water.

Final step is to mix up a bit of epoxy and stick the lead to your lure, remembering which bit of lead goes with which lure. You can see in the photo below, that mine aren't a work of art or anything. I'm not too fussed for a square lump on the front, pike aren't fussed either. However if you are bit more patient you can take time to shape the lead and round off the corners and even paint it up so that when finished it isn't such an eye sore. That's time on the bank though to me so I don't bother.

Final tips for Burt owners. They come with big hooks and seriously strong split rings. Designed for 50lb Musky so they need to be tough. If you fish places with no snags, that's not a problem. However if you fish snaggy rivers like me, then those strong hooks and strong split rings will have you losing a lure. So change the hooks to something like Eagle Claw 3/0. These will bend out of snags a little easier. You can also switch the split rings for some that bend out at 30 or 40lb.

Check the tail. Some of them I have bought in the past have not been fixed in and it will fall out after a fish or two. Epoxy is good for setting them firmly in place. These two from Lure Lounge seem fine. One last check, look for holes around the hook eyes. For some reason they aren't always covered and you end up with a lure that sinks fast when it fills with water so use that epoxy to fill the hole. Again, these two are spot on.

That's it, your Burts are now super fish catching lures. I know a few people who don't always get on with them and can't catch a pike. I promise you if you follow this guide your Burt will catch pike. That downward stroke followed by a pause, however long or short you want, will trigger a fish at some point. 

Blogs are for blogging, so I'll blog.

Finally the rains came

I don't think I've got much to write about. Hang on, that will mean this entry is as long as the rest and I'll rattle on about something, of which at this very second I have no idea what that will be. So yeah, nothing much to write about. Why do I always feel like I'm waiting for some part of the year that always seems so far away? I'm waiting for proper piking weather. Not the depths of winter, I'm not wishing the sun away so soon, I would just like it a bit cooler, the odd bit of rain to keep some water in the rivers every now and again. For the last month or two it's been like a proper summer, there's been no rain and the river has been that low I keep expecting to see the pike beached somewhere and the spiky dorsal of the perch cutting the water every where I look.  Anyway, finally after weeks and weeks we had some rain, and boy did it rain. We had a bit of hurricane Bertha smack us right in the face, tail end my arse. For a full on hour it rained so hard even the streets around me on top of a hill were flooded. The 20mph speed restricting chicanes on the road created something the slalom canoeists would have loved as river rapids raged down the main road. At the bottom of the hill in town cars were underwater, the local tackle shop owner was fishing in the streets and Neil was planning a porte boat session up his street if it got any worse. I also managed to capture a lightening strike on film. The rains cleared, to be replaced by and epic lightning show in the sky. After all that, the river rose, peaked and dropped again over night. Not a sustained flood but at least it got a wash through.

 
I didn't even get on it. I ended working an extra night shift over the weekend and then a mixture of being too busy and not been arsed to get out because of something more important than fishing, of which I will explain later. I did grab a short hour one day midweek when it was cool and another hour another day to do a bit of filming. I decided to knock up a lure video to answer those unanswerable questions. What's your favourite lure? Which lure catches most fish? What's the best lure for pike? and so on. I decided the best answer, a go to lure for me, was the Savage Gear Lowrider. A lure that can often trigger a hit when everything else seems to be failing. A lure that will catch fish so if you have one and you are struggling, whip it out and use it and only it, you will catch. So On that hot day I got on the bank and just filmed me talking for a bit about the lure and you can see that video below if you wish. The day when it was a bit cooler I had a few fish. I had the ultra light rod, a tiny 2 inch kopyto and I was looking for the perch. But me being me though, that meant I ended up with nine pike and a tiny perch. Can't complain, I do like pike.

So a few weeks have passed and I haven't done too much at all. I never really like the full on summer, it's too hot, not piking weather and the banks are either full of other anglers on the popular stretches or an absolute nightmare on the unpopular stretches as there's nine foot of growth everywhere and just walking 50yards takes an hour and 19,000 calories. I sweat enough at work (not cos I work my balls off but because it's already hot) so me working up another sweat for fun is not on my agenda. That's where getting out on the boat with Woody works perfectly for us but to be honest we haven't really done too much. Woody was sorting his engine and so the last couple of times we haven't really gone at it serious and then more recently I've been working or otherwise engaged so not been at all. That needs to change, we need to fish.

