Pike Fishing UK

The Big Switch

2012-01-25T11:19:00.000-08:00

After the last report what do you think we went and did next? Well unsurprisingly Denis and I went back to the same place to try and do the same thing. It didn't work of course, someone had thrown the big switch, conditions were totally different and the pike were not there in numbers. We arrived at dawn and started lashing the water to a foam with our lures but just had one fish apiece, a sixteen pounder to Denis and a 17.13 to me and by mid-morning we moved on. We spent most of the rest of the day exploring a new venue, something I've done a great deal of this winter and while it was a very long walk, which took its toll on my poorly knee, we did like the look of what we saw.

Next morning we arrived before first light and were surprised to be apprehended by a bailiff before we'd even taken our gear out of the car - now that's keen! He checked our tickets which were all in order and he told us that there had been a serious problem with foreign anglers poaching the fishery in recent weeks so he was being extra vigilant. If only all bailiffs were as good as that.

We stumbled down the bank to the waters edge through grass that was white with hoar frost and we both managed only with great difficulty to get our bank sticks into the frozen ground. This was the hardest frost I'd seen all winter and it came as quite a surprise after the recent mild conditions. The water was low and very clear and I didn't hold out much hope when the sun came bursting over the horizon into a cloudless sky. By eleven o'clock we were both still fishless and there were absolutely no signs of fish life so we called it a day. Best to wait until the conditions were just right again.

It's been quite a while since I got the boat out and since I was keen to give the engine a run I decided that I would go afloat this week and see if I could snag a pike or two. The lake's been fishing very badly so I wasn't expecting too much but when I arrived and saw that there were no cars at all parked up I knew it was going to be a tough couple of days. This time last year there would have been four or five anglers out fishing but it seems word has got around - they just aren't having it.

I fished the first day for no reward, dropping into banker swim after banker swim without so much as a twitch on my floats and at the end of it I retired a little despondent. Kevin was due to join me the next day and I was looking forward to that, we don't get to fish together often enough, but I was afraid we would both blank. I didn't sleep well, the rain hammering on the roof of the car saw to that but Kevin arrived bright and early and we were soon anchored up in yet another spot that, over the years, has brought good results.

Dawn broke and before long I spotted a familiar sight making its way across the smooth surface of the lake. It was an otter, the first I've seen here but as regular readers will know, not the first I've seen by a long way. It seems I just can't get away from them these days, that's four different venues I've seen otters this season alone.

We moved on, then we moved on again and again. We spent some time just cruising slowly, trying to find pike or bait fish on the sounder but we found very little and eventually Kevin persuaded me to try a new spot, one I hadn't fished before. It was an inspired choice as within five minutes of casting in had a low double on a mackerel head. We hung around for some time expecting at any moment to pick up another fish but it wasn't to be and eventually we up anchored and moved on once more.

I decided we'd end the day in a familiar swim, one I'd fished quite a few times but one which I never see anyone else fishing. I didn't really expect anything to happen, they just weren't feeding so I got quite a shock when my float dipped and sailed under. The shock only got bigger when I wound down to this fish and the rod stopped dead on the strike - this was a good 'un!

I heaved the fish towards the boat and both Kevin and I strained to see the creature through the crystal clear water. We both gulped when it came into view, thrashing and head shaking as it tried to remove the hooks, yes it was a good 'un alright. I pulled hard and the fish broke surface whereupon Kevin scooped it up at the first attempt. It was hooked on just the one treble, neatly in the scissors and I flicked that out before hoisting the beast up on the scales.

28lbs 4oz. I was so glad I'd made the big switch and got the boat out!

Once in a While...

2012-01-12T05:32:00.002-08:00

I know I moan a bit in this blog. The weather's always wrong or the levels aren't right or something else is giving me a good excuse for not catching. Just once in a while though, it actually all goes right and this past week that's what happened. That said, I got a little help from my friends.

The weather has remained mild but the strong winds and the rain have subsided now. That gave us a choice of where to fish but Denis and I weren't exactly spoiled for choice, we knew where to go. We got there quite early and, having a lot of water to explore we split up. The intention was to fish seperately for the morning and then meet up again at dinnertime and decide what to do next. I chose an area I'd fished before and was surprised to find another angler there when I arrived. He told me he'd had a mid double figure pike and we wished each other good luck as we each went about our fishing.

I dropped a legered sardine into a likely looking spot and didn't have long to wait. The bobbin was off within a few minutes and I pulled a 16lb 14oz pike to the bank. The fish was a bit of a mess I'm afraid, there were scars along its flanks and the bottom lobe of its tail was missing - definite otter damage. I put her back and moved on to another spot. Several spots and several moves later I had had no further action and as it was close to 12 o'clock I rang Denis and packed up to go and meet up with him.

Denis hadn't had anything and we decided to move on to a third place, a short drive away, to see what we could catch there. We had a bit to eat before setting off with our tackle on our backs and yomping across the fields. I left the first choice of swims to Denis and settled into a spot some three hundred yards away, again fishing static deadbaits. Before long the bailiff came by and we had a chat about the fishery and how it was fishing. He said he thought conditions were just perfect and I agreed, after all, that was why we had come here.

The bailiff set off along the bank checking members' licences but after half an hour or so he was back; "There's a chap along there having a bit of pike trouble." he told me, "Every time he hooks a roach a pike snatches it off his line." I didn't need an invite, the deadbaiting had produced nothing so I quickly packed up and set off with the intention of offering to catch this pike for him and get it out of his swim - I'm kind like that. When I got there though, I discovered that I wasn't the only generous soul on the bank, Denis was already there standing next to the roach fisherman - and he had a bent rod in his hand!

I helped Denis land the pike, an upper double, and he told me he's taken it on a lure on his first cast. The roach fisherman wasn't impressed however; "That isn't it," he said, "The pike I've been seeing is bigger." While Denis was unhooking his fish I decided to try to help the old guy out myself and began wobbling a herring through the swim. Nothing happened and before too long Denis had his pike returned and was ready again with his lure. He cast it in and once again he was into a pike.
It seemed it was lures they wanted and that left me with a problem - I hadn't brought any!

I put my hang-dog face on, cadged Denis's only other suitable lure off him and wandered off along the bank before settling in about a hundred yards away and lobbing out the lure. The switch from deadbaiting to lure fishing produced a spectacular result and I took a low double on the very first cast. Second cast the lure was taken on the drop and I landed another sixteen pound fish. Meanwhile Denis was into something much bigger and, dropping back my fish unweighed I went along to help. This pike went 24lbs 8oz, a super fish but the day wasn't over yet.

Over the next two hours before dark we continued to catch pike after pike, all of them over ten pounds and all of them on lures and by close of play when it was too dark to see we had amassed a catch of fourteen fish, five to Denis and nine to me. Two of Denis's fish broke the 20lb barrier and they both weighed 24lbs 8oz (different fish) while I too had a brace with fish of 20lbs 14oz and 23lbs 12oz. We finished the day delighted with our fishing and had a celebratory pint or two in the pub before retiring early for the night, keen for an early start next day.

Next morning we were on the bank before dawn and thrashing the water to a foam with our lures. Denis got off to a flyer with an eighteen pounder and followed it up quite quickly with a fine fish of 21lbs 12oz. I countered with yet another sixteen pounder but horror of horrors, it bit my lure in half! With no more suitable lures between us I set off to the tackle shop to buy some but when I got there I was disappointed. Despite the presence of a fantastic pike fishery right on their doorstep this shop catered only for the match angler. The choice of lures was restricted to a very big lipped rubber Storm lure, more suited to trolling than casting and a handfull of tiny spoons and jigs. I opted for the big one and took it back to the bankside.

First cast with this lure it was grabbed but the fish came unstuck after a few seconds. I cursed myself for not checking the hooks when I realised they were quite small and quite blunt and I replaced one of them with a hook from the damaged lure and touched up the other with a diamond hook sharpener. I was soon into another fish and pulled in yet another sixteen pounder on the new lure but a few casts later I hooked and lost another pike. It seems the profile of this lure wasn't a good one and it was a poor hooker. What's more it was very heavy and had a lumpy action so I was tiring quickly as I was using it.

Denis came down the bank, he'd cast his lure into a snag and lost it so that was it for him. He discounted the idea of buying a lure like the one I had since he could see I was struggling with it and his recent tennis elbow was starting to flair up again. I had a follow on the lure, a big fish, certainly well over twenty pounds but it didn't take and then a short while later I hooked and lost yet another fish.

We decided to call it a day at this and set off to fish the area I fished on the morning of the first day, a place where we knew we could catch on deadbaits. We only had one more pike there though and it turned out to be the same pike I had caught there the day before, the one with half a tail. It seems it wanted to get its own back on me for as I was taking out the hooks it thrashed madly and drove a barbed size four deep into my middle finger of my right hand. The hook was in deep and there was no way it was coming out so that was it for the day. I drove Denis home then took myself off to hospital to get it removed.

Was I bothered? Well after the fishing we had just had, with nineteen double figure pike, five of them over twenty pounds NO WAY!

Backyard Fishing

2012-01-07T02:43:00.000-08:00

Crikey what weather we've had. Back in September they warned that we were going to have yet another severe winter with sub-zero temperatures and snow. What we have had so far is, if anything, worse than that with storm after storm crossing the British Isles flooding the rivers and making it impossible to take the boat out. It seems every river in the country has been on a rollercoaster ride rising fast on minute and then dropping the next and catching the river right in such circumstances is nigh on impossible. My one trip to a river was fruitless, the water was high, coloured and rising and I blanked.

The only alternative has been to fish relatively local waters and take what I could get, which is usually not a lot in northwest stillwaters although I've had fish at least. The water I've been targetting is quite a large one, a reservoir but despite its size (54 acres) I've seen the water level rise by more than six feet over the last two weeks and it is currently quite full with millions of gallons tipping over the overflow. Naturally enough the water has coloured up during the process and this has influenced my fishing style somewhat.

I've managed three trips to this lake, although one of them was curtailed when the weather turned nasty once again and I've had pike every time. The coloured water has led me to fish smelly deadbaits so sardines have been on the hooks each time and of course these have had to be on the bottom where the pike have a better chance of finding them. I've also fished at least one rod very close in each time. Here the water is shallow and the light has a better chance of penetrating the murk down to the bottom. Every fish I've had has come close in, usually just one or two rod lengths out.

Three doubles and a jack have come my way, the biggest weighing 15lbs 15oz. The fish have been well fed but they've not been in the best of condition and in particular two of them have had red sore disease. This is a bacterial infection which is reasonably common in pike which leads to a loss of scales, sometimes in big patches and bleeding. They do recover from it in time.

I've included two pictures of the largest, one of the good side and one of the diseased side.

2011

2011-12-26T14:56:00.000-08:00

Well that's another year over (well almost). Not so much to look back on I guess but I do feel I'm at a turning point with my fishing for a variety of reasons. Recent fishing's been a bit dull really but much of that is weather related while the rest is down to the interference from the festive season.
The Big Lake is still fishing very poorly, Denis and I have managed just two fish between us in the last two trips but I do know of a very big fish that fell to a friend around three weeks ago. The rivers have been up and down like a fiddler's elbow and the one day I chanced it on a river it was far higher than I had hoped, leading to an expected blank.

Time to look back I think, let's review 2011, as far as it goes.

First Quarter
This is generally the time of year when I get some big bags of fish and the biggest pike of the season. 2011 was a let-down in this respect. It was a struggle for many after the severe cold that had frozen even the biggest lakes and rivers and I struggled rather myself. Fish came alright but it was hard and slow and the fish were smaller than usual. Upper doubles came to the boat including a fish over nineteen pounds but there were no twenty pounders and when at last it seemed that things were improving I had to stop fishing and start some work. March, April and May were then abandoned while I earned a few bob and later I discovered that I had missed out rather. It seems that the fish really turned on in late March with many big fish being caught - oh well, c'est la vie!

Second Quarter
With April and May mostly turned over to working (see above) I had a small window of opportunity to catch a big tench. I've been chasing a Northwest double for several years now and I believed it was possible at a new venue which I'd discussed with Denis. I was hopeful that Denis would do some work on this new place while I was still working but he chose to stick with our old water instead - and was rewarded with no tench at all.
When I finished wiork I hit this water hard, fishing five mornings a week, starting at dawn each day and moving from swim to swim until I found a spot where I could catch. When I did catch i was quite pleased with the result and as you may recall I took fish to 9lb 7oz with a very high average size. Denis struggled for a while but when he broke his duck he did so quite spectacularly, taking a monster of 11lb 12oz!

Third Quarter
Summertime as a quiet time for me. Mrs Edwards is on holiday during the summer as she is a teacher and I choose to spend my time with her when I can. A complicating factor this year was the marriage of my eldest daughter Sarah which took up a great deal of my time what with the organising and so on. After the wedding I took Mrs Edwards away to Madrid for a break then it was back to blighty, she went back to work and I tried for the Colemere bream.
My season on Colemere was more productive than the previous year with a pike, a perch, an eel, two tench and two bream falling to my rods, along with the ubiquitous roach. The bream are all supposed to be in doubles figures but I did manage to catch one of just five pounds. The other bream I caught was quite a different beast though and at a weight of 17lbs exactly it became my pb by nearly two pounds.

Fourth Quarter
I've been quite pleased with this period. I've been out to many new places and found some good areas on the rivers where I believe I'll go on to catch some big pike. Best fish from the new river so far is 18lbs 1oz but I know there are much bigger fish present and I'll keep plugging away until I get one.
Meanwhile, the trout waters have offered mixed results. Blithfield has been very poor all round and I've caught nothing there while my few days on Chew did at least bring a brace of twenties. It's odd that while I've fished at Chew almost every year, and caught a good number of twenty pounders from there, I've yet to break the 25lb barrier. Meanwhile, others break the 30lb barrier sometimes on their first trip!

So Now What?
Three months of the pike season left now as far as I'm concerned and my targets are clear. First and foremost a twenty from the new river is high on my list and I do feel quite confident about it. I still haven't had a twenty on a lure this season yet so that's another one to go for and there are still some trout water days left to fish.
After that I'm going to try very hard for that double figure tench. I have high hopes there after the past season.
I've dropped Colemere. I can't really justify the membership now that they've increased the cost by 50% and after all, I've had the fish I was after. There's another water appeared on the horizon though - watch this space!

Later in the year I also have new pike fishing venues to concentrate on. Like I said, it's all change this year and the likelihood is I'll either have a fantastic year or a totally dull one. That's ok you know, success or failure each in their own way are better than mediocrity!

Better Progress

2011-12-07T07:55:00.000-08:00

Another trip to the new river saw me trying out some new areas in search of the fish. It was quite a walk to reach the spot I fancied so I travelled light, no brolly, no flask and no food. I was going to rely on my woolies and waterproofs to keep the weather at bay and the forecast had warned of strong winds and rain so I knew what to expect. Or at least I thought i did!

