Busy Busy Busy...

 Haven't had much time to update the blog recently, there always seems to be something that needs doing. I've managed to get out fishing though, and I've had a few fish too although there's one part of my pike fishing which continues to deteriorate. I've visited several trout waters already this season and almost without exception the experiences have been bad ones.
The latest failure occurred at Chew. I haven't got any good dates at Chew this year, they are all end of block days and all individual dates at that. That means a round trip of nearly 400 miles for just a single day's fishing and so when I can, I'll be combining my days at Chew with days elsewhere.

I was to share my boat at Chew with Kevin but he could only get the one day off work so I arranged to meet him there and I set off a day early and found some good fishing on the way there on another venue. It was only an afternoon's fishing but by staying mobile and using just lures I covered a lot of water and had quite a good session picking up seven pike, all of them over ten pounds with the two biggest going 16lb 9oz and 19lb 13oz. The fish all took big soft plastics fished deep and slow and apart from the seven fish I caught I also lost three that shed the hook. One of these I saw hit the lure in the margin, I would guess it was around sixteen pounds but another one felt much heavier. I never got a look at this one as it stayed deep and wouldn't come in but I'm pretty sure it would have been twenty-plus.

Next day we fished at Chew as arranged. I can't really report very much because not very much happened. I had a herring picked up within the first five minutes of fishing but it was dropped before I had the chance to set the hooks and that was it, not another run between us. Two decent fish were caught, a twenty-five and a twenty-eight pounder but apart from that everyone I spoke to just reported a jack or two or nothing at all.

Kevin set off home after his day at Chew but I wanted to catch some more fish so I spent the next day at the other venue and made good use of my lures once again. There were a lot of other people pike fishing this time and the competition made it a bit harder but I managed another four double-figure pike with the best fish a creditable 20lbs 4oz, I was well pleased with that. I like to try to get at least one lure-caught twenty pounder every season and now that little task is under my belt I can breathe a little easier.

One saturday it was time for Mrs Edwards and I to make our annual pilgrimage to the Lake of Menteith. This was a lure-only day organised by the PAC but once again my trout water hoodoo struck. We caught fish alright, lots of them in the 1-7lb bracket but nothing went anywhere near double figures. Mrs Edwards had the best fish of the day in the shape of a fine rainbow trout which took a Rapala Super Shad Rap in goldfish pattern. Ah, that lure takes me back!