Saturday 15 November 2008

Tough Going

More wind, more rain, will it ever stop?

I got the boat out this week, what with the rivers being in the fields again, and found it quite hard going. Two days away and just one fish each day, a fourteen pounder on the first day which took a replicant and a 15.10 the second day which took a deadbait. Both fish came right at the end of the day when I had resigned myself to a blank so it just goes to show, never give up hope.

There are always things to learn of course and this trip improved my understanding a little more. The bait fish have started to shoal up quite tightly. I found a lot of shoals in deepish water, 40-50ft, and the sounder showed that there were obvious big shapes hanging just off them. Pike in such circumstances are often easy to catch but not this time. I fished over the shoals and over the pike time and time again but got nothing so what was going on?

I decided that the problem was with the bait fish. The shoals were constantly on the move, never settling in one area and i expect the pike were on the move with them. Usually, by the time I had got the boat anchored over a shoal of fish, they were gone, hundreds of yards away up the lake.

The two fish I did catch had full stomachs and were in excellent condition. No signs of handling damage and very very fit. the bigger of the two in particular fought like stink and had I lost it, I would have been convinced I had lost a twenty pounder. I'll give that lake a miss for a few weeks I think, until the baitfish settle down a bit.

Here's a picture of a rather nice perch I caught on a local lake the other day. As you can see, it took a slider.

1 comment:

All about the grab said...

What a fantastic looking perch and a greedy bugger by the looks of it.