My research had suggested I might find some good swims in this area and when I arrived at the riverbank I wasn't disappointed. The fast water upstream had given way to a smooth glide with around 200 yards of slack water along my bank. There were many trees and bushes lining the bank so I couldn't access all of it but since many of those trees lay half on the bank and half in the water they added to the attractiveness for the pike.

The wind was fierce but thankfully it was coming off my back. I had no chair (saving on weight) so was forced to sit on the cold ground until the rain started - that's when I stood up so as not to get too wet. The first swim I tried was the widest one on the stretch with a large slack area just in front of me. I dropped in a legered smelt, put the rod on an alarm and clipped on a bobbin. Five minutes later the bobbin was off and dangling in the wind as line ran steadily from the spool. I pulled into the fish and was treated to a lively scrap before putting the net under a good double figure fish. At 16lb 9oz she was my best fish from the new river and was in superb condition, fat and solid with not a mark on her.

I carefully slipped the fish back and put another deadbait in the same spot before huddling down under the high bank in an effort to shelter from the storm force winds. Half an hour passed with no further action and I decided to try another of the many fishable swims I had available. The next swim produced nothing though and after another half an hour I moved on once more. Swim number three was a tricky one, a bush trailing in the water just to the left and a fallen tree in the river to the right made it a tight spot and the bank was high. It was going to have to be hit and hold tactics here and then netting a fish would be a problem.

I lowered a sardine in just a few feet from the bank in seven feet of water, attached the bobbin and sat back. Two dogs on the far bank took exception to my presence here and stood barking for all they were worth although the roar of the wind sometimes drowned out their noise. I pulled my hood up as the rain grew heavy and watched as they got wet, stupid creatures!

Then the bobbin was off again and my only thought was to hit this fish before it could reach the sanctuary of the fallen tree.

I held hard, not giving an inch but the fish was powerful and the 3lb test curve rod buckled madly in my hand as the pike twisted and turned in the clear water. I prayed that the hooks would hold fast during that initial surge and they did, turning the fish away from the tree and back towards me where it could do little other than wallow, its energy all spent in that first rush. I had to lie flat on my belly to net her due to the high bank and then haul her up. It was good fish but on taking out the hooks which were just in the scissors I could see there was another trace inside her.

Normally I can remove any trace no matter how deep but this one was hopeless. So deep was it that only around four inches of tracewire were showing poking out of the throat along with the swivel. Teasing up the trace I could see I was never going to get this one out and so I left it where it was. The wire on it was feeble, maybe just ten pound bs and the swivel was a cheap barrel swivel. No proper pike angler would use such gear and I wondered how it had got inside this fish. There was no line at all on the swivel so I guess the angler had taken as much care with his knot tying as he had with his tackle selection.

The fish weighed 18lbs 1oz and I took a couple of pics to show you but they turned out a bit odd for reasons I don't quite understand. They were badly overexposed so I've had to darken them a bit but they aren't as I would like.

No more fish on the new river and next day I had a day on the Severn again. This was to be another Severn disappointment with three fish coming to the bank on deadbaits but none of them very big. The biggest just scraped over ten pounds and I'm thinking we should give up on the upper Severn as we're just not finding any better fish.

Just For a Change
Denis and I took the boat out on the big lake this week as well. It was all a bit slow with just a handful of jacks to both of us until late on the second day when I had a nice 16lb 15oz fish, again on a sardine. We had struggled to find the fish and it came as no surprise that no-one else fished the lake at all during those two days - it's obviously not fishing well.
When we did find them it was late on the second day and we couldn't make the most of it. No prospect of fishing another day with yet more gales due so we headed home.

That's ten doubles so far for the season, six of them over 15lbs so things are starting to take shape. If the weather holds out we could be in for some good fish I think!

Slow Progress

2011-11-26T10:31:00.000-08:00

Denis and I have stuck at the rivers determined to find some good fish. It would be easy to get the boat out on the big lake and fish productive areas where we could be sure of latching into some doubles and the odd twenty but that's not what we do. It's easy to stagnate when you find good fishing, milking it for all it's worth and ignoring everything else but then what do you have for the future? ...and what do you have when your good fishing comes to an end?

The other approach of course, the one which many many people take, is to keep an ear to the grapevine and jump in on the going water. Hmm, not much attraction there. So we keep plugging away at likely looking stretches of river until something happens.

Two trips out this week. We had a couple of days on the new river, finding out more and more about it, and a day on the Severn. The new river produced a few fish, a low double to Denis on day one and two doubles to me on day two. We fished two different stretches some fifteen miles apart and found them to be quite different in character. The day one stretch was quite fast with only odd places where a pike might hang out. It poured with rain for most of the day and despite our waterproofs it started to get in.

Day two was a much brighter prospect with clear skies and some sunshine but of course there was always the threat of rising water which we knew would put the fish off. I settled into a swim at first light and had half an hour's lure fishing before dropping a deadbait in. The lures produced nothing despite covering a fish on the far bank which appeared to be rushing a shoal of dace from time to time but it was a different story on the deadbaits.

I packed away the lure rod and dropped in a legered sardine around five yards from the bank. Just five minutes later it was away and I pulled in a hard fighting fish of around thirteen pounds. Unhooked and a quick pic. before putting it back then I put out a second sardine. Once again this was taken within five minutes and I pulled in a fish of similar size. Indeed I'm quite sure it was the same pike once again since it didn't fight at all, probably still tired from the last fight.

The day ticked by and no more fish came our way despite fishing many different swims. It's becoming noticeable even this early that the fish in this river feed early but then don't seem to show later in the day. We'll be back there in the coming weeks I have no doubt.

Later in the week we had a trip to the Severn, to the same stretch where I fell in last week, though not to the same swim. This part of the river is baffling. There are two text book swims which look like they should hold some good pike but so far all we've had is jacks and so it proved on this occasion. I had all the fish, one on a lure and two on deadbaits but the largest would only have weighed seven pounds or so. I expect we'll stick at it for a while yet as there is sure to be something better but it had better put in an appearance soon!

Mermaid Award

2011-11-19T00:56:00.001-08:00

I've been boat fishing for pike for more than thirty five years now. Safety is obviously very important when you're out in a boat and I never, ever go out without my lifejacket on. Now I've never fallen in from my boat so I've never had to put that lifejacket to the test. We never wear a lifejacket when we're bank fishing though do we?

Denis and I went back to the stretch of river I fished last time. I was the driver but we were forced to split up as each of the areas that looked worth fishing only really had enough room for one person to fish. Our plan was to fish from dawn until noon and then move on to another area, staying in touch by phone in case we wanted to change that plan or in case either of us wanted to stay put.

I dropped Denis off close to the feild with a bull in it and drove off to the place where there's a steep climb. Tackle on my back, I scrambled down the greasy slope and was soon set up with two baits in the water. Before long I gave Denis a ring to check that he'd found the swim I'd directed him to and hadn't been gored by the bull and I was surprised to hear that he'd already had two pike. They weren't big fish but they were at least fish.

Time passed slowly and I was starting to nod off when I heard a rustle behind me. It was the bailiff for the stretch and after checking my licence he stayed a chatted for a while. It seemed that the swim I was in was a bit hit and miss, often devoid of pike but that the swim I'd sent Denis to was reliable and held some big ones.

The bailiff left and I called Denis again, he'd had another pike and he was happy to stay there for the rest of the day, I'd made the wrong choice it seemed. Twelve o'clock came and I decided to move on, there was another good looking swim on the stretch just by the bridge and I decided to try there. This was only a short walk from one of the car parks which was nice but the banks were difficult, steep, overgrown and very slippery.

I set up and cast in my two rods. Nothing happened and after a while I stood up for a recast. It was difficult to tell where the riverbank ended and the river began because of the thick vegetation but by the time I realised my mistake it was too late and I was falling into the ten foot deep icy water. I managed to grab the long grass as I went down and clung on as I felt the cold fill my boots and start to climb up my legs. I was in up to my waist but the goretex bib and brace was being surprisingly resistant and the water was slow to fill it up. I heaved at the grass with both hands and luckily my foot found a purchase on something and I hoisted myself back up onto dry land.

I was quite shaken, I don't mind admitting it. The water was cold and dark and the current was strong and better swimmers than me have lost their lives in such situations. I slumped in my chair and pulled off my boots, emptying them out before wringing out my socks, grateful that I was still around to do so.

In time the light went and I packed up the tackle and loaded it into the car. I picked Denis up at the appointed time - he'd had quite a good day with five pike in all, though none of them were very big and we drove home in the dark.
Maybe I'll start wearing that lifejacket on the bank from now on.

Pastures New
After that debacle I had two days on Blithfield and then I managed a couple of days away on my own to a new river.
Blith was a disaster, with no pike caught either by me or by Kevin although we both came close. Kevin hooked a good fish of around 23lbs on a Bulldawg but it threw the hooks at the side of the boat then a few minutes later I hooked an immensely powerful creature which took off like a train. I got this under control after a while only to discover that it was a pike of around 28lbs hooked in the back! I got it boatside and kevin flicked out the hook with his pliers, letting it sink back to the depths.

The new river was a great venue although with lots of walking around looking at swims and lots of time spent talking to people I didn't actually get in much fishing time but I did manage a twelve pound pike on a wobbled dead roach.

I'll be back there in the near future as there are some very big pike to be caught in the area and when i get one, I'll let you know.

Otter Watch UK

2011-11-06T02:28:00.000-08:00

Yes, the way things are going I'll have to change the name of this blog. I see otters in so many places nowadays I'm beginning to think they're following me around. I'm not one of the anti-otter brigade, I like to see them, but I have to conclude that when they put in an appearance the fishing's probably over for the day.

I had a two-day trip to a stretch of the severn this week and an otter came into my swim both days. This was a new stretch of the river to me and I researched it using the various mapping and aerial photography sites available on the net and I was intent on fishing two big wide bends I had picked out. These websites are a boon to the river angler but there's one thing they can't tell you and that's where the flow is in the river. Sometimes it's best to fish the inside of a bend but sometimes the outside is better - you can't tell until you actually see it.

I arrived at dawn on day 1, loaded up the gear onto my back and walked to the inside of the first bend. It was a very long walk and I was disappointed to find, when I got there, that this was one of the awkward bends with all the current on the inside and none on the outside of the bend. I fished for a couple of hours with a bait very close in in the slackish water close to the bank and another cast well across, keeping the rod high to keep the line off the surface. Nothing happened though and I moved on mid-morning.

I yomped back to the car where I loaded it up then drove round to the other side of the river where I bumped into a farmhand who was building a big fire. He was surprised to see me, telling me he never saw anglers on that stretch. Hmm, was that good or bad?

This bank was a much shorter walk but a very steep climb down to the river. The bank was very muddy and it was a struggle to get down with all the gear so I had to take my time, the dodgy knees protesting with each downward step. It looked worth it when I got there though, there was a big slack on my bank now and after a bit of plumbing I discovered that it was around seven feet deep - perfect! I dropped in a floatfished whole herring, propped the rod up on the marginal vegetation, switched on the baitrunner on the reel, sat back and waited.

Nothing happened, but before long I saw a splash way out across the river and spotted the telltale line of bubbles that could only mean one thing. It was a small otter, maybe a youngster and it was busy feeding on something it was finding on the riverbed. I couldn't work out just what it was eating but every time it surfaced I could see that it was chewing away on something. I don't think there are crayfish in this stretch of the river so maybe it was finding small fish or some other crustacean. It worked its way off upstream and was gone before long.

I stood up and picked up the lure rod, not worrying too much now about spooking fish close in since lack of action on the close-in rod suggested there was nothing there anyway. I clipped on a slider and flicked it out to the left, three or four twitches and the lure was hit quite hard - but the fish wasn't hooked. Two more casts with the same lure didn't provoke a strike so I changed it for a purple raider and first cast with that, I hooked a fish. It felt like a double figure pike but I never got to see it, it came unstuck halfway in!

I cursed the usual curse, reeled the lure back and checked the hooks. They weren't bad but I reckoned one of the points needed a touch-up with the hook sharpener so I started to root around in my bag to find it. Just at that moment I heard a steady buzzing sound, the float had gone, the bait had been taken! I picked up the rod, wound down hard and struck, meeting a solid resistance. Something was wrong though, there were no kicks, no head shaking and slowly I gained line until I could see I was hooked into a waterlogged branch. The fish had obviously run into a snag and somehow transferred the hook to the woodwork.

Two fish lost in as many minutes and I was really fed up. What made matters worse, the otter came back and spent quite a bit of time in the swim. I packed up after a while, hoping to get to the other bend on the stretch and have an hour's fishing before dark. The climb up the slippery slope was tough and I was well out of puff when i got back to the car. Short drive up river and I was out and yomping once more, another long walk to this swim. Halfway there my journey was interrupted, the next field had a bull in it. Now bulls are unpredictable, most of them are docile but the odd one can be a bit feisty and there's no way of knowing for sure until it turns on you. I waited at the fence for a little while and the cows that were in the field along with Mr Bull started to drift away to the far side of the field. The bull obviously thought they were far more interesting than me and he followed them, leaving my path clear.

This bend was, if anything, even more inviting than the last A big slack, 12ft deep and the river more than fifty yards across, there had to pike here. I fished deadbaits and lures but nothing happened so the day ended in a blank but I'll fish that bend again. I slept in the car but was awoken sometime after midnight by the sound of heavy rain hammering on the roof. The rain lasted until dawn and then the sky cleared but I knew it bring the river up and sure enough, when I slithered down the slope to the spot I lost the fish just after first light I could see that the river was on the rise. A rising river is often the kiss of death and so it proved to be. I fished for a few hours anyway but the only thing that happened was that another otter came into the swim. This was a larger beast, a dog otter I think and like the other one it was finding something small to eat on the riverbed.

I packed up once more and spent the rest of the day looking at swims and stretches I might fish in the future, hopefully without too much company from our furry friends.

What else did I do this week? Well I was on the telly, Sky Sports to be precise.

You can see it here, navigate to the Nov 4th episode and click on download;

http://www.skysports.com/podcast/0,20494,19916,00.html

Hitting The Ground Limping

2011-10-21T12:53:00.000-07:00

Six days fishing on two of the top trout waters in the UK, what could go wrong there? Kevin and I were to fish Blithfield Reservoir for two days and then move on to Chew Valley lake for four more, surely we'll get something worth catching. As usual though there was a fly in the ointment when I developed agonising toothache on the first day. It was expected, and the dentist had given me antibiotics to get me straight again but boy did it hurt!

That first day was wasted rather. I spent most of the time in the boat with my head in my hands wanting to cry with the pain but slowly, over several days, the antibiotics worked their magic and the pain subsided. The pain of blanking persisted however! Kevin got on with the job of catching pike and had several doubles at Blith while I remained fishless. We started off in shallow water as we always do in October but the pike were nowhere to be found and all those swims which people had fought so hard for, racing to get there first, were soon deserted as they all went off to try and find the fish.

