FAS - taking the "young en" piking

After missing the weekend session, i could not wait to take my gandson for a quick hour and half on Irlam old course

this will probably be my last session here until the weather really gets cold and takes a grip, action was a bit slower for dad on mags tonight 4 bites and 2 fish banked one a decent roach and the other the pike livebait,

My second rod had worms and prawn, baited over dead mags, hoping for the large perch to switch on, espcially as dusk would be approaching, but alas no action,

Well on the pike rod, we started with a dead perch, nothing, then within 20min of putting the roach livebait on we had a run, a definate jack bite...... we struck into the fish and my grandson with my support got it to the net with a tail walk or two,

A nice 3lber was his first ever pike, he was a bit scared on the handling thus the not so good pic, for me i enjoyed getting the hooks out without incident, but it wasnt easy

due to the size of the roach i had to lip hook and flank, now the lip was hooked with the single, so the fish would be deeper down the throat than a tail hook up, again i was surprised to see the single did not have a hook hold and the single had reversed out of its mouth, strange eh the back hook is in but the front hook is not, unless it was taken tail first???

i will keep my eye on this, the other theory is the single hook does not get hold on strike at all?,

Small Jacks in my view are more difficult to unhook if it is lower down the mouth/throat - holding under the gills and moving the mouth towards you does not open the mouth automatically,

Now i have used gags and will not again now i understand the danger to the pike, but to keep the mouth open i used small pliers reversed,just the keep it open without pressure - the gag puts far too much pressure on the jaw it doesnt hold open it forces it open, that is dangerous,

so i snipped the single hook off so it wasnt flying around, with a little help from the reversed pliers  the treble was removed and fish went back safely,

so far so good.