In Full Swing

The season's really under way now that we've reached October and guess what - it's raining! I squeezed a few days in before the rains came, two more in the big glacial water and two on the river and I'm pleased with the results so far. The pike on the big lake are playing hard to get just now, I had four on the first day to around eight pounds and two on the second, both double-figure fish with the best going 14.02

Interestingly they aren't very keen on livebaits, with only one fish, the smallest of the lot, coming to a bait. The rest took a variety of lures with replicants being the most successful (not surprising since I used them the most). I was pleased to get two fish on jerkbaits, one on a manta and the other on a slider. The slider was hit really hard by another fish which I mysteriously failed to hook though.

The river fishing has been truly fascinating so far. I discovered that I can catch livebaits easily at the stretch I want to fish for pike so bait isn't a problem and unlike the lake fish, the pike really do want a livebait. The first day produced a bumper catch (for the river) of five pike with two going over ten pounds with the biggest being a twelve pounder.

Day two was much more difficult. The weather was on the turn with a strong wind bringing frequent showers over all day long. It was noticeably colder too and these conditions meant that I had to spend much longer than I want to catching livebaits. I then returned to the swim where I had taked the five fish but they didn't want to know this time and after a few hours I gave it best and moved on. I chose a swim with a slow current and set up the planer float to fish a live roach.

Nothing happened for quite a while and as the day was wearing on and the light fading, I started to pack away my gear. Then I realised that the float was no longer there, wound down and pulled into a very hard fighting pike. It tailwalked back and forth across the river several times and on one occasion when I had it in the net, it actually jumped out again and carried on fighting.

It was quite dark when I landed the fish and the rain was started to fall heavily so it was a case of a quick weigh-in followed by two quick photos before the camera got too wet.

15lb 15oz - and you won't see a better looking pike anywhere!