As ever, those who did find the fish first had a good day with a number of fish falling to both baits and lures but most people struggled - even the ones who didn't have toothache! Day two was a little better as I did at least hook a couple of pike. The first hit a jerkbait but didn't feel the hooks at all and the rod sprung back as quickly as it had been pulled forward. I changed the lure, the fish having been spooked by the first one and on the next cast I got a better hit. It wasn't good enough though and after two hard kicks the fish dropped off.

A little later we moved out to deep water, away from the awful algal bloom that was dogging the lake and the sounder betrayed the presence of an enormous shoal of bait fish. We dropped an anchor here and started to cast with heavy soft plastics and after four casts I was into a pike. It fought hard as I pulled it up towards the boat and within seconds it burst from the surface in a tailwalk. I watched in awe as it shook its head, mouth agape and the lure went flying. A little later Kevin caught a similar sized fish, fourteen pounds or so but there was no more action for me.

Chew was no better it seemed, and we had a bit of a shock when we arrived. Overnight, vandals had set light to several of the fishing boats and had stolen some engines. For a time we weren't sure if there would be enough boats for us all to fish from but the fishery pulled out all the stops and everyone was catered for.

Once again I had to watch as Kevin got all the action and on day one it was very big action. Kevin took a great fish of 26lb 4oz on a smelt in the early afternoon, one of the biggest fish he's had from there and what a superb creature it was, fat and healthy unlike the Blithfield fish which were showing signs of red sore disease. He took a good double the same day but once again, I was fishless. Day two was little better but I did at least catch a jack, as did Kevin and the wind turned to the north and became quite strong.

Day three was another grueller with the nagging north wind making things uncomfortable and while Kevin managed a nice 16 pound pike, I was fishless once again and as we set out on our last day, the fourth on Chew but sixth overall, I had given up hope. It was clear that every fish we were going to catch was going to be caught by Kevin despite us using similar bait, similar tackle and both fishing from the same boat. Something was different now though, it had been a very cold night with a widespread frost but the wind had subsided and at first, it came from the West.

We got out a few minutes late in the boat, for one reason and another and headed out to our chosen spot. There were quite a few boats out there already and we had to squeeze in where we could. We dropped anchor and all was quiet in the light breeze and early morning sunshine. Soon though, there was action! Another boat had a fish, a good one and then the miracle happened - one of my floats moved!

A big chunk of bluey had been picked up by something and as the float bobbed and dithered I picked up the rod and started to tighten down to the fish. I struck hard and the fish pulled back with equal resolve so I piled on the pressure. This was a good fish I could tell but I was determined that it would learn who was boss. Within a few minutes I had the pike at the boatside and Kevin did a sterling job with the net, scooping it up first time. At 21lbs 7oz it proved to be my first twenty pounder of the season and was in quite fabulous condition, thickset with stunning markings and not a fin out of place.

We returned the pike and within a few minutes Kevin followed it up with another of around ten pounds. Then the wind swung round to the north again! It was quite amazing what effect this had. We were catching, the boats around us were catching and then nothing, the action ceased immediately. No-one could have imagined that such a simple phenomenon would have such a dramatic effect on the fish's feeding habits but it did, they just melted away.

Hours and hours passed with nothing to show. Boats moved out of the area in search of pike but we stayed put, knowing the fish were not far away and trying to find the trigger that would make them feed. In the end we moved across the bay where the weed was dense. The fish were in that weed, I was sure and so we lobbed out our baits (big baits) into the weed and waited.

We hadn't long to wait before Kevin had a run on a headless herring. He picked up the rod, wound down to it - and struck at thin air!. The fish had obviously not turned the bait and had left not even a toothmark on it. It was my turn next though and when my large whole herring was picked up I made no mistake. This turned out to be a super fish which fought like a tiger and looked every bit as beautiful as one. Fat, and with a broad back it weighed 21lbs exactly, making this my first brace of twenties for 18 months.

Phew!

You know what, I've just realised this is my 100th blog entry!

October's Here!

2011-10-03T21:36:00.000-07:00

October, and the pike season 'proper' kicks off. It's been a faltering start for many as this year we've seen exceptionally high temperatures at the beginning of the month, higher than we've ever seen before in fact and such sultry conditions are bad for pike and bad for pike fishing.

One good thing about this was that it probably contributed to a good turn out at the PAC convention which was held, once again, at Kettering Conference Centre. The decision to hold it on the first day of the pike season was a risky one but with most waters out of sorts because of the heat everyone knew the piking would be rubbish and they came in their droves. I was running the junior event at the convention this year and I thought it went quite well. We got 19 boys there ranging in age from 6 to 16 and I had managed to persuade some of the biggest names in pike fishing to donate their time to give the lads a show to remember.

Indeed it wasn't just their time that they gave. The generosity of the speakers and the tackle trade was tremendous and all of the boys left the event with armfuls of goodies along with, hopefully, lots of inspiration to set them on the road to being tomorrow's pike anglers. Of course I couldn't possibly have staged all that on my own and I was ably assisted by the newly formed PAC coaching team who worked like trojans on the day to keep everyone safe and happy. We're already looking forward to next year at Harrogate when the junior event will be bigger and better still.

My first day's piking was also courtesy of the PAC as Kevin and I attended the club organised event at Esthwaite in the Lake District. Esthwaite is a trout fishery which has had a reputation as a tremendous pike water in the past. The huge pike of yesteryear are no more on there but there are still good fish to be had and the club holds a day's fishing for members on Esthwaite each year. This was the first time we had attended this event and we were both hopeful of a fish or two to get out season off to a flying start. We debated beforehand whether or not to take deadbait fishing gear with us or just fish lures and in the end we went with the latter.

We arrived early, selected our boat and loaded it up with gear. Esthwaite only allow electric outboards but we have quite good ones and we soon found that the 55lb thrust Minn Kota pushed their little boats along just fine but as the day dawned, damp and murky we soon became aware of a problem. The water was very coloured for a glacial lake with visibility down to less than two feet and we soon started to question the wisdom of a lure-only approach.

I had got some information from Dave Kelbrick who is a regular on here about spots to fish but by noon we had tried them all with nothing to show and we were starting to get desperate for a fish. We weren't alone. The fishing was proving to be very difficult and it seemed just a couple of jacks had been taken by the anglers in the fifteen boats that had set out that morning.

By mid afternoon we had done a complete circuit of the lake and found ourselves back at the spot where we had started the day. By this time each of us had had a bump on the lures but nothing hooked but we suddenly had some encouragement when a big fish rolled nearby. Neither of us actually saw what the fish was but the disturbance it made was big and we were in no doubt that it had been a pike. We continued to cast our jerkbaits and before long Kevin was into a fish. The pike gave a spirited fight but was soon at the boatside and swallowed up by the waiting net. It was a low double figure fish of eleven or twelve pounds in good condition and with the hooks removed went off strongly after a quick photo.

Fifteen minutes later it was my turn and I had an almost identical fish, again of eleven or twelve pounds. We were hopeful of another fish or two in the remaining hours before dark but that was it, no more takes to our lures. We weren't despondent however as word was filtering through that the fishing had been hard for everyone and ideed only one other double figure pike had been caught along with a handful of jacks. The lure only approach had been the right one it seems and the bait anglers had done very poorly but we had both been out of practise and boy how we ached!

Let's see what the rest of the season brings then.

When the Wind Blows

2011-09-16T06:03:00.000-07:00

Ok hands up all you who thought I was dead! Yes, it's been a while since I updated the blog but as my regular reader knows, I often leave it a while during the summer. I don't really fish much during August as Mrs Edwards is a teacher and she gets that month off - I much prefer spending time with her than spending time with the likes of you smelly fishermen. This year I had a special project which kept me off the bank. My eldest daughter Sarah was married at the end of August and preparing for the wedding took up much of my time. After that, Mrs Edwards and I needed a break so I whisked her off to Madrid for a holiday.

Back in blighty I looked forward to a couple more trips to the syndicate water before the pike season begins. I made all the usual preparations and loaded the car up for a Monday morning start but there was a little fly in the ointment which held me back for a day - hurricane Katia, or what was left of it. The lake is well south of the eye of the storm but gusts of up to fifty miles an hour were forecast and so I waited until the worst of it was over. The problem with this lake is that the main features are well out of casting range and so a boat is needed to bait up and to tow baited rigs out. We aren't allowed to use proper boats, just inflatables and an inflatable in a 50mph gust doesn't sound like my idea of fun.

I arrived at the lake late on tuesday morning and I was glad I had delayed. There were trees and branches down everywhere and in one place the access path had been completely blocked by a fallen tree. I chose a swim on the opposite side of the lake to where I usually fish. This meant that it would be a little further to tow my baits out but at least the still strong wind wouldn't be blowing into my face. I soon had everything set up and went out in the little boat to bait up. It was a little scary still but I wasn't intending to put out much bait, just a couple of pounds of pellets and around a quarter of a kilo of boilies. The stock density in this lake is very very low and I'm always worried that baiting too heavily will feed the fish up before they get to my hookbait.

Some time later I towed out the baited hooks. I was only fishing two rods - quite enough in difficult conditions and both were baited with boilies. Bait out, I got the kettle on and cooked a nice meal before settling down to listen to the radio, or what I could hear of it above the roaring of the gale in the trees about me. It soon gets dark at this time of year and tired out after all the business of setting up, I drifted off to sleep.

Shortly after midnight I was awoken by the alarm on the right hand rod and looking out I could see that the bobbin had dropped to the floor. Shoes on, I stepped out grabbed the rod and lifted but there was nothing there. It takes a few minutes to reel in 200yds of braid and when I got it all in I could see that this had indeed been a run. I was fishing helicopter style and the fish had pulled the bead up the line as it had taken the bait. This wasn't the first time I'd had an aborted run at this lake and it bothered me. I can't afford to have fish shed the hook, runs are too hard to come by here.

I retied the rig, making it much shorter and set off into the darkness with it in the little boat. The wind hadn't dropped very much and the lack of daylight only made the experience in the little boat even worse than it had been during the day but the GPS on the sounder proved invaluable and I found my marker ok. The lead went in with a plop and I hurried back to shore as quickly as I could before setting the bobbin and crawling back into the sleeping bag. I was soon asleep again and awoke just as dawn was breaking, thankful that the wind had finally abated. I lay there for a little while considering whether to switch on the radio again when for the second time, the right hand bobbin fell to the floor.

I jumped up, grabbed the rod and lifted - this time there was a solid resistance. The fish felt heavy and ponderous but occasionally it lunged, taking line against a generous clutch and my mind turned over and over, is it just another tench or is this the fish I've been after? Slowly it came and soon it began to kite round to the right - a typical bream move. The fish was in open water and I was confident that it wouldn't snag me but was the hookhold a good one? It seemed hours before I got the fish close enough to get a look at it but sure enough when I did, it was a great bronze back that cut the surface. My knees began to knock and I held my breath as I heaved the enormous bream closer and closer to the net.

All at once the fish's head was against the spreader block and I lifted- it was mine. I pulled the net in and hoisted the great fish up onto the mat. What a creature, it was absolutely huge! I found that I needn't have worried about the hookhold which was a good one firmly in the bottom lip and with the hook removed I transferred the bream to the weigh sling for the moment of truth.

17lbs exactly!

Boring, Boring, Boring.

2011-07-21T12:42:00.000-07:00

I think I remember now why it was that I packed in fishing for specimen bream long ago - IT'S BORING! My biggest bream weighed 15lbs 2oz and was caught 26 years ago from Queenford Lagoon in Oxfordshire. I fished 74 nights at Queenford for just two fish and at the end of it all I would have been happy if I'd never seen a bream again.

The syndicate lake is, if anything, even harder than Queenford. It's more than twice as big and the stock of bream it holds is tiny. The only advantage is that no-one seems to be fishing the lake midweek when I'm there so I have my pick of the swims. That's a double-edged sword though and I'm finding myself getting more and more fed up having no-one to talk to for days on end.

Two trips in the last two weeks, one for three nights and one for two. The first trip produced nothing but I did come close to catching something. I had a steady run at 5.30 in the morning but when I lifted into it all was solid. Whatever it was it had run straight into thick weed and it was well snagged. Not wanting to tear the hook out of the fish I just maintained a steady pressure for several minutes but after a little while there was a click and the rod sprung back. On retrieval I discovered that the hook had opened out, allowing the fish to go free. On reflection I decided that it was probably not a bream that I had hooked, more likely a tench or even a carp, the run was far too positive to be a lethargic old bream.
All in all it was a boring trip, made a little more entertaining by the visitors I had whilst I was there. Two mallard ducks seem to be keen to make friends, too keen as it happens. The moment my back is turned they are in the boat or in the bivvy looking for something to eat and if they aren't doing that they're swimming across my lines or pecking at insects on the bobbins giving me false bites. This became infuriating after a while and I was ready to strangle the damn things. Eventually I cracked and grabbed hold of one of them as it rummaged through my food bag inside the bivvy. I imprisoned it in the landing net for several hours giving it water and pellets to eat. I expected this period of imprisonment would scare it off but no, ten minutes after I released it it was back in the bivvy again!

I had a visit from a bat too. There was obviously something wrong with this creature as it spent its time crawling around on a log neaby and made no attempt to fly. I took a few pictures and looking at them afterwards I realised it was alive with blood-sucking mites. I think it was a Serotine bat but then my bat identification skills may need some work.

Next trip I got close to a fish again when I had an early morning run that stopped after a few seconds. I've uprated my hooks and hooklengths after the lost fish but obviously I've not quite got it right yet as it managed to shake the hook out. I did get a fish on the bank the next morning though in the shape of a 6lb 6oz tench. It was a rough looking thing just like the last one - the tench don't seem to do so well here.

Only one of the ducks put in an appearance this time, perhaps the other one chose to get too friendly with a fox or an otter!

Gimme a Break!

2011-07-08T09:41:00.001-07:00

Buoyed by the success of that syndicate lake bream I expected to catch more, and bigger! I didn't of course, another three nights produced nothing more than a 5lb 7oz tench, well spawned out and rather tatty and I had a five pound jack that grabbed a boilie on the way in. Three nights on your own without actually speaking to another human is quite hard going even for an antisocial sod like me and at the end of it I decided to give the syndicate lake a miss for a while.

The plan was to spend a couple of nights bream fishing on an easier water where the fish run to 14lbs or so but that soon fell apart because the other water involves a long walk. Now I don't mind long walks too much, even though I've got dodgy knees but the weather forecast showed that it was going to be a wet wet week. Fishing overnight in heavy rain demands that you carry a fair bit of gear in order to make it bearable so my plans to travel light and fish just one night at a time were scuppered. I had to make the choice between travelling light and going home wet and miserable each morning or taking the kitchen sink which would mean staying for several nights if it was to be worthwhile.

