A pike followed my lure to the boat and just... left. Why, and what now?
A follow is a strike whose trigger never fired: the fish committed to the intercept but your lure never gave it the "prey is escaping or dying" cue — usually because the retrieve stayed metronome-steady. The fixes are all rhythm violations: speed up hard (counterintuitive but deadly — fleeing prey triggers pursuit), snap the rod sideways, kill the bait dead, or roll into an oval or figure-8 at the boat before lifting out. And mark the spot: a follower is a located, feeding-curious pike, worth resting for twenty minutes and returning with a different lure class entirely.
The full story
This answer is one piece of a longer lesson — setups, diagrams and the reasoning behind it.
More questions about How it strikes
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