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This articulated fly tied by Danish Sune Andersen was inspired by the European water vole

Look! It’s a bird... It’s a plane... It’s the Flying Flash Carpet! A pike fly out of this world.

Fly fishing for pike certainly seems to have been a popular in central Europe during the late middle ages

I recently reviewed the book "Flyfishing for Coarse Fish" by British Dominic Garnett, and noted in that review how untapped a resource these fish are. This book is the US counterpart of Garnett's book - and then some!

In the European pike fly fishing community Dutch Ad Swier is a well known profile, probably best known for his beautiful art, often depicting the toothy predator which this book is about, but also for his writing and engaging in the community, in shows and activities around fly-fishing for pike.
For this reason it's no surprise that he has managed to gather an impressing array of pike fly tyers and have had them submit pike fly patterns and stories for a book such as this.

A crazy foam construction that looks very little like a mouse and a lot like an opera house

Inspired by some large, colorful saddles and an ordinary feather duster, this pike fly is voluminous and voluptuous, easy to tie and easy to cast.

Large and gaudy flies for pike and musky. All our best pike patterns and how to tie them.

It's nice sometimes to bump into a different book, and Dutch Ad Swier's pike book is different.
Pike books are not common, and books from the Netherlands are not common, but what makes this book really stand out is the author's very personal approach to the whole affair: the pike, the gear and the flies, the writing, the illustrations and the approach to fishing altogether.

The first word that comes to mind is pragmatic.
And I like pragmatic!

Not one of Martin Joergensen's usual pike flies. For that it is way too complex and has too many tying steps and too many different materials. He doesn't like complex pike flies. "I spend dozens of minutes tying one, and a pike spends seconds shredding it!" he says.

Two tails are better than one says Mark Dysinger, who is an avid pike angler. In this, his latest pattern, he has created a large and very lively fly for the mossy green predator of the lakes. And it can tempt a bass too...

Mark Dysinger presents a pair of pike flies that can take a beating - the Prince of pike and the Poxy Bunny. Large, durable and easy to tie as pike flies should be. Mark has used them extensively for his own Northern pike fishing

Pike fishing requires large flies, and they are not nice to cast! GFF partner Martin Joergensen has improvised over some well known salt water patterns and made them into a fly, which is light, large, easy to tie and still acceptable to cast on a 7 weight rod.

How about a fly which has caught tuna in the tropics, salmon and trout in Russia, cod in Denmark and a number og other fish in Global destinations? Claus Bech-Petersen's simple Tinsel Fly is such a fly. Read Claus' article with history, patterns and fishing methods.

During a recent gettogether with some Danish flyfishers I hauled out some of my cod flies. One of them was this one - The Rocket. They were quite excited about the fly - first of all because it's a light tube fly, second because it's very durable. They saw in it not only the cod fly that I had made, but also a pike fly, a fly for pike perch and a universal fly for all kinds of deep fishing for larger fish.

Deep in my heart, I prefer stream flyfishing for trout. However, Holland has precious few trout class streams, and next to none fishable trout, so most of my local flyfishing is for warmwater species. In fact all of my stream trout fishing happens abroad, mainly in the States, as well as in Belgium and Denmark.

This amazing fly is ment for pike. It's caught a lot already on the line of originator Morten Valeur who states that this is one of the few flies he can truly call his own.

On the surface the job was simple, come up with some pike flies for my friend's teenage son's trip to Canada, something small enough that a teenager can handle and still tempt a pike.

A large muddler pattern for big fish. This one has caught both pike and baby tarpon.