In the end I chose neither, preferring to spend a bit of time barbel bashing on the Ribble instead. Getting a break from the bream fishing could only do me some good anyway and at least on the Ribble I could pretty well guarantee getting some fish on the bank. The first trip was to be an afternoon/evening session on a stretch I knew well and i was surprised on arrival to find that there were no cars in the car park. I chose a swim near the bottom of the stretch. Experience has shown that when the river is low, as it was, the fish didn't move up too far from their hidey hole and so fishing close to their home was the best option.

It was a day of heavy showers, making me glad of the light umbrella I'd carried along and I was soon into fish. I packed pellets into pva mesh bags and attached one to the hook on every cast and it soon got the barbel going. I used the same boilies I'd been using for the bream and the barbel seemed to like them a lot. By the end of the session, as it was getting close to midnight, I had put together a catch of two chub and eight barbel. No really big ones but a brace of eights and a brace of nines featured in the catch with the biggest fish going 9lb 2oz, a really pleasurable evening.

Session two was to be to a stretch I had never fished before. I started a little later this time, arriving at the riverbank at around 5pm and as I walked along the stretch looking for a likely area I bumped into a salmon angler who was just leaving. He was very helpful and put me onto an area where he often saw barbel so I set off to find it. I was a little disappointed when I got there to discover a number of anglers already fishing from the opposite bank but I managed to squeeze into a likely looking spot sufficiently far away from them not to cause annoyance to them or to me.

The current ran along the far bank and the water looked quite deep but I reasoned that I wouldn't need too much lead as the line would be mostly passing through dead water so I clipped on a three ounce lead to each rod. This proved to be just right and I set about casting in with those little bags of pellets in order to lay down some feed. I soon discovered a problem however, this was a very snaggy swim and I steadily lost leads and hooks in amongst the rocks.

The first bite came after about an hour and I had a real tussle on my hands with a very hard fighting fish. On the bank it looked like it just might scrape ten pounds but it missed by the narrowest of margins and i recorded a weight of 9lb 15oz, not a bad start. Twenty minutes later the same rod was away again and I pulled in a plump eight pounder. At this point I was quite taken with the stretch despite the snags which continued to claim my end tackle but things were about to change. More anglers arrived on the far bank and yet more. It was clear that most of these people knew each other and while they didn't interfere with my fishing at all, keeping a respectful distance from me, they were pretty noisy.

A sudden violent squall almost caught me out. The wind blew and the rain hammered down for ten minutes or so before it passed over and I found myself having to gather in the tackle and hang onto the little brolly throughout. The squall passed and I continued casting - and losing tackle. Hours passed and yet the rod tips didn't tremble again. Indeed I didn't catch another fish, nor did any of the anglers on the far bank and as darkness fell, one by one they packed up and left. Eventually my turn came and I reeled in the rods, snagged again, and packed up. I had no more leads left and I was down to my last hook!

All in all, I won't be visiting that stretch during the summer again. There is clearly a lot of pressure on the fish there and the snaggy nature of the riverbed only serves to complicate things further. I was pleased with the result though, a near ten pounder on the first trip is definitely a success.

I suppose it's back to blanking now then!

Success?

2011-06-22T08:56:00.000-07:00

My syndicate lake in deepest Shropshire is going through a bad patch. The lake is known for it's small head of large carp and equally small head of enormous bream and of course it's the latter that interest me. The lake is around 90 acres but prior to the start of 2011 there were just eleven known carp in the water. I say "were" because a tragedy has
been unfolding over the last few months, a family of otters has set up home at the venue. I've seen them several times swimming back and forth and I did wonder how long it would be before the otters crossed paths with the carp. It seems four of the carp have been consumed so far, including the largest known resident and they have also chomped four of the bream.

Now modern carping holds no interest for me. I've seen far too many good waters turned into "campsites" by the addition of numbers of mediochre carp. Cheshire and Shropshire are now full of lakes that hold little other than carp up to around the thirty pound mark, not big fish, and it's been to the cost of the tench and bream fisherman. This lake's different though. The regulars haven't piled in stockies just so that they can get a run, they like it hard because when a fish does get caught it represents much more of an achievement. I feel sorry for these guys, their fishing's probably ruined and unlike the "can't catch, won't catch" brigade, they've played by the rules. The great danger is that the syndicate will fold now and the water will be taken over by the local club who will doubtless stock hundreds of carp (illegally) as they have in all their other waters.

My first season on the lake produced no bream.I wasn't alone in that by any means, indeed there were only two bream caught the entire season and the both came on opening day, June 16th when I wasn't there. I was there on June 16th this year and again a very large bream was caught but not by me. Two nights produced just a few line bites but at least I had the opportunity to introduce a quantity of my new bait. The next trip was to be another two-nighter but I was disappointed to discover on arrival that the swim I wanted was already taken. The angler in question was only there for one night so I set up across the lake from him and spent another fishless night in an unfavoured swim.

I moved across the lake next morning and set up next to the angler who was just leaving. He had had some success, though not with the target species by taking two tench, the largest just a little under eight pounds. Nice fish but not what we were there for. The bream in this lake are huge, the smallest that had been caught in recent years was over twelve pounds and the largest approaching twenty but they are so thin on the ground that putting one on the bank is a rare event.

Kevin was to join me for one night so I found and marked several bars for both of us before putting in a quantity of pellets and boilies on each. The largest feature is a large flat gravel bar rising up to five feet but surrounded by water more than twice that depth. Undertow caused by the wind keeps such areas free of silt and weed and they make excellent clean feeding areas for the bream so we concentrated on the bar, placing four baits on it between us.

Kevin arrived and took his time getting set up. He gets more like a carper all the time with his matching rods reels and alarms putting my amateur setup to shame. Before long we were both set up and darkness fell - and so did the rain! It was an awful night with strong winds and frequent heavy showers but I'm used to that by now, this summer is clearly turning out to be a typical British one. Then at two thirty in the morning I heard a different noise, the incessant bleep bleep of a bite alarm.

I grabbed my head torch and stepped out of the bivvy into the elements. Sure enough one of my indicators was jiggling up and then down just a little. I picked up the rod and lifted into the bite expecting to feel a solid resistance but no, nothing! Disappointed, I started the long, slow process of reeling in the rig from 180 yards but I got something of a surprise when I got it close to the bank. There was a fish attached after all - and it was a bream!

I scooped it up and called Kevin to take a couple of photos. At exactly five pounds in weight it was the smallest bream to be caught from this lake in many years, maybe ever, but I didn't care too much. To catch a bream at all here represents success of sorts and at least we know that the bream will eat our chosen bait. What's more we now know a spot where the bream will feed - all we have to do now is catch one four times as big!

Bubble Burst

2011-06-07T09:03:00.000-07:00

Well the inevitable happened, two days of moderate sunshine and the tench spawned. I guess that means my chance of a northwest double has gone for now - but there's always next year of course. First day out this week produced nothing but a large eel. No line bites, no other bites and nothing rolling. I followed this up with another two eels along with tench of 6lb 15oz and 8lb 2oz on day two. Denis couldn't make this trip but I had plenty of company as several people who have caught modest fish there (and who don't actually weigh their fish) have chosen to advertise the venue here and there. There's a race for swims now most mornings and I had people fishing either side of me.

The appearance of the eels obviously coincides with the tench having shed their spawn. Eels have a fantastic sense of smell and I don't doubt they have converged on the area from all over the lake gobbling up the tench spawn - and any maggots they happen to come across in the process. I've been avoiding baiting up with cereal feed as I don't really want to attract the bream into my swim. All I've used for feed is maggots and caster, introduced by spod but I may have to rethink this policy if the eels really become a problem. I wouldn't mind so much if they were big ones but the biggest I've had so far is only about two and a half ponds - not really specimens.

Day three was a different story. The tench had completed their nuptuals and were on the verge of a feeding frenzy. Seven fish were caught in all, six tench and a bream. The bream was first to put in an appearance, taking the bait on the first cast within just a few minutes. It weighed 9lb 8oz and fought so poorly that at times I wasn't sure I had a fish on at all. There was a lull after that but the tench came on the feed mid morning and I got bites steadily for an hour or two. I hooked eight of them in all but lost two in the very thick marginal weed. The ones I landed weighed 5lb 8oz, 5lb 15oz, 7lb 5oz, 7lb 14oz, 7lb 15oz and 8lbs exactly. All were battered but some were still carrying a bit of spawn.

Interestingly, I caught nothing on maggots, every bite was on a rig which carried two plastic casters on the hair and two real ones on the hook. What's more the majority of bites occurred within the first five minutes after a recast. Denis had remarked on this previously and it does look like the tench are homing in on the splash of the feeder. Echoes of Pavlov's dogs!

Denis joined me for the last session of the week and we both blanked. Denis hooked a fish which came unstuck almost immediately but I didn't even have a line bite. It had been a very cold night with frost forecast (frost in June!) and I can only imagine the drop in temperature coupled with early bright conditions served to put the fish down. I wasn't too bothered really, the tench are in very poor condition now and this was to be my last attempt at catching them for this year.

Next week brings the start of the river season and the opening of my bream lake. I think I can smell a blank!

Green Giants

2011-05-31T09:41:00.000-07:00

Ok, I know that title's been used before but I do think it's appropriate. The tench fishing this week has continued in the same vein as last week, a bit slow but with great rewards. The week started off in fine style when I had a sizzling run within five minutes of my first cast. I had decided to go back to short hooklengths and heavy feeders since I've found a spot where the weed isn't too thick and I've also uprated my tackle. We're now on ten pound main line with an 8lb 15oz hooklink. The hook was a size ten was and baited with two plastic casters hair-rigged.

The heavy tackle gave me a great deal of confidence as I steered the tench between the patches of dense weed and when I got it close in where the weed's at its thickest I was able to keep the fish close to the surface as it ploughed around. It certainly ploughed, a cracking scrap by any standards and i could see it was another big fish. 9lb 1oz it went on the scales - I was well pleased with that.

The session didn't produce any more fish but I did lose another one. It didn't stay connected for very long but again it felt like a big one so that was a bit of a disappointment. Stepping up the line and the hook size hasn't completely cured my lost fish problems it seems.

Next day out was with Denis. It was s low affair that had a highlight and a lowlight. The highlight was the capture of another tench by me, 7lb 8oz this time and obviously spawned out. The lowlight was yet another lost fish, a tench again, and on the strong tackle. It fought very well and I'm sure this was a very big fish - possibly the biggest one I've hooked this season so I was gutted when it buried its head in the marginal weed and managed to shake the hook out. The weed is getting thicker by the day and it won't be long before we have to make the decision to drag it or abandon that particular part of the lake.

Thursday was a day I couldn't make it. I had a family function the evening before which meant I had to have a beer or two but I was also drafted in to ferry my daughter around on Thursday morning so there was no fishing for me. Denis fished on his own and finally broke his duck - and in spectacular style. Opening his account with a five pound bream he went on to catch a super tench of 9lb 1oz before eclipsing that one with a monster - the monster we've been after all this time!

One last day together to end the week but with clear skies and early sunshine it was always going to be hard. I didn't get a single bite but Denis hooked and lost two fish, one a tench and the other a bream. Once again the weed was his bete noir.

The weather's getting warmer, these tench will spawn very soon. Maybe too soon for me but at least Denis made the magic mark!

Tench Heaven?

2011-05-26T12:28:00.000-07:00

Over the past five years or so I've been trying to catch a double figure tench from the Northwest of England. It's a tall order, tench in most of my local waters struggle to reach half that size and even in the very best waters it's really only possible to achieve when the fish are in heavily spawn in May and June. I was in no doubt when I selected my new water that it held fish of such size so that's one big piece of the jigsaw but there's another piece that I can't legislate for and that's luck.

This week I managed three short sessions after the tench - with thoughts of bream also as an added bonus. The first session I spent on my own, it was still, cold morning when very few fish were showing and the bobbins were motionless for most of the time. The bream were certainly not in residence as was evidenced by the total lack of line bites. Eventually however a bobbin did twitch its way up to the butt and the strike met a solid resistence. It was a lively little tench of five pounds or so which fought hard until it reach the dense marginal weed where it buried itself deeply. A few moments of tugging and pulling eventually saw the feeder fly out of the water as the hook pulled free.

A short while later I had a repeat performance when a second tench was lost in the weed. I didn't actually see this one but it felt a similar size to the first and so I wasn't desperately unhappy at losing it. These two incidents forced me to reexamine my tackle. I had already stepped up my hooklengths after losing a bream last week and this time I decided that the size fourteen hooks I was using were too small and so changed them for size twelves.

The next day I was joined by Denis and on arrival at the swim I gave him the option to choose which side to fish, the left or the right. He chose the right, as I knew he would and we both set about the business of setting up our rods and baiting the swim. I baited up with a pint of white maggots using a spod, cast in two feeder rigs and sat back to await the action. It was slow again but we did get the occasional twitchy line bite before at around 6.30 my nearest bobbin twitched its way up to the butt. I struck and at once I knew I was into a heavy fish. The fight was unspectacular and dogged, mainly because the fish had quickly collected a lot of weed on the line around its head and soon it was within netting range.

"Looks a good 'un." I said, "It certainly does." said Denis as he slid the net under it. We hauled it onto the bank and I could see this was a very good tench. At 9lbs 7oz on the scales it was my biggest ever tench from the Northwest and that bit closer to my long term target. It wasn't a spawny fish this one either, just a very big framed female.

After the obligatory photographs we slipped it back and got back to the fishing. We caught nothing else that morning but two more incidents did take place. Denis saw a monstrous tench roll as he was spodding in his maggots. He described it as "at least" as big as the one I had caught earlier. Then a little while after he hooked a big tench which unfortunately shed the hook. He's decided to go with softer rods after that coming down from 2lb test curve rods to 1.25lb. Would it work for him next day?

Day three was a tough one. A strong wind was blowing right into our faces making it difficult to feed and to cast and making bite indication tricky too. We went through the routine of spodding out some maggots, set up the gear and waited. Before long I had a steady run up and struck into what felt like a big bream. Denis grabbed the net but within a few seconds the rod sprung back - another lost fish. I rebaited and cast again.

Long hours passed before anything else and then I started to get line bites. These became more and more frequent and I was sure some bream had moved into the swim. Eventually I struck at a more positive indication and hooked a heavy fish that started to kite to the right. It felt like a bream with no kicking or head shaking, just a dead weight and constant kiting to the side. I pulled it slowly in and expected to see a big bronze flank come into view but no, it was a big green flank instead. It was another tench and a good one. Once under the rod tip it remembered it was a tench and started to scrap quite hard. This was a dangerous time with a fresh fish and all that weed to contend with and I breathed a huge sigh of relief when Denis lifted the net under my prize.

This fish was quite a different shape to the nine, quite spawny and shorter in length it weighed 8lb 6oz - not to be sniffed at.

We had no more action and week two at the new pit ended with just those two big tench. Is this where I'll catch my Northwest double? Is this water going to turn out to be our tench heaven? I guess only time will tell!

Job Done!