So what, apart from sun, work and lack of being arsed on my part has kept me away from fishing? What is so important that I would turn my nose up at a much awaited river running off or a chillaxing session with Woody and Tyke on the boat bagging fish after fish? The other love of my life which I have touched on occasionally though never probably gone in to detail with. I'm a northerner, a Yorkshireman and us proper northern Yorkshire men love rugby league. Flat caps, pigeons, whippets and rugby league. Actually most of that lot isn't so much the case for us Yorkies unless you're from Featherstone and then it's still all of them in that case. Not to be mistaken with the posh southern sport of Rugby Union, this game is played by coal miners, steel workers and anyone who spits and swears for a living. Hang on a minute, like the whippets, all that's changed now too. We have a game fit for TV now with super human athletes who run and bash each other non stop for 80 minutes, with a bit of biff and some cracking entertainment to boot. If you haven't yet discovered it, tune in to Sky Sports on a Thursday and Friday evening (days subject to change because Sky piss us about all the time) and we even make the good old BBC sometime, last weekend being one and weekend after next being another. (Read on)

My other love is Castleford Tigers. A small town team holding our own in the top league. It's like Blackburn Rovers or Huddersfield in the Premier League, with the exception that those towns are probably five times bigger than my tiny town. Ok league isn't anywhere near as big as football and since in the main it is confined to the M62 corridor and Yorkshire and Lancashire there's not a full nation of towns and cities to compete with. Still, it's a tough life kicking it with the big boys like Leeds and Wigan (pah! Wigan. *lolz* We smacked them in the quarter final at their place.) and for the last ten years it's been frigging hard. Relegation, promotion and then relegation again for us to claw back up to the top tear where we've lived 99% of our life. Money comes hard and we've struggled to compete but this season, this season it has been different. We're only kicking ass! We're fecking spanking them all you know. Only a couple of points off the top with a few games to go and in with a chance of winning it. But forget that, at least for now, we're fucking off to Wembley you know! We're fucking off to Wembley!

Last weekend I didn't fish because we had a massive semi final against Widnes Vikings and we cruised it, winning easily and sending my tiny town mental. We've got Wembley fever here and I can't even think about fishing. They say if you are not fishing you are thinking about fishing. Not for me old lad, we're off to Wembley. We're the famous Castleford Tigers and we're off to Wembley! And guess what, guess who we play? We play that big city team, our long time rival, the dirty Leeds Rhinos. The place is going to be packed and this tiny town of mine will be a ghost town. Every man, woman and child will be there, wearing black and amber and singing our hearts out. Come on your 'Ford! Tune in to BBC1 on Saturday 23rd August, wear anything you have that is black and amber and if you haven't got that, yellow or orange will do. Cheer on my boys, the tiny town underdogs against the big city bastards. Be a Cas fan for the day, and I promise you this, you'll be a Cas fan for life afterwards.

Here's a picture of me from the last time I visited the capital.

Video updates.

I just thought I'd share my last few video updates on here just in case any of you lot have missed them. I'm trying to keep them a little bit different each time so it's not just the same thing all the time though eventually I guess it might just be me and Woody catching more fish, and then some more. Where I can though I'll try to keep it fresh if I can manage to be creative enough.

Anyway this first video was posted up to my Youtube page about over a month or so ago and it's just a bunch of pike action shots, slow motions and just general spectacular stuff that happens when pike fishing. It's why I do it.

Next we have one of my best productions to date. Out with Woody on his boat there's a few fish and some few high speed boating fun. A short fast and loud video for those with a short attention span like my kids, and probably most other peoples kids too.

 

Then we have a little video from a few weeks back where I went off on my own to a new bit of water looking for a few fish. I had no idea what to expect as I'd not even scouted out the place before. I was met with a hot day, peace and quiet with a few fish to the ultra light rod and the trusty Kopyto shad.

Finally we have another boat ultra light video with a few more fish caught and a few laughs on top. It won't be a box office smash but it shows what we get up to through the summer while we wait for proper piking weather, not this hot and sweaty crap we have right now. What's all that about?