Natural-born killers

PILAR — Only on the Rio Grande can the wind blow from four directions at the same time.

And when you’re trying to cast a fly the size of a chihuahua into such a swirling wind, your vocabulary tends to get, well... it gets colorful. Mine does, anyway.

I’m a trout man. But in February when the water’s 35 degrees forget about trout fishing. Now’s the time of year for going after northern pike. That’s right: northern pike in New Mexico’s Rio Grande.

Natives of Canada and the Upper Midwest, northern pike were planted in reservoirs along the Rio Grande in Colorado in the 1960s. The story goes that the fish slipped through the dams and migrated down the Rio Grande into New Mexico. Slow-moving sections of the Rio Grande at the Orilla Verde National Recreation Area near Pilar are prime spots to find the sleek, toothy predators of the north; if you’re looking for a real challenge, try catching one on a fly.

A pike fly is nothing like a dainty little trout fly. It’s a gaudy monstrosity of a thing, 4 to 10 inches long, that you sink below the surface to imitate a wounded baitfish or other aquatic critter to entice a strike.

Pike are slender and strong, ranging from 18 to 40 inches in length in the Rio Grande, so they require heavier gear than trout tackle — a 7-, 8- or 9-weight fly rod and a 10- to 20-pound-test monofilament leader. At the end of the leader you’ll need a shock tippet, which is a wire or braided section of line tied to the fly, for a bite-guard because of the fish’s razor-like teeth.

You’ll also need plenty of patience, especially if, like me, you’re used to the subtleties of trout fishing.

There’s nothing subtle about a pike, explained one of my fishing partners for the day, Ed L’Heureux , as we were rigging up our rods last week.

“Think of a lion going after a wounded gazelle,” he said. “I think that’s why red works so well. It looks like blood.”

L’Heureux is the manager of High Desert Angler in Santa Fe and an expert on catching pike on a fly. An expert is exactly what I needed. I’m no slouch when it comes to trout fishing, but to be honest, I’m a frustrated goof when it comes to pike. I’d tried it twice before and hadn’t landed a single one. Pike behave so differently from trout they had me befuddled. I had some old trout habits to break if I was going to catch a pike. I wasn’t optimistic but L’Heureux showed me you can teach even this old dog some new tricks.

Predator and prey

Pike are mysterious fish, always around but seldom seen in the Rio Grande except during the cold months of late winter when the water is low and clear.

Pike lie at an ambush points in slow, almost still, water waiting for a smaller fish to swim by, L’Heureux explained. An ambush point could be a rock, log or other structure it can hide behind.

“You’ll usually find them adjacent to mud,” he said. “It just seems to be where they are. The maybes as to why that is, it’s kind of a mystery. But that’s what I like about pike fishing, it’s mysterious .”

They’re a mysterious fish, but if you look hard enough you can spot them in the water with the help of polarized sunglasses.

L’Heureux recommends finding a perch on top of a rock on the shore so you can look down into the water to catch a glimpse of one lying in ambush. It will appear as a still, sticklike shadow in the water.

When a pike spots its prey — usually a small baitfish — it slowly sidles into position behind it and stalks it for a while before gobbling it down with one quick strike. If you spot a pike following your fly, speed up your retrieve to imitate a fleeing fish. It can trigger the pike’s impulse to attack.

“You want your fly to act like prey that’s suddenly swimming through a bad neighborhood and trying to get out of there,” L’Heuruex says.

If at first

you don’t succeed ...

Pike don’t spook easily. So if a pike doesn’t take your fly the first time, cast a dozen more times at it, and then some more. Sometimes a pike can get plum mad, which is exactly what you want, L’Heureux said.

Pike may not come after your fly just to eat it — sometimes they seem to go after something just because they’re ticked off at the world and they feel like killing something.

With your rod tip pointed down toward your fly in the water, strip in line to retrieve or “swim” your fly back to you. Vary the speed of your retrieves. “Be consistently inconsistent,” L’Heureux says. When a pike strikes, set the hook by pulling on the line, not by lifting the rod tip or you’ll yank it right out of its mouth.

The other day, L’Heureux hauled in a 22-incher in no time. I struggled, as usual.

Over the first several hours, I managed only a few strikes, watched several phantoms follow my fly without taking it and hooked every rock in the stinking river. My other companion , Jim Beneson, owner of Stonefly Custom Fly Rods in Santa Fe, also wasn’t having much luck. He, too, is a trout man and new to pike fishing.

As the swirling Rio Grande wind rose to a fever pitch in the afternoon, I was getting grouchy and about ready to call it quits. I mumbled cusses at the wind that would make even a sailor blush.

Beneson, who is a more mild-mannered fellow than myself, also spoke out loud.

“Here fishy, fishy,” I heard him say. That didn’t work either.

It was growing late in the day, but I rallied my senses to give it one more try. I crossed the river and cast into what looked like a likely spot: mud on the shore, rocky ambush points and slow-moving , slack water.

After several casts, finally, the long, slender shadow of a pike appeared slowly stalking my fly. I sped up my retrieve and in a silver flash the fish hammered my fly and I set the hook with a tug on the line.

I finally reeled one in. It wasn’t too big, maybe 20 inches or so, but the skunk was over. The jinx was lifted.

As I plucked the fly from the pike’s alligatorlike jaws, I looked into its expressionless, black and yellow eye. I felt like I was holding some primordial creature that would eat me if it were big enough to do so.

Holding the fish in the water, I thought of stories I’d heard about pike snatching baby ducks from the surface of the water. These are not nice fish. They’re natural-born killers.

I let the sleek, cantankerous predator go and watched it slip back into the chilly depths of the Rio, disappearing like a snake in the grass.

Yeah, I like pike, I thought. I’m a reformed trout man — at least for now, until the dog days of late winter are over. If you go ... Orilla Verde National Recreation Area is located 50 miles north of Santa Fe on N.M. 68 at Pilar and the intersection of N.M. 570. The U.S. Bureau of Land Management charges a $3 dayuse fee for parking. High Desert Angler, 435 S. Guadalupe, offers full-day guided fly-fishing trips for pike at $275 for one person and $375 for two people. The fly shop also rents rods and sells tackle suitable for pike. Call 988-7688 .