Scottish Waters and Pike lures

This is a continuation of the spinnerbait thread and the subject got me thinking. Yes, I do occasionally think....

I once had a theory about why lure fishing for pike appeared to be 'simpler' for many folk in English/Southern/Irish/Swedish waters because believe me, many have come up here with their usual banker lures for open days on Menteith and the like and come away with their tails between their legs wondering where it all went wrong and it's not that I think they did anything wrong at all. I think it might be the Scottish waters themselves and not the anglers or their lures.
You've heard me say before many time that the number of species up here is limited right....now bear with me for a bit.
99% of Scottish waters contain either Pike, Perch and Brown Trout or a mixture of the 3 and very occasionally the odd introduced species. So think about it like this. Pike up here are used to seeing the same thing day in, day out and cannibalism is very high up here but in many Southern waters, you might have literally dozens of species, all living in the same water and the pike in these waters get to see and eat them all.
Could it be that Scottish Pike are simply harder to 'fool' visually, while your English/Southern/Irish/Swedish Pike are more open to trying fish that often look different, move differently, taste different, behave differently and as such have become accustomed to trying 'everything on the menu' as it were??
I'm not suggesting English/Southern/Irish/Swedish etc. Pike are stupid. Could it be their life-experience is, how shall we say this, their downfall, while Scottish pike, are less visually accustomed to different species and as such, that has become their unwitting salvation from the lure angler??
To use an analogy, it's a bit like the child that only knows beans on toast. By the time they've grown up, their tastes are limited and they're far less open to trying new foods, while the child that is fed a bit of whatever Mum and Dad is eating, grows up to be far less fussy about what is put on their dinner-plate.
Am I making sense here??
So while many anglers will tell you in 'Pike and Predators' and suchlike that 'This Lure' or 'That Lure' will take any water apart, could it be that they're basing their 'facts' on the waters they're fishing and the species contained within those waters?
2 examples that spring to mind in Scotland that go with my theory are Loch Lomond and Castle Loch/Loch Maben. Both have enormous numbers of species contained within them and both are excellent lure waters. It seems the pike in both of these waters will literally try anything, while on some Highland waters, the pike almost seem to scoff at lures. They'll often come zooming from all directions to have a look but actually take it. Now that's something else. Myself and a mate once spent a day observing possibly 100s of pike following lures and zooming in to see what had landed in 'their' bay. On several occasions there must have been more than a dozen pike coming from all directions to see what had just made this 'chink' sound. In my case, it was a Fox Bucktail. We tried many lures over the day and again again, the same thing happened. Fish would zoom in, very often at high speed and then stop dead about 6 feet from the lure and then just look at it, before idling away. By the end of the day we had barely broken into double figures with actual fish caught.

What do you think??

.....Regards.....Andy.....

seems plausible, i have only fished up your way once and that was with lures in the sea(at jon o groats and caught too).
(drove round lomond and kipped there but didnt fish same goes for other waters in the vicinity)
?I can relate to that though with some of the more acidic moorland waters i know of, plenty of follows followed by the six foot quivering stand off.

off the top of my head i think i have done best on those waters (and best is relative, probably still in single figures per year in fish on lures from these waters) on dark natural patterns like trout imitations or dark blues and blacks
the gaudy types like firetiger draw lots of inquisitive fish but no takes .

Grand. I know you're quite a lure collector/hopeless case and if you can see where I'm coming from, then maybe there's something in it. Hmmmm. I've slept on it and I'm still sure it's a plausible theory myself.

......Regards......Andy......

I'll tell you what I think Andy.

If you'd had some fresh deads to wobble you'd have bagged up.

Sounds a grand theory Andy but that's all it is. I just hope that anyone reading it will not leave their lures at home the next time they go to Scotland.

Regards

Andy Webster

LOL...you're not wrong Andy. If I thought I could keep myself going on frozen 5 inch perch throughout the year, I'd probably wobble all the time....hic!.....
Actually I put my theory to the test on Pike and Predators and it's actually not been torn to bits....yet...150 reads later, so maybe I'm not so mad after all. You can have a read at the replies and my latest update here...

Click HERE for P&P thread

.....Regards.....Andy.....

it makes perfect sense to me... well done andy

I think youre right. A pike mind is probably not very complicated and its reaction pattern is inherited through thousands of years.A strike cost the pike a great deal of energy and it dont waste that on things that are not eatable.If you tie up a bolt on your line you wouldnt get a reaction from any pike no matter where you were because the movement and shape doesnt match any of the pike inherited movement pattern which is tells the pike it is food.
It is likely that pike in waters with small amounts of fish species to eat the pike there have less of these patterns "downloaded" in their brains.And a result of that less strikes towards other movements.
A pike from a lake or river with many species of any kind both under and over the surface has many more these patterns that trigger a strike. So I guess many more lures would work in these waters.
This is my thoughts about the subject.