And has been fishing on lock dirt since he was a kid.

How's the weather working just like generations of his family before him?

It was a long time ago, but he still remembers that momentous day 20 minutes, once in a lifetime catch, weighing almost £38.

So he called that fish on a on a couple sport hopper school traces that he met Our wire.

There's no such thing as Flora Caravan or anything like that, but you stole the actual fish.

I seem deficient.

That speaks when I've ever seen that there has been a bigger ones compared with an average sized pike.

Danny's father caught a Goliath, but his fish would be dwarfed by the £90 pike that were allegedly found in these waters.

It's one of those giants that I'm here for.

Do you control the rpm?

Normally on those bodies, Danny's father called his fish, using the method known as trolling, where lures are pulled through the water behind a moving boat.

Even travelling at this speed, Pike will have no trouble chasing down and attacking my lure.

A lot of things to pay attention, Thio one is speed one is the death.

Why don't want to do is run into ward, and suddenly it's too shallow.

I risk hanging up my Louis on the bottom and losing them.

I'm also alert to one of these rods, suddenly just bending round, and that will be that will be officially one of those.

Louis Pike are formidable predators.

They're sensitive.

Lateral line organ picks up even the faintest vibrations in the water.

Special grooves in front of their eyes work like rifle sights, enabling them to judge distances on zero in on fast moving prey.

There's a lot of structure down there, which could be weed beds.

I think some of it could be rocks.

There's little sign the signs of water, probably small fish as well.

It really is a perfect spot.

My monster hunting career has taken me around the world.

But this challenge is different in many senses.

This investigation is it's a lot more personal.

It's the fish that sort of launched me, I suppose, on my big fish career.

That was the first big fish like holes little backwater off the Author River store in Suffolk, southeast England.

I started fishing when I was about seven years old.

But for the first few years, even the thought of catching up like terrified me.

Then one day when I was about 13 I convinced myself I was ready to fish for a pike.

The river store was less than a mile from my house.

I've heard that were big fishing.

I chose a small pool connected to the main river channel with lots of weed.

Perfect cover point to lie in white on each caste.

I held my breath.

The strike was so powerful, I knew it could only be one thing.

It's almost sending a shiver up my spine.

I could almost feel the presence of that fish.

It's almost instinctive fear you get when you when you look at it, there's just something about looking in the face of a pint for the first time.

I mean, that was That was an amazing day for me.

Ah, half a century has passed, but getting back on the trail has reignited my childhood obsession.

Only this time I'm after something a lot bigger.

Yes, thatwas within a couple of minutes of putting the little hat.

Very good.

Oh, yes.

Here we go.

Not a giant, but a good start.

How about that?

There we go.

Lock dirt bike.

That's my first Irish pike of any descriptions.

That's that's quite amazing.

That's, uh, but a seven or £8 fish.

Something like that.

Quite something to catch something on this water, though.

I mean, that is such an expensive water.

I wasn't really expecting Great deal.

The biggest pike ever found here was said to be 10 times this.

Wait.

So I've got some work to do.

Lots to see that swim off strongly to grow bigger, potentially to grow into something really big at this time of year.

When the water is cold, Big Pike follow their prey down into the deaths.

So I target older, deep areas.

I confined.

But after that promising start, six hours passed without a single take to improve my chances of catching a monster pike in this lot, I could do with some more information.

I've arranged to meet the scientist who carried out the recent research on the Lakes Pike Population Professor Stefano Mariani is the lab where we can talk on essentially D n.

A change is Professor Mariani and his team spent three years sampling pike DNA in Lakdar GE.

The first thing we found, which was definitely what we didn't expect, was the fact that not all Irish pike what's conforming to the same type of group.

There were two genetic units of Pike significantly, the Virgin from one another.

It turns out, the pike that arrived here from mainland Europe 10,000 years ago evolved into something quite different from all other pike.

But frustratingly, Stefano also reveals that those super sized pike that were once here have almost certainly bean wiped out.

Pike were deliberately killed because they were believed to be a really serious threat to the populations of trout and salmon.

And there is a well established notion in Ireland that Pike is an invasive species.

So basically we're talking.

Just a few years ago, a pike were being basic, basically netted and killed.

Absolutely, this species has consistently, for a long time being considered a villain, so genetically unique giants that evolved over 10,000 years were practically wiped out in less than 50.

But Stefano agrees that the conditions that created these monster pike could have happened in other places.

To my bet, would be areas that are undisturbed or relatively undisturbed and areas similar to what Island Waas and that could harbor groups of bikes that have been isolated for a long time from any of the pike.