Ian, I'm sure Jim would gladly help other pike anglers if they asked for advice on venues, baits, rigs etc but the point he's trying to make is that big pike are becoming rarer (Chew Valley aside) due to increased angling pressure, poor handling etc so it's in the best interests of the big fish for the location of big pike captures to be kept quiet, otherwise that venue where a big pike was caught would certainly see increased angling pressure which would be detrimental to the big fish.
However, I also see your point of view regarding non informative catch reports (big pike captures not included of course!) from NESA members (there's usually a few in the shore angling reports) where they only serve as an ego boost to the person who has written the report then followed up by several replies of nice fish mate, cracking catch pal blah blah blah zzzzzzzz.
Cheers for that mate, and you will see on your thread where I leave an open question about if you wanted to catch a pike on a lure, my thinking was your a bass/sea angler wanting to catch a pike on a lure for the first time or for the species challenge where I've assisted in the past. Again I could help!
As for the ego thing, I went through my thread starts and most of the catch results the venue was given and I was promoting the venue to help others. Most of which are not pike but you have given the reasons in your posts.
To lighten this thread up a bit, I once went to a water I'd done some homework on. We got there and met the owner who took our money. I asked about pike catches and he said it's been poor, but his words there is a big ******* in here. He left and we fished on.
The next day we were there and he came round and asked how we had done. I said we had blanked. He just took the money and left. Little did he know I had that big ******* at well over 20lb. They had a match on the lake and one of the match lads caught a jack and was mocking us pike anglers for struggling. That's pike angling, not many people know about the big ******* and after the match lads went I had 3 pike.