First pike of the new year

2007, here at last, and an opportunity to get out on a big lake and catch some pike. Well that was the plan anyway. I took the boat out on 1st and 2nd of January, hoping to reproduce last year's result when I managed a twenty pounder on my first day out. First day out this year produced a big fat blank, not a run, not a pull, nothing. It was an awful anticlimax as I'd hardly had any blanks there in the first three months of last year. All the usual marks were fished and there just weren't any fish there. The weather was mild - too mild but it was also windy and very very wet. I took this picture of a boat crusing about on the lake - there wasn't anything else to do!
I took a temperature reading and was disappointed to find that the surface temperature of the lake was a balmy 7.3 deg C. At this time of year it should be 5 maximum and the lake should have turned over by now.



Day two was a little better. I decided to fish some new areas to try and search out the fish and did actually boat a few. Two jacks and a 15.12 to be precise, there's a pic of the 15 below. Interestingly, most of the action came in a short spell of forty minutes or so late in the afternoon. I'd had a jack earlier in the day and moved into a spot I'd had my eye on for a while. Shortly after starting there I picked up another jack on a smelt. I unhooked that, put on another smelt and cast it out to the same spot. Ten minutes later it was taken again and I wound down for the strike. Unfortunately I struck into thin air, missed the fish cleanly and lost the bait. On with another smelt and I whacked it out again. A little while later I hooked a good fish on a black bulldawg but after a few slow, heavy kicks, it threw the hooks - nothing was going right. The hooks looked ok but I decided to touch them up with the sharping stone anyway. Just as I started to do this, the smelt rod was away again and after a very hard scrap, landed the fifteen pounder. As I removed the hooks from this, I spotted the smelt I had lost earlier sticking out of its throat! Ah well, I guess that was the one that didn't get away, in the end.
I stayed on for a couple of hours after dark as for a change, the wind had dropped and it was a nice evening. I was amazed to see a bat flying around. A BAT on the second of January! This weather is just crazy.