Brenig Bruiser

After the modest results that Chew produced for me I was hopeful of something a little better from Brenig. The fishery was open for pike fishing for five days and I'd booked three days on there, the first two and the last one. I'd fished Brenig before, several times but as yet, the pike had eluded me. 2006 saw a couple of good fish hooked but they came unstuck so I was getting a little desperate for a pike, and a good one, from this venue.

Brenig's 1200ft above sea level so it's a cold place but the water is crystal clear and the pike are beautifully coloured. Grant was to be my boat partner for the first two days and dave Kelbrick for the last one. There is only a small head of fish at Brenig and there aren't many marks that hold them so it's a bit of a "Le Mans"start for those in the know. Grant and I loaded the boat up as quickly as we could and got moving as soon as we had the nod from the fisheries staff but we weren't actually the first boat away. Fortunately though we had what seemed to be a fast engine and soon caught up with the other boat. Both boats arrived at the hotspot together and we all dropped anchors. We were a little closer to each other than we would have liked but it was friendly enough as the banter started to flow. A third boat came and joined us after a few minutes and we all began thrashing the water to a foam. This is a really good mark and it was inevitable that a good fish would come from it on the first day - it was just a question of who would catch it.

IT WAS ME!!!!!

A fish took my rainbow trout pattern replicant on the fourth cast and it turned out to be a beautiful, plump pike of 22lbs 2oz, the first twenty of this winter's campaign. I followed it up with a twelve pounder and a smaller fish, both from a second good mark and went home a happy bunny. Poor Grant didn't catch either on day one or day two, when I added two more small fish to my now growing Brenig tally.

The fishing at Brenig seemed to get very hard very quickly though. Day five was almost a total disaster for everyone. Just a few tentative hits to me, none of which I hooked, and a very small pike to Dave which turned out to be the only fish caught that day.

Here's to next year.