Here We Are Again Then

Hello again readers, it's been a long hot summer but the predator is winding up again now at last. There's been very little fishing for me since June. Mrs Edwards and I have had a long holiday followed by a short holiday but that's all over now, the rods have been dusted off and I've already cast a line for old esox.

I've cast more than one line in fact, I've probably cast around four thousand times in the last week - but it's been for poor reward. Kevin and I spent five days at the opening of pike fishing at a large trout water. It was lure only and on a very restricted basis, or so we thought, so our hopes were high. The first week in September is early for pike fishing though, the weather can still be warm and bright if you're unlucky - we were unlucky!

We had five days of unbroken sunshine with hardly a cloud to be seen. The wind was strong at times and though this would have had a cooling effect on the water, and would be likely to improve our chances, it didn't help that much. What's more, the management decided that all the boats were to be made available for piking and not just the five they had originally intended so there was far more competition from other anglers than we expected.

I'll not give you a blow by blow account, it would bore the socks off you but suffice to say we only caught three double figure pike in the week along with some zander. I had the biggest at 16lb 6oz with the other two to Kevin. The pike's behaviour led us to believe that they were there ok but they weren't really interested in feeding. We had occasional bumps and bangs on our lures, several follows from pike and two fish that I had lightly hooked and which fell off on the way in. Of the three we caught, two were so lightly hooked that the lure fell out in the net and we didn't need to unhook them at all.

 It wasn't all bad. We both caught personal best zander, mine going 8lb 2oz and Kevin's being the first zander he had ever seen let alone caught and we were treated to a spectacular wildlife event when an osprey swooped out of the sky in front of us and snatched a fish from the lake. I wasn't fast enough with the camera to actually get that but I did get a few pics of the bird in flight, albeit at range.