2011-05-20T09:56:00.000-07:00

Ok, my three months of employment has finally come to an end. Money in the bank, courtesy of the Office for National Statistics and I'm a free agent again ready to catch some fish. The job caused me to miss the end of the pike fishing season and I had to shelve any plans to make the annual pilgrimage to Scotland so the money was hard won but it did enable me to invest in a novel piece of equipment - more about that later in the season I think.

In the modern age, May herald's the start of the tench and bream fishing season for me. Previous years have seen me at a particular water in the North West where I've taken tench to over nine pounds and bream to more than twelve but I've decided a change is in order. I've never been one for sticking at the same place for year after year like some, I prefer to fish around a bit so I've moved on.

My new water is quite a big place so there's plenty of choice swim-wise but after a few days I'm beginning to understand how popular it is. Three early morning starts (very early) saw me competing for the swim I wanted and indeed I only got into it once. It wasn't easy either, I had several line bites on the first morning but didn't catch anything and then had two mornings where the bobbins didn't move at all. The fish were there alright, they taunted me by rolling and splashing in front of me but they weren't to be tempted.

There were other problems too. A layer of bottom weed carpets this lake, bistort I think, although I'm not an expert and this presents a number of problems. I started off using bolt tactics with heavy feeders and short hooklengths but soon abandoned this idea. The feeders were getting well stuck in the weed and I'm sure the baited hook was simply being buried by it. I soon changed to more traditional paternoster and running feeder rigs to combat this, hoping that the longer hooklengths would allow the bait to settle on top of the weed rather than be swamped by it.

Day four saw me arrive at dawn with some company. Denis had joined me this time and we were fortunate enough to get the swim we wanted, indeed we didn't see another angler all morning. Several nice tench rolled in front of us as we were tackling up and with heavy cloud cover and warm muggy conditions our expectation was high. We spodded in a couple of pints of maggots, cast in our loaded feeders and sat back to await developments.

It wasn't long before the action started, indeed the line bites began almost immediately and before long I had a more positive indication which saw me strike into a heavy fish. It didn't end happily however as the fish ran into thick marginal weed where it became stuck. A few moments of heaving by me on one end and the fish on the other saw the 4.12lb hooklength snap and it was gone. I replaced the hooklength with a heavier one, 5.14lb this time and recast and sure enough another run ensued. I landed this one, a nice bream of 10lbs 5oz which fought well (for a bream).

An hour passed with many line bites keeping me on the edge of my seat before another positive indication which resulted in the capture of a spirited 6lb 2oz tench. I was a very happy bunny at this point with both target species in the bag and finished off the morning with another bream which went 8lb 14oz.

That was it for my return to fishing in 2011, job done and lessons learned. I'll be after those tench and bream again next week. Denis? well he didn't have much luck I'm afraid, perhaps it'll be his turn next.

Last Gasp

2011-03-28T10:25:00.000-07:00

Ok I managed to squeeze in a couple more pike fishing trips before the end of the traditional piking season. First one was a trip that had been planned for some weeks to Chew valley. I had originally planned to go for four days but the new job got in the way of this and I had to cut it down to two. On the upside, it gave me the chance to fish with old friend Paul Brown again. Regular readers will recall that my last trip out with Paul, back in October, proved fruitful for him as he took a fine 23 pounder on his first cast of the day.

This trip was somewhat different. the lake had been fishing very well with quite a lot of thirty pounders being caught but it had slowed considerably. The combination of angling pressure and the approaching spawning season had put the fish down and even the most experienced locals told me they had been struggling.

Day one was over before it began. We made our way to the lodge and joined the throng of pikers for breakfast but there were mutterings amongst the staff that we might not be allowed out due to the strong winds. Nine o'clock came and the decision was made - sure enough it was too windy and we would not be allowed to go out in the boats. Paul claimed back his money for the boat and we headed off for a day's lure fishing on a local gravel pit.

The gravel pit didn't produce at all. We both raised the same jack a few times but neither of us actually had a take and we headed back to Paul's house at the end of the day glad to get out of the wind and to sink a pint or two.

Next day we were back at Chew and this time we did get out ok but the fishing was dire. Nothing took our deadbaits and nothing hit our lures, a total blank. We did see a very big pike caught by someone on the bank but that was the only fish we saw all day so it was a disappointing trip all in all, only made bearable by the wonderful hospitality shown to me by Paul and his wife Ali.

My other trip was a different affair altogether. I took Mrs Edwards for a weekend to Scotland where we were to fish the Lake of Menteith for a day. We treated ourselves rather and stayed at the Forest Hills Hotel and Resort at Aberfoyle - very nice.

The day's fishing went quite well really, no big fish to us but we had some sport and the sun shone a fair bit. It didn't rain or snow either, quite rarely for Menteith. Overall most people struggled but there were four twenty pounders caught along with ten other double figure fish and lots of jacks between thirty boats.

What was particularly pleasing was that three of those doubles came to our boat. I took our biggest fish, a fourteen and a half pounder that took a Burt but it was my only pike of the day. Mrs Edwards did rather better with five runs to her deadbaits, four of which she boated. She caught a three pounder, an eight pounder, a ten pounder and a thirteen pounder.

I didn't hear of anyone getting more than four pike on the day so in my books, that makes her top rod!

Out With A Whimper

2011-02-25T16:29:00.000-08:00

Ok so I've had a quiet time just lately. Mrs Edwards was off work for a while and I took the opportunity to spend a little time in her company then I planned to get stuck right in to the piking.

"This is it." I told her, "The big push, I'm taking the boat out and I won't be back until I've caught something whorthwhile." I couldn't be sure that I didn't detect a little smirk on her face as I said this, maybe she was happy that I'd ventured forth to discover my Nirvana or maybe it was something else. I went to bed early, car already packed with gear and boat primed at the ready.

I woke at stupid o'clock, dragged my weary body down the stairs and pulled on the obligatory layer-after-layer of high tech thermal gear before stepping out into the night. It was still and misty but cold nonetheless and at such an hour, the streets were mine alone. I hitched up the boat and set off on the lonely roads - I had a long way to go.

I passed through the suburbs and a short stretch of countryside until I reached the motorway where I knew I could relax. I joined the little traffic that there was, almost all of it heavy goods, switched on the cruise control and radio and settled back into my seat, bliss!

Ten minutes later my heart leapt as I was catapulted out of my comfort zone by the dreadful sight of showers of sparks in the rear view mirror. I signalled and drifted across to the hard shoulder and getting out, I discovered the source of the problem. The trailer lighting board had come adrift so that one of the metal arms which had held it in place was dragging along the tarmac - hence the sparks.

I shoved it back into place and screwed down the holding bolt as tight as I could before testing the lights - nothing. AARRGGH, now what? I fiddled and jiggled around with the plug and managed to get some life out of the thing. Soon the rear lights were working, then the brake lights. The right hand indicator sprung into life but the left hand one stubbornly refused to comply. Nothing I did was able to persuade it to work so I gave up on it. "I'll risk it." I thought. There was no-one about anyway.

The rest of the journey passed withoiut incident and I arrived in good time at the lake - it was still dark. Two cars with their trailers were parked by the slipway and I recognise one of them as that belonging to my good friend Kevin but he was nowhere to be seen. I loaded up the boat and launched before ringing him to find out where he was fishing. He had been keener than me and he was already setup at a favourite spot so I set off in a different direction, not wanting to compete for his fish.

The dawn arrived, along with a fair bit of drizzle and while there was early promise in the way of some brightness in the sky, this soon fizzled out and a grey, cold day was established. I anchored up at a spot I refer to as the "saddle". This is an area where the lake bed is shaped like a saddle with a high point at each end and a ridge-cum-trough in between, you get the idea.

The action wasn't long in coming and the first bait was taken within a few minutes. I struck at once but the fish didn't stay connected and after a couple of kicks the line went slack. Ah well, it happens. Not long afterwards a second bait was taken and I pulled in a nice fat double of around fourteen pounds. The fish was in excellent condition as they often are in this little fished area of the lake.

Within minutes another float disapperaed and I pulled in a fish of around eight pounds then shortly afterwards I got a fast run on a legered bait and connected with a beautiful chunky fish of 15lbs 11oz. Things were definitely looking good but I was conscious of the fact that all of the fish lately were coming in the first and the last hours of daylight. It was still only nine o'clock when I put the fifteen pounder back but it soon became apparent that the morning feeding spell was over and no more runs came my way.

At around eleven, I reeled in all four rods but as I reeled in the third, I spotted a mid double figure fish chasing after the float. I dropped the bait on it but it didn't want to know and although I spent a little time trying to catch it on lures it wasn't to be and I pulled up the anchors. I then spent a couple of hours trolling around with a replicant fished deep. This produced nothing but it did give me the chance to trace out a 35ft contour and save the trace on the GPS. This will pay dividends in the future.

At 2 o'clock I anchored up at a spot I had fished before a few times. I cast out the four baits and waited. Soon enough a legered sardine was picked up in deepish water and I struck into a decent fish which, as it happened, went 18lb 14oz. Although this was the biggest fish of the day so far I was a little disappointed as it was in poor condition. Thin and tatty it had probably weighed much more at some time in its life but it looked like it was going back. I took a quick pic of it on the deck then slipped it back.

Soon afterwards I caught an eight pounder and the light slowly started to fade. It was just before five o'clock when the dreadful thing happened. My phone rang and the person on the other end offered me a job!!! " You start tomorrow." he told me.

"That's that then for this season" I thought. I packed up, towed the boat back home and was up bright and early the next day to start my training. It's only a 3 month contract but I'm going to be too busy for fishing for a while now...

...or am I?

Ready For Spring

2011-01-29T05:55:00.000-08:00

The cold weather continues. Not the intense freeze that we had last month but generally, it's still cold and water temperatures are still hovering around the point where water turns hard. I'm a bit fed up of it now and ready for Spring but I'm still getting out and more importantly, still catching.

I had a day on the syndicate lake this week. I only caught one pike, a fish of 9lb 14oz which I thought might be my first double from the water but it wasn't to be. I got it on the bank and then realised I'd made a stupid mistake in leaving my forceps at home. Fortunately the hooks were right on the edge of the mouth so I was able to unhook it with my fingers but that was the end of my day's fishing. You just can't fish for pike without adequate unhooking gear so i packed up early and went home.

It was particularly disappointing since I had just discovered where the pike were. They had herded thousands of roach into a large reedbed and were sitting at the edge of the reeds making occasional forays into the vegetation, ploughing into the bait fish and taking a mouthful. I was astonished at how many roach were there, packed like sardines in a can in just a few inches of water. They went berserk every time a predator attacked, making quite a noise, which is how I discovered where they were. Look at the short film and you'll know what I mean.

After that it was out with the boat for a couple of days. Denis joined me but we found it quite tough, as did all the others fishing the lake at the time. To cut a long story short we had just nine pike between us with the biggest one weighing 19lbs 1oz. I caught this on a legered sardine in quite deep water very late in the day. Indeed a pattern is forming with regard to times of captures. We're getting very few runs in the middle part of the day just now, almost everything is coming in the first and last hours of daylight. That's the behaviour I expect later in the year, after the start of March, the pike can usually be caught all day long in January but then, this is no ordinary winter.

I had three doubles in all and one of them, an eleven pounder, was quite spectacular in that it was almost pure white. It wasn't an albino, just very very pale. Fish sometimes turn pale like this if they're living in very coloured water but of course this one was in very clear water so there must be some other reason for this phenomenon. Perhaps the fish was blind, although it's eyes looked clear enough.

That's 31 doubles since the start of the pike season but another week without a twenty pounder. Just where are those big fish right now?

Deep Thinking

2011-01-20T08:12:00.000-08:00

Two contrasting weeks of piking have taught me a lesson which I needed to learn.

We're well into January now and the pike season is at its height - a time when I should be making hay and getting some big fish in the boat. It's been tough though and while results are picking up, they have done so at a slower rate than I would have liked.

The first week i was out with Denis for three days - three very wet days as it turned out. Fishing in the rain is never that much fun and when you're out in a boat it's worse still. My boat has a folding cuddy which keeps the worst of the rain off but when there are two of you, and baits and floats are spread around all over the place, the cuddy obscures your view and I don't like to use it. Fishing a mixture of float legered baits and plain legered ones helps a bit but it's not a big boat and there's not much room for two under the shelter.

So it was that we both got wet, then wetter and finally wettest. Three wet days and it gets through even the best waterproofs and we were both glad to get home at the end of it. The quality of the fishing made it worse with just two single figure fish and a twelve pounder to me although Denis did better with four doubles up to fifteen pounds.

What was noticeable was that the fish we had came from deeper water than usual and that the usual productive swims were almost devoid of fish. I spent some time thinking about this and wondering why it had come about and eventually the old grey cells kicked into gear. The exceptionally cold winter has created a condition in our lakes which doesn't always happen, turnover!

Turnover happens when the surface layers cool to four degrees centigrade, when water is at its densest. This causes a complete breakdown of any thermal stratification which has been present in the water column and leads to a total mixing of the upper and lower layers of the lake. This gives the pike access to the deeper layers which, ordinarily, they would avoid due to the very low oxygen levels that exist down there. Oxygen levels are high in the deep water after turnover and since there is food down there, in the form of Charr in particular, the pike will be spending much of their time very deep just now.

Turnover, if it happens at all in this country, usually takes place quite late in the winter after the coldest time of late January. If turnover takes place late, its effect is less pronounced since by early February light levels are starting to improve and we're getting close to spawning time, thus making the shallow water attractive. This season I expect it happened in the first week of December, two months early and this will have had a big effect on the fish, both pike and preyfish.

Armed with this thought I set forth on my second trip, another three day jaunt. No rain this time, indeed the weather was positively balmy, but I resolved to fish new swims and to fish deep. It paid off in terms of numbers of fish but I didn't get the big one I wanted. In three days I managed eight pike, all of them over ten pounds with the best five all over fifteen. These went 15.04, 15.10, 16.06, 17.00 and 17.06
All the fish came from swims I haven't fished before and all came from deep water.

It looks like I might make sense of this season after all but there's one other thing I have to mention. On a water whose size is measured in thousands of acres it really isn't necessary to anchor up right next to someone else - as the people in this picture did. You can see my float in the foreground there, couldn't they find their own swim?

Cold Turkey

2011-01-05T02:46:00.000-08:00

What a tough end to the year! We had the coldest December for 120 years and not only were most of the stillwaters frozen (including the very large ones) but many stretches of river froze over as well. The bad weather conspired along with the Christmas festivities to prevent me from fishing altogether for fully three weeks and by the time New Year was over and done I was becoming stir crazy. January 3rd was a bank holiday, I try to avoid fishing on public holidays since the waters are invariably busy but I was desperate to wet a line so decided to take the boat out for a couple of days.

An early start almost ended in disaster the jockey wheel fell off my trailer as I was getting the boat out of its garage. Exactly how this happened I'm not too sure but it appears that during the very cold weather, when temperatures dipped down below minus 15 degrees locally, the bolts holding the jockey wheel to the trailer must have contracted so much that they snapped the lugs off the jockey wheel. As soon as I started to move the trailer the wheel fell off and the drawbar fell to earth with a clunk.

I managed to patch this up temporarily and set out an hour later than planned, meaning that I arrived well after first light and after a number of other anglers were already out fishing. This delay was important since it meant that my first, second and third choice swims were already taken and it left me scratching around trying to find fish on the sounder. It came home to me how lucky I am to be able to fish midweek most of the time. People who work monday to friday must be faced with this problem all the time and I don't doubt it impacts on their catches a great deal.

The day was grey and cold, very cold and the fish were very hard to find. I ended the day fishless, not a great start to 2011, and made my way back to the slipway in the dark where I encountered two other anglers. They had blanked as well but told me another piker they'd spoken to had had six fish, five of them jacks.

After cooking up some curry and rice I made my bed in the car and, exhausted, was asleep before eight but I awoke little more than an hour later when I experienced a strange rumbling, shaking feeling. I looked out expecting to see a vehicle driving past but there was none, nor was there a boat chugging by. I fell asleep again, mystified as to the cause of the disturbance and was awoken many hours later to the sound of rain hammering on the roof of the car.

It was soon time to get up, though the prospect of going out in such awful weather didn't inspire me and I switched on the radio as I made my first brew of the day. The news reporter revealed the source of the strange rumbling I'd experienced during the night, a minor earthquake had occurred in North Yorkshire and though that was many miles away, I had been aware of it due to the quietness of my location. What's more, the dawn was to bring another natural phenomenon in the way of a partial eclipse of the sun - what would the pike think of all this?

I got out at first light, successfully avoiding the few remaining ice floes and made my way to my first choice swim. Sure enough there were familiar arches on the trace from the sounder, betraying the presence of a number of large fish, probably pike. The downpour continued though and after getting four baits out in the water I raised my collapsible cuddy and snuggled down under the shelter it offered. I soon picked up a pike of around nine pounds on a mackerel head, a pretty fish which had a busted gill raker and expected more action to follow but it wasn't to be and in time I moved on.

I dropped into several more swims, watching the fishfinder intently at each one, looking for those telltale arches and eventually found what I was looking for. Several big fish were holding close to a dropoff in 29ft of water. I marked their position using an "H" block marker, anchored up and started to fish. The rain stopped but the wind picked up markedly and this swim was in a very exposed location so I started to get quite uncomfortable. The waves were building bigger and bigger and as each one slammed into the boat I was pitched forward, only to be dumped back down on my chair as the trough followed the wave.

It was early afternoon, I had only a couple of hours left before I had to go and I had just about made my mind up to move to quieter water when one of the floats disappeared beneath the waves. I swept back the rod and pulled in a scrappy fourteen pounder which was quickly unhooked and returned. A few minutes later a second float dipped and I subsequently boated an eight pounder. My mind was made up for me then, I had to sit tight and ride out the waves.

After another hour the wind had subsided a little and I was glad I had stayed put but I only had until three oclock to fish before I had to go home. It was two thirty when I got my next run, a screamer which was ripping line from the baitrunner on a legered bait right from the off. I pulled into this fish while it was still running fast and the rod bucked hard as a result. This was a very hard fighting fish and for a time I thought I might be into something a bit special so I was just a little disappointed when I got it to the boat and saw that it was only a mid double.

During the fight the baitrunner on the other legered bait had buzzed a few times. I thought this had been caused by the hard fighting fish pulling the boat around but as I netted the pike it continued to run and started to pick up speed, it was another run! I left the first fish in the net in the water and picked up the second rod, winding down hard and hooking into my fifth pike of the day. This was a fish of similar size and I was forced to hand-land this one, the net being already occupied.

I quickly took a picture of the two pike together in the net but I was till being tossed around by the wind and the picture suffers a little from camera shake as you can see. Both fish were fourteen pounds odd, the biggest being short of the fifteen pound mark by just two ounces and had I the time available I would have seen the day out in this spot but it was time to go.

Wind, rain, earthquakes and eclipses what a start to 2011, what will the rest of the year bring?

Competition

2010-12-15T14:12:00.000-08:00

A change of scenery for me this week as I ventured out to pastures new. There was a certain river that I'd long fancied having a look at and so I invested in the three hour drive to see what it offered. I have access to several stretches through clubs that I belong to and so rather than visit a day ticket length I decided to try a couple of them first. It was to be a two-day trip concentrating on deadbaiting and lure fishing.

I checked out the weather forecasts and river level websites and conditions looked ok. There was to be no rain and the river was dropping slowly after last week's snowmelt had brought it up. I reasoned that the fish might be starting to feed if the water wasn't still too cold and too coloured.

It was cold and coloured! I arrived at dawn and after pulling on my woolies and boots I treated myself to a brew before setting off to find a swim. As I drained my cup another angler arrived. We exchanged pleasantries before setting off together along the bank. Pete (as he was called) told me a little about the stretch and settled into a swim he fancied as I marched on further upstream.

I found a likely looking spot with some dead water in between some bushes. The water was so dead in fact that a large sheet of ice, some thirty feet by ten was covering the swim so I dug out the landing net pole and, wedging it against the ice, heaved it out into the flow leaving me with clear water to fish.

I dropped a legered sardine at the edge of the crease where the slack water met the current and sat back to await developments. They weren't long in coming as, after fifteen minutes or so, the rod tip twitched round a little. I pulled off the bobbin by hand and picked up the rod watching the line peel from the spool. A hard strike met with a satisfying resistance and a lively six pounder was brought to the net. "That's ok" I thought, "first trip and I haven't blanked."

I moved on after a little while trying other similar spots but no more runs came. I bumped into Pete again and he told me he had blanked and I saw two more anglers, also fishing for pike. Staying mobile, I fished a number of swims but to no avail and as darkness fell I yomped my way back to the car. Pete's car was gone by now, as was another vehicle I had seen in the car park earlier. I loaded my gear into the car as the two anglers I had spotted earlier arrived at the car park. They too had blanked, though one had had a dropped run.

All in all I was growing disappointed with this bit of river. The lack of action wasn't a problem, after all conditions were not so good, but I was really surprised to find at least four other pikers on the stretch on a tuesday in late December. It's clear this stretch is fished heavily and that's something I really don't like.

I drove to my other stretch and after a nice pub meal and a drink or two slept in the car until dawn. An early start saw me on the bank as the sun was creeping over the adjacent mountains. The location was breathtakingly beautiful with rolling meadows bounded by dark, brooding forests leading away to snow covered peaks.

The river was wide at this point with slack water close in and the main thrust of the current on the far bank. At some point in the distant past a huge tree had fallen into the water just upstream. This had had the most profound effect on the river, diverting its flow and causing a great eddy to form just at the point I had chosen to fish. I plumbed the depth, at seven feet it looked ideal and I was confident that a pike or two resided in this text book swim.

I cast in two deadbaits and sat back to await developments. Little happened for a while, the odd fish turned, mostly small stuff but I did see a large dark salmon roll at one point, probably a returning fish. After a while, the float on one rod started to bob. I picked up the rod and waited but the bobbing stopped. I put the rod down again and after ten minutes or so it started to bob again, only to stop once more. Over the next hour this performance was repeated several times and I decided that some "nuisance" fish was the culprit, probably a chub or a trout.

In time the nuisance fish must have lost interest and all was quiet until I became aware of some movement to my left. Something large had splashed, or maybe just submerged and though I hadn't seen what caused it, I did see a line of bubbles move quickly upstream, past me until it reached the ancient fallen tree. Few creatures behave in such a fashion but I had seen this before and I was fairly sure an otter was responsible. I waited and sure enough after a while I saw a large otter emerge from beneath the tree and travel back downstream against the far bank, utilising the current to speed its passage.

Was this responsible for my lack of action so far? The answer came soon enough when a whole family of otters came swimming upstream rolling, splashing and playing in front of me. Four of them disappeared under the tree and then a straggler came up and joined them. I had never seen more that two otters together before and I sat transfixed by the sight. Before long they came out from their holt, for that is what the old tree had become, and played on the ice and in the water before me. It was a rare sight and one I managed to capture on film.

I packed up. There was little point in fishing right on top of an otter's holt, even the most stupid pike wouldn't set up home there and I had to accept that the competition at my two chosen venues was too hot for me. That said, I was truly thrilled to see those otters and absolutely delighted to get pictures of them. There are those in the angling world who would have otters done away with but not me, they are a predator, just like the pike I want to catch and for too long predators have been persecuted. Better to make room for them and enjoy their presence in my view.

As I tramped away from the river I heard a loud PLOP and turned back to see a kingfisher burst from the water and land on a branch, a minnow thrashing in its beak. What a fabulous sport this is, most people never get to enjoy such sights.

Handle With Care

2010-12-04T12:50:00.000-08:00

Not much to report this week. The severe weather's curtailed my activities a little, though I did manage to get out. It's the east side of the country that's been bearing the brunt of the snow, it's just been very cold here in the west. Lots of people haven't been venturing out at all so those of us who are mad enough have had the fishing to ourselves.

I managed two pike, a ten pounder and a 16lb 7oz fish. The ten pounder told a sorry tale as do many of the fish I'm seeing lately. It was carrying obvious handling damage which, though it didn't seem to be hampering its feeding was at the very least unsightly.

Most of the handling damage I see is around the fish's head and in particular the lower jaw and so it was with this fish. The jaw had clearly been held very tightly while the fish thrashed, or possibly the fish had been hand landed. This had resulted in the cartilage under the jaw becoming broken and the skin around this area was split.

There are times when hand landing a pike is the right thing to do but by and large a net is kinder to the fish. If people have to land a fish by hand they should put down the rod as soon as the fish is secured and take both hands to it. This is to prevent the fish from thrashing around - that's when the damage is done.

Of course it may not have been caused by hand landing. Failure to control a fish properly whilst unhooking can cause the same kind of damage. The fish has to be placed on the floor, or the deck on its back and the angler kneel astride it. Once the pike's in this position it can't go anywhere and thrashing only brings its tail in contact with the angler's legs.

In most cases we might try to pass off damage like this as being the result of inexperience but frankly I don't believe this to be true. The vast majority of anglers who fish this water are, or at least profess to be, knowledgeable pikers. It's noticeable too that the larger fish are in much better shape and I'm guessing that they are treated with more respect that the little ones because they are to be held up for a trophy shot. Indeed the sixteen pounder I had on the same day was in pristine condition - see pic.

Those responsible should try to remember that today's ten pounder is tomorrow's twenty , or even thirty pounder.

The North Wind Doth Blow

2010-11-27T04:27:00.000-08:00

Late November and winter has really set in. We've had a couple of hard winters in a row and it's starting to look as if this one will go the same way - whatever happened to global warming? The wind turned to the north this week and it got very cold but that's the nice thing about pike fishing really. While most people in this country abhor the cold and stay tucked up in their cosy houses the average piker loves it and can't wait to get out. Wind, rain, snow, we take them all in our stride and concentrate on the matter in hand - catching snappers!

So it was with me this week, I had a few days to spare and set out in the boat. Denis was with me for a couple of days and then i had some time on my own. It was slow, very slow. I was still smarting from the loss of the very big pike from last week and wanted very much to make amends so we fished hard but little came our way. Indeed Denis didn't have a single run in the two days he was with me while I picked up just a couple of fish, the biggest being around the fifteen pound mark. I don't bother weighing many of my pike these days and I photograph even fewer. It's kinder to the fish to get them back into the water as quickly as possible and after all, how many photographs of mid-double figure pike do you want? My estimates as to the weight of fish are usually pretty good these days, though I tend to under-estimate a little but I don't really care if a pike weighs 15lb 2oz or 15lb 8oz. If it looked like it might go 18lbs plus I would weigh it though.

I'd had some trouble with the trailerboard whilst towing. I took a bend rather tight and since the cable was tied up tightly (to prevent it from dragging along the ground) the turn caused the plug to pop out whereupon it dragged along the ground and got nipped off by one of the wheels. I had to repair this so it meant an hour's drive back to civilisation to find a parts supplier where I could buy a new plug and then a drive back. It was dark by the time I got back but I'd managed to find a chip shop in a small village along the way so Denis and I enjoyed a fish and chip supper under the stars.

I repaired the plug the next night after Denis had gone home and bedded down early in order to get a dawn start on day three. Next morning it was rough and cold with a stiff northerly blowing. I set out into the wind intending to find shelter on the leeward bank but it meant a long slow bumpy ride against the waves. It was worth it when I got there, there was enough shelter to fish and anchor comfortably and I knew it was an area that could produce fish.

Results were quick in coming, indeed I had a float legered mackerel tail picked up on the first cast within five minutes and immediately on pulling into the fish I could tell it was a big one. After a slow, dogged fight I slid the net under a nice big pike which went 24lbs 14oz on the scales - very satisfying. I took a couple of pictures and put her back just as a second rod was away. The other half of the mackerel was on this one but the pike was substantially smaller at around fourteen pounds.

I took just two more pike during my trip, a jack and a scabby nine pounder so all in all it was a slow trip. I'm only averaging around one run a day at the moment, hopefully that will improve as the winter progresses and the fish really get on the feed. That's thirteen doubles including two twenties since the start of October, the season's shaping up. As I write I've just had a text from an old friend to tell me he's just caught his first thirty pounder. It's a good time for some, North wind or not!

Three Bad Blanks

2010-11-19T12:25:00.000-08:00

Three bad blanks, does that make sense? After all, if we call a blank "bad", it suggests that there may be "good" blanks too but surely all blanks are bad. Well let's just say that some blanks are badder than others - and these three were BAD!
I don't blank often, indeed I've gone whole seasons without blanking at all but this year I've had a few. What makes these three so bad? Let's take a look.

Day one was a coaching day. Mark, a local guy, quite a successful lure angler, was struggling to catch pike on baits and so I took him out to try and help him. We fished two lakes, both quite close together, with a selection of deadbaits. We fished long and we fished short. There wasn't enough wind to try wind-assisted methods so we were stuck with static fishing. It was cold, very cold and if the fish weren't feeling it then I certainly was. When it's like that you can only keep on the move, casting frequently and changing swims when you can. I talked to him about "pinch points", checked over his tackle (which was good) and emphasised the need to keep on the move. The day ended fishless for us both and while he told me he had learned a lot I was disappointed we couldn't get a fish for him.

I'm enjoying the coaching a great deal and I know things aren't always going to go according to plan but this has been a bit of a knock. Thankfully Mark had his head screwed on and saw the day for what it was meant to be. So many people, it seems, confuse "coaching" with "guiding" which is not the same thing at all.

Blank number two was just horrible. Cold, wet and windy the weather was really against me from the off but that wasn't really the worst of it. I can't remember such a dark day anywhere. It never got light all day, it was just like a very long morning twilight followed by a very long evening twilight. I ended the day cold, miserable and soaked to the skin and was glad to get into my pit at the end of it. In between I fished as hard as I could on a water I knew well. I fished all the usual holding spots, including some at which I'd caught just recently but I never had so much as a twitch.

The worst thing about a day like this is that there's nothing positive to get from it. I couldn't tell you why I blanked, nor could I say what I could have done differently, it was a completely wasted day. I don't believe I learned anything and if I was to go back to the same place tomorrow I don't know what I would do to stop it happening again. Just one day closer to the grave that one I'm afraid!

Day three was different again. It was still a blank, though in vastly different conditions but there was one event that made this a blank among blanks. The sun shone, the wind and rain stayed away but unfortunately so did the pike. I was in my boat and I moved frequently, scouring the bed with my fishfinder seeking out the pike or failing that, their prey. I found plenty of prey fish but no pike and as the day wore on, swim after swim was getting crossed off my list.

Then, early afternoon I saw one of my floats dip slightly. I picked up the rod and it dipped again, then once more. The pike in this water tend to run with the bait so a finicky take like this one is almost always a very small pike, or maybe a trout. I waited a little while for the run to develop but it never did. At no time was the float pulled entirely under the surface, it just stayed rooted to the spot bobbing slightly. Convinced that this was a very small fish I wound down and struck. I knew at once that I had been wrong and that this fish wasn't small at all. The fight was unspectacular but dogged with line gained steadily but slowly. Once or twice the pike took a few yards of line from the tight clutch only for me to regain it inch by inch. After a few minutes the fish came into view. "That's a twenty pounder!" I thought. A few yards closer and I could see that this was a very good twenty and started to get quite excited.

Soon the fish lay on the surface in front of me, motionless and looking beaten. By this point I was aware that I was connected to something special. I've seen enough thirty pound pike in my time to know what one looks like and I was in no doubt that this was another, inches away from me. All I had to do now was get her into the net. I could see that she was hooked on the upper treble of the two and that the other treble on the trace was hanging outside her mouth.

I dipped the landing net into the water and still she remained unmoving so I started to apply sidestrain to draw her over the net. At this she woke up in spectacular fashion and took to the air, head shaking and gills flared. She landed with a crash, her head and the front half of her body inside the landing net and at once I thought she was mine but no...

...the loose treble snagged the net and with a shake of her head she tore herself free and was gone.

I'm gutted.

Fireworks!

2010-11-10T15:29:00.000-08:00

November. The season's well under way now and it's been a busy time for me. The first day of the month saw me at Llyn Brenig with Luke Kelbrick, son of Dave. Brenig was tough, as it usually is, with fish showing but refusing to take. We had several follows, a few bumps and at least four fish lost on our lures. We each ended the day with a single double figure pike, a ten pounder to Luke and a fourteen to me. If Brenig pike are a little small and hard to catch, they make up for it in their appearance. I doubt you'll see prettier pike anywhere.

I didn't hear of any twenty pounders being caught, the biggest being seventeen so it looks like Brenig has continued it's slide into obscurity. Will I fish there next year? We'll see.

A trip to the syndicate lake resulted in a blank. I used an inflatable boat to deposit deadbaits all over the place and sat waiting for a run all day but none came. This is a tough venue but there are massive shoals of roach so i really believe there's a big pike in there somewhere - a change of tactic next time I think. I shared the lake with a solitary carp angler and we both agreed that the lake looked fantastic in its autumn colours. I wonder if the pike do!

I had a great day coaching for a local club. Since gaining my angling coaching qualifications it's given me a new lease of life and I find coaching just as satisfying as fishing itself. Around thirty members turned up at the venue and I ushered each to his chosen discipline where, hopefully, he would learn a thing or two about pike fishing. As usual it fell to me to give the instruction on lure fishing and I thoroughly enjoyed it. The feedback from the participants was fantastic and I felt we'd done a really good job for them, for the club and for pike fishing.
Here's to the next one.

More than anything I want to catch a big river pike this season but like every year the elements are conspiring against me. I had arranged with a friend that we would have a couple of days on the Wye, a river I've never fished, and I've looked forward to it for a while now. As you might expect, the day before we were due to go it bucketed down, especially in Wales. That meant the river would be on the rise and probably not worth the long drive so we cancelled. Instead I took the boat out to a familiar place and had a few fish.

It was to be a two-day trip and as I arrived on the morning of the first day I could see it was going to be a bumpy ride. There was a strong north-easterly blowing and with it was a shower or two - some of them pretty heavy. It was something of a "shake down" trip for me, the first time I'd had the boat out on a big lake for many months and I was slow at getting myself organised. The worst mistake was that after getting out to the spot I wanted, sounding the depth, noting the shoals of fish on the sounder, picking a spot and then spending a good fifteen minutes setting the anchors solidly to make sure I wouldn't get blown off the mark, I turned to set up my rods and realised I'd left them in the car! I had a good laugh at myself for doing that.

I was limited in the spots I could fish effectively due to the wind but I finished the day with three fish, an eight pounder, a thirteen and a seventeen. Not too bad you might think but all of the fish were in poor condition. The smallest had a busted gill raker, the thirteen had an ugly ulcer on its flank and the biggest was blind in one eye. All three were painfully thin and it had me doubting whether I should be there at all.

I slept in the car and next day I had the baits in the water at first light. The wind was a north-westerly now and it was cold but the sun was bright and hot, a day of contrasts. I moved a few times and picked up a solitary fish in each swim. Three of them were small, indeed I'm sure one was the same eight pounder I'd had the day before, but the last fish made the trip worthwhile. At 21lbs 10oz it had taken a small smelt and was in pristine condition.

Here's to the next trip.

Chewed Up - Spat Out

2010-10-29T23:39:00.000-07:00

Every autumn I manage a trip or two to Chew Valley Reservoir in Somerset. It's probably fair to say that the pike fishing at Chew is just about the best there is in this country - usually that is. Earlier this year there was a fish-kill at the lake in which it is clear that many very big pike died. Such things are natural phenomena in which the population levels out a little, nothing much to worry about in the long term but annoying at the time.

In the spring of this year Chew was turning up pike to over forty pounds - exceptional fish by anyone's standards but it seems now that the fish are topping out at the low thirties. Now these are stil big pike and well worth fishing for so I was hopeful of something worthwhile during my six days fishing there during October.I had one day in a boat with Denis, two in a boat with Joe, my son, one on the bank with my old friend Paul Brown and two more boat days with my wife. I always catch at least one twenty pounder at Chew - but not this year!

The day with Denis produced lots of fish, but not one over ten pounds in weight. Others found the same on the day, fishing over the vast shoals of prey fish failed to produce big fish, just lots of little ones. It seems the bigger fish weren't hanging around the prey fish shoals but were over in shallower water.

My two days with Joe were little better with just a few double figure fish to thirteen pounds or so and some jacks. It seemed that either your name was on a big fish or it wasn't and while we worked hard lure fishing as well as bait fishing and moving around constantly trying to find the fish, others just sat it out for that one run which inevitably came for some. One friend had a single run in the day but it was a fish of more than thirty pounds. Another had two runs in two days and both were over twenty. Blanks were mounting up for many people and I even had two myself.

The last session, one day on the bank and two in a boat was a mixed bag but it was still hard. The bank session with Paul was a wet and windy day in which most bank anglers were looking for shelter rather than fish. We found a spot where we could get in and where the wind was coming from the side and set up there. I had my first rod in quite quickly as did Paul but as I was setting up my second rod I heard Paul call out "I think I'm in here."

Sure enough a fish had taken his legered sardine on the drop and after a lively scrap he soon had a super 23lb 6oz pike on the bank. I'd like to say it was the beginning of a bumper session but in fact the wind and waves got worse and worse and by ten o'clock the swim was unfishable. As so often happens in a big blow the waves were carrying great clumps of weed which were washing up on our lines and making the fishing quite impossible.

We moved to a different area and Paul had another pike, a small one but soon the weed got the better of us again so we opted to move once more. At this point we realised a boat had become available so we opted to take to the water where at least we could be sure of getting away from the weed. I took a low double figure fish from the boat but all too soon the day was over.

My last two days, out in the boat with Mrs Edwards were very disappointing with only one fish boated, a low double. I should take comfort in the fact that the rain held off and it was relatively mild so she wasn't uncomfortable but I would have liked us to catch more fish.

That's it for Chew for this year, I have the option to fish some more days if I want to but I think I'll move on to other things now. That's six doubles for the season so far, I'm going to try to keep count this season.

Celebrate October

2010-10-24T02:30:00.000-07:00

Pike anglers must be amongst just a handful of people in the country who actually welcome the month of October. For most it heralds the end of summer and the onset of winter, long nights and early frost, the gloomy prelude to months of wind, rain or worse. The piker doesn't think like that, for him, October is EXCITING!

Well I've had more exciting Octobers than the current one but maybe it's starting to take shape a little. To be fair my season always starts slow, mainly because I always try to get out on the rivers early season and fishing the rivers depends so heavily on rainfall. Too much rain and they become raging torrents, too little and the preyfish become concentrated into little pockets, the pike finding their meals too easily.

This year, October's been fairly dry and the rivers I've fished with Denis have been low and clear. Results should have been fairly good but they weren't really. One stretch we fish every year, and which normally produces plenty of pike, proved to be very hard indeed, prompting suspicions about where the fish have gone. This stretch is very easily accessible having a road bridge running across it - have the set lines and barbecues arrived on the Severn now?

We got the boat out on a local river this week, the River "X" (in joke) and had a fun day. The competitive element was there and driving us both as ever, even in the bait catching. We set up to trot maggots under stick floats in a little spot where I know there are plenty of roach and sure enough, the fish were there. We decided a dozen baits would be just enough for the day and started feeding and trotting. First fish came to Denis, a plump eight ounce roach and then he had another. Was I going to lose round one? I needn'y have worried as I soon started to get a bite a cast and we finished that session with me winning eight fish to four.

Bait catching completed we went in search of the pike. This is a tough river but I'm building a mental portfolio of spots that produce and sure enough Denis was soon into the first pike on a lure, only for it to shed the hooks on the way in. He soon made up for it with two more fish on baits before I picked up a small one on a lure.
So the big man started with a bang but could he maintain it? Sadly not, Denis had no more fish on baits or lures through the day while I steadily increased my tally to five including this rather nice 15lb 2oz specimen, a good fish for this river.

Poor Denis, I won the bait catching then I won the pike catching. What's more he lost two lures in trees along with their titanium traces (ouch, expensive that!)

Four doubles for the season for me so far along with lots of jacks. Let's see if we can report a twenty next time!

Anguilla Angst

2010-07-08T09:09:00.001-07:00

Well the bream fishing is going according to plan - that is I haven't caught any. I have had two more nights in pursuit of the big bin lids but only managed to catch eels so far. I knew there were eels in this water and I've been told there are some very big ones with fish to over 7lbs but I did get quite a surprise when i fished with worms as bait. On the first night I had many indications, most of them line bites but I also got five good fast takes on the worms. Each one of these turned out to be an eel with the largest going 3lb 1oz, not too bad for starters.

I was worried though that all were deep hooked. I don't just mean well back, I mean deep, way out of sight. The bream rigs probably wouldn't have resulted in deep hooked bream but the eels obviously really wanted those worms. I didn't dare try to remove the hooks, size six super specialists, since I was sure I would have ended up killing the fish so I cut them off and crossed my fingers. I felt very guilty about this though as I expect most of them would still die due to having the hook embedded in their gut so I decided to do something about it.

Next night I rigged things up differently. Both the worm rods were to be fished bolt-style using fixed leads and on one I added the extra refinement of a "T" bar some two inches away from the hook. The idea behind this is that It's just not possible for the eel to swallow the hook down deep because the bar won't fit inside its mouth. Both of these rods were made up with barbless size eight Raptors this time so that if I did get an eel, I could unhook it easily.

The changes were partially successful. I only had one run during the night and landed an eel of 3lb 6oz. The barbless hook dropped out in the net so I was confident that this fish at least would survive. Trouble is, the other rod, the one with the "T" bar didn't produce any runs at all and when i reeled it in in the morning the worm was gone.

Looks like I need to work on this some more if I'm going to target those bigger eels. Then again, they are a sod to handle for the photograph!

The Long and Winding Road

2010-07-04T13:29:00.000-07:00

tench fishing's over for now. The fish have spawned and so the prospect of a very large one has receded for this year. I managed a couple more before the event and I was pleased to hook a couple of fish using the old fashioned technique of raking a swim. I wish I'd done this earlier really since the swims I most enjoy fishing tend to get choked with weed quite early in the season and so I don't get to fish them as much as I would like.

It took a full three hours to rake the swim I wanted. the weed, mostly canadian pondweed, was so thick that the rake was still clogged on every drag even after two hours of raking but eventually it started to thin out. I baited the cleared area quite heavily with maggots and casters and of course the tench moved in but sadly, when they did, it was clear that I was too late and they had spawned. Best male to come from this swim went 5lbs 15oz and fought like stink while the best two females both went 7lb 4oz.

With the tench fishing over it's time to turn my attention to my bream campaign. Now this might surprise you but I honestly expect to catch no bream at all. That's because the water I've selected has a very very low stock density. It's a big lake, nearly 100 acres and the syndicate is very small so I don't expect to have to fight for swims but there are so few fish that most people don't actually catch anything.

I've fished two nights so far, and blanked as expected but I did at least see a bream - a rare event in itself. I saw an otter too, at quite close quarters, and I understand they use this lake quite a lot, feeding on the eel population.

I packed in serious bream fishing many years ago, life's too short to fish for bream. Let's see how long I can stick it!

Some Like it Hot

2010-05-28T13:21:00.000-07:00

I've managed a few sessions after the tench and like many people on the lake I've found it quite tough. Tench in the springtime respond well to the sun. The hotter it gets, the better they like it. This is all a bubble of course. The tench come out in the sun, they feed, they get fatter and fatter and then they burst, or in this case, they spawn.

Last year the spring was a cool one and the tench fishing was hard as a result. This year we've had some early hot weather and this has brought results for the lucky ones who were able to get out fishing in the sun. Now me, I was at work when it was sunny and when my rest days came around the temperature was falling fast. We went from the high twenties to the low teens in just a few days and the fish didn't like it at all.

Don't worry, this isn't just another whinge. I've actually managed a few fish and one decent one at that. Tench will take most baits but for me there are two that stand head and shoulders above the rest. They adore maggots and will work over a bed of maggots for hours. There are logistical problems in delivering maggots into the swim of course, they can't be catapulted very far and if you try to mix them in with groundbait they have a nasty habit of crawling out of the bucket when wet. What's more they gulp in air when they're wet and then they don't sink. The only sure way of getting maggots into your swim (unless you have a boat/baitboat) is by swimfeeder.

My swimfeeder approach is on two levels. I tend to use one rod with a simple running feeder and use a bobbin as indicator. This is my preferred method as I've said before but it's probably not the most efficient. On my second rod I fish a heavy feeder which is semi-fixed. This is fished in-line with a short hooklink and the tench just hook themselves and steam off with the lot. Indeed it's this rig that's caught most of my tench so far this year but it wasn't maggots on the hook!

Maggots are good but there's one bait that's even better - casters. Tench will eat casters until they come out of their gills and when times are tough, as they have been, casters will often produce the only fish of the day. You can see my rig in the photograph. The feeder depicted is one I've had for many years, I only have two and they are no longer made so I don't know what I'll do when I lose one. The hookbait actually consists of one plastic caster and one real one.

Best fish so far this season is this rather nice 8lb 4oz specimen. You can tell it's cold from the jumper I'm wearing.

It's Tench Time

2010-05-05T22:45:00.000-07:00

No blog entry for more than a month. Well it's not so surprising, April's always a funny time of year and I haven't fished much. A trip to Scotland didn't produce anything exciting, just small pike. I did come close to a big one when I had a six pounder grabbed by something much larger as I was bringing it to the boat but the big one let go, just leaving the jack with some pretty impressive scars. I fished that area quite intensively for some hours after that but I didn't catch the culprit. I guess it's possible that the jack was grabbed again on its return to the water and devoured in which case the big pike might not have been so interested in my baits and lures with its belly full.

This week was the start of my tench campaign for 2010. This is going to be a short campaign for sure as I have other projects in mind but I was fortunate enough to kick off with a fish, albeit a relatively small one. Denis and I got to the lake just after first light but we were disappointed to find the swims we wanted taken. No matter, it was a wednesday morning so there was plenty of space and we headed off to the opposite side of the lake. It may have been a blessing in disguise since the day was a cold one and we got a fair bit of rain thrown at us but the swims we were in were sheltered and we missed the worst of it.

It's a late spring this year after a very cold winter so heavy feeding would not be a good idea and maggots were to be the first line of attack. I fished two maggot rods, one with a simple running rig and the other with a short hooklink and heavy feeder fished semi-fixed. I don't like fishing this way to be honest, I would prefer to fish two running rigs with long drops on the bobbins so as to get early indications in the way of line bites. I can't deny though, the bolt rig setup works and is very efficient, especially in pressured waters, which this one now is!

I set up a third rod as well. This was a new rod which I built myself from a 2.75lb tc Harrison Chimera blank. I've built this rod specifically for long range bream fishing and this was to be its first outing. I rigged this to fish "method feeder" style using pineapple flavour boilies on the hook and a very stiff groundbait mix moulded around the feeder. It's easy to make a very stiff mix, just add some liquidised corn to the mix and the starch from the corn stiffens it nicely.

First bite came on the maggot bolt feeder rig. Typical sort of thing, one bleep followed by a screamer and before long I had the first tench of the season in the net, 5lb 12oz. I was a little surprised to see how much spawn the fish was carrying considering how cold the spring is, not sure how much longer it'll be holding on to it.

A while later I had a drop back bite on the method feeder rod but when I lifted the rod I failed to connect with anything - need to work on the rig a bit more I think. I finished the day with one more fish, a jack of around four pounds which took the ubiquitous slider. I'm determined to do more lure fishing this summer, it breaks the fishing up nicely when you're waiting for that one run from a big tench or majestic bream.

Hell and High Water

2010-03-27T12:10:00.000-07:00

Well the weather's finally broken and the pike have come back on the feed. Lot's of work to do at the moment so I only managed one day out in the last two weeks. The forecast said it was going to be wet and windy but since it was the only day I had available I just had to take my chances and got the boat out.

I got to the lake very early and saw that there were one or two others there who had slept overnight in their vehicles. The wind was howling and the rain hammered down as I rigged the boat out and I wasn't a bit surprised that these other anglers stayed tucked up in their sleeping bags. I was soaking wet even before I ventured out and I knew this was going to be an rough day.

First stop was in one of my favourite swims and I took great care to dig the anchors in deeply before starting to fish to make sure that they didn't pull. The anchors stayed put alright but the wind was strong and I found it most uncomfortable sitting there being pitched and tossed about. Indeed I had a few hairy moments when I needed to stand up and came close to testing the auto-inflate lifejacket several times.

I stuck it out in that spot for an hour or so before deciding to move. Discretion, as they say, is the better part of valour and I moved over to the far side of the lake where there was some shelter. Once again I sat it out for about an hour and once again, no runs were forthcoming. The rain hammered down all this time and despite the "waterproofs" and fleeces both the cold and the wet were seeping through.

Undeterred, but secretly suspecting that a blank might be on the cards, I went in search of the fish. Now this doesn't always work but sometimes it does pay off. Years of using a fish finder (with fish ID turned off) have taught me to recognise what might be a pike down in the depths and by patrolling slowly in likely areas I can sometimes find them. It took a while but eventually I spotted one close to the bottom in 37ft of water. I dropped anchor there, digging the anchors in deep once again and cast in.

I didn't have to wait long. A float legered smelt was soon picked up and the fish gave me a fast run. I struck at once and the rod bucked hard as I pulled into the fish which was obviously still running away from me at speed. After a hard scrap, I slid the net under a very fat fish that weighed 15lb 9oz. I was pretty pleased with this but couldn't sit on my laurels for long as a second rod was away - again with a fast run.

This was somewhat smaller, only six pounds in fact, but it confirmed that there were several fish about in this area. When pike run fast with the bait like that it's likely that they are competing for the food and running away with it to prevent one of their brethren (or sisters) from stealing it. If you get a fast run, be prepared for more action.

A little while later I got my third sizzling run in this spot and it turned out to be a rather nice fish of 19lbs 12oz. No time for fancy photography this as the weather was still awful so I just took a quick snap of the fish on the mat. Indeed, as I was taking the pic. the boat lurched once again in the wind and the pike slid sideways, coming to rest against my toes as you can see from the photo. I should be able to recognise it if I ever see it again, the top part of its tail was missing - an old injury, well healed.

I checked the time, it was just on 11am. Now after the beginning of March I never catch anything on this lake between 11am and 3pm. I can only imagine that the light levels down in the depths are too high for the pike's liking and so they slink away somewhere very deep and dark. Any way, I spent another two hours in that spot but nothing more came my way so I moved on around the lake exploring.

I settled into a nice sheltered spot early afternoon. The rain had stopped now and the wind had eased a little so I was feeling a little drier and warmer and the sun popped out for a look from time to time. After a while I had a bait picked up in leisurely fashion and pulled into a nice fat fish around the fourteen pound mark. I unhooked it and slipped it back before looking at the time - it was 3pm!

One last move before dark and I had another jack of around five pounds and that was it. No more fishing for a few weeks now, time for a break.

Back Down to Earth

2010-03-19T07:37:00.000-07:00

What contrary creatures these pike are. After my recent good catch I was pleased to act as guide for none other than the legendary George Higgins from Belfast. George kindly agreed to come over to give a talk for PAC region 31, my local region and so I offered to take him for a couple of days fishing.

Naturally I wanted George to have a good trip so I took him out in the boat and of course, we went straight to the spot where I had taken the 26 the week before. After casting out four deadbaits, two each, it wasn't long before one of my rods was away; "Here we go." I thought, "It's going to be another good day." I pulled that fish in, a nice fifteen pounder and slipped it back. It wasn't going to be long before we had another run - was it?

The hours ticked by but no more floats dipped and I started to get anxious that George wasn't going to get a run. By and by I started wishing I'd handed my rod to him and let him reel in the fifteen. After a while, we opted for a move and I took George to a spot that for some reason often produces on lures as well as baits. We cast in the baits and George started lure fishing. Nothing came to his lures and after an hour or so he sat down and had a rest. Boredom took hold of me and I picked up a lure rod and started to cast. Typically I had a take quite quickly and brought in a single figure fish.

All too soon the day was over and we had to head for shore. I was so disappointed that George hadn't caught - and I felt really guilty that I had!

We spent the night in a local B&B and the following morning we opted to fish a different lake. No prospect of me catching the fish this time, I didn't cast in!
Thankfully George did manage a pike at this second venue, albeit a small one but by lunchtime we had to go, George needed to prepare himself for the evening's entertainment at RA31 in Ashton in Makerfield. It was a great talk and people came from far and wide to watch it.

George was great company out on the lake and I very much hope I'll get the opportunity to fish with him again at some point. Next time, I'll put him on some fish!

Next trip was with Joe and things hadn't improved at all.When we arrived at the lake we bumped into and old friend of mine who had been there for a few days. It was another tale of woe I'm afraid with little to show for his efforts but we were there, so we had to fish.

Straight out to the hotspot and baits in the water, it took less than five minutes for Joe to get the first run. At 18lb 7oz it was a good fish and it was followed just a few minutes later by a run to me which I missed clean. Unfortunately that was it for the day, not another run came our way. We stayed over and next day went out to the same spot. This produced a repeat performance with a run immediately to me which I missed once again. I cast the bait back out to the same spot though and it was taken at once, almost certainly by the same fish. This was a lively pike just a little under 15 pounds and guess what, we never had another run!

Light at the End of the Tunnel

2010-02-28T14:37:00.000-08:00

Almost everybody I speak to is in agreement; this has been a terrible winter for fishing. Weeks and weeks of rain swelled the rivers and dirtied the stillwaters but when the rain left us it got even worse with ice and snow dominating December, January and well into February. I crossed over the River Ribble in mid-January and was astonished to see it flowing with more ice than water and quite unfishable. In the north, most stillwaters of less than a thousand acres have frozen at some point and even the very big ones have had a lot of ice.

So it was on our final trip to Blithfield for the season. Joe and I fished on the saturday but found it very hard, once again there was little in the shallow water and we caught nothing on lures or baits there. I managed a low double figure pike on the awful slow-trolled soft plastic in 45ft of water but it was to be our only fish of the day and we were not alone, many others blanked or caught little. We usually stay over in a cheap hotel for the saturday night but I had been unable to get anywhere to stay this time so we travelled home.

Next morning we awoke to a covering of snow and after loading the car we made the long tortuous journey to the lake, a distance of some sixty miles. It took far longer than usual due to the weather and when we arrived we were greeted by the sight of yet more ice and snow. The corner of the reservoir where the boats are moored was completely frozen over and with many anglers being unable to make it, the day was postponed until the following saturday. The reservoir should have fished well on this second day. It was later in the year than we usually fish and the fish had had a week's rest but the low temperatures remained and the fishing was as poor as I've ever known it there. We blanked totally as did many others and while there were a couple of good fish caught, it was only a couple.

So what's all this about a light at the end of the tunnel? Well I don't only fish at Blith and in between those two awful days I actually did ok for a change. I managed to squeeze in a day and a half out in the boat, ignoring the dire weather predictions (which turned out wrong anyway) and had a thoroughly good trip. Day one saw me settle into a swim I knew well and in which I'd had lots of good fish in the past. This particular lake had been fishing badly for some months but I knew that if the fish were going to feed anywhere, they would feed in this spot. I wasn't to be disappointed and it was only ten minutes into my session that my float legered bluey was picked up by a scraper double. "A good start" I thought to myself but there was more to follow.

Half an hour later, I had a sardine taken by another low double and a little later still I caught a 19lb 2oz fish, again on a bluey. This was turning out to be a good day but the swim went rather quiet after that so i moved on and did a little sounding, trying to find somewhere new. I have detailed charts of the water but they don't always show everything up and I find that I can sometimes discover a new feature by travelling slowly and watching the sounder closely - and that's just what happened. I found a huge clay mound, way out in the lake and some twenty feet shallower than the surrounding water. Naturally I had to give it a go and sure enough there was at least one fish sitting there as I pulled in a fifteen pounder.

I moved swims again a while later and took a thirteen pounder from a spot I knew well, again on a deadbait but was a little disappointed to lose another one which took a replicant fished deep. The day was wearing on and so I moved one last time to a spot that was new to me. Here I missed a run on a float legered bluey but I rebaited and cast to the same spot and had another run within a few minutes. This was almost certainly the same fish and went a very creditable 16lb 2oz. So the day ended with six doubles, three of them over 15lbs and the best 19lb+, a good day's fishing by anyone's standards. What would day two bring?

I was quite exhausted after my busy day and so went to bed early only to be kept awake at times by the rain hammering down outside. I was keen though after my good day and so awoke early and got out on the lake for first light. I couldn't fish all day as I had to be home at a reasonable hour so just opted to fish the morning. I wasn't too worried about that since it usually goes quiet after 11 o'clock or so and I would have around four hours fishing before then. First stop was on the clay mound I had discovered the day before and once again, there was a fish sitting there, a fourteen pounder which picked up the legered mackerel quite early on. No more runs came in that spot so i moved on to the area where I'd caught the nineteen the day before. I decided to try a little deeper this time and so anchored up in a slightly different spot and put the baits out. Before long my legered mackerel tail was away and I pulled into a fish that was obviously heavier than anything previous.

The pike fought strongly and made several good runs against heavy pressure but my tackle is stronger still and there was to be only one winner and I soon had her in the net. Superbly conditioned with not a scale or a fin out of place this pike went 26lb 7oz, my biggest of the season, I was delighted with this pike but it wasn't over yet. The bait was still in good nick so I whacked it out back to the same spot and after an hour or so, it was taken for a second time. After another super fight I found myself looking at my second twenty of the day, a fish of 20lb 11oz.

Yes, things are definitely on the up!

Little Tommy Tucker

2010-02-13T13:19:00.000-08:00

It's been a quiet winter for me, both on the fishing front and on the meetings front. I usually get asked to do a number of slide shows throughout the season and in truth, I've been asked a few times this year as well. I turned most of them down this year as I wanted a bit of a rest really but Steve Gould of the Thames Gateway region of the Pike Angler's Club was very persistent and I agreed to go down and sing for my supper. I really enjoyed the evening, it was a good turnout and the members there were both knowledgeable and appreciative. Steve put me up for the night and treated me to a days piking the following day. I would love to be able to tell you that we had a bumper catch but it wasn't to be. I managed three fish, two on baits and one on a floating slider but the largest only went eight pounds or so. Poor Steve was fishless on the day but I expect that was because he put me in all the best swims.

After my trip to Kent I had a weekend at Blithfield with Joe to look forward to. Boy was it hard! I don't think I can remember a time when so many people blanked, unless you exclude the early days when little was caught except the thirty pounders! We opted for plan "A" again that is, an hour on the shallows casting jerks to begin with followed by a sojourn into deeper water. We were really quite surprised to find that the shallows were devoid of pike. They are there every February, no matter how cold the water is but this year they were not and after an hour of flinging wood and plastic about we admitted defeat.

We tried the awful deep trolling of soft plastics which just everyone on there does these days and I'm almost pleased to say we didn't catch. It works ok does that but boy, is it boring! In a way the method's spoiled Blithfield by being so successful since so many people now do it as a first resort. That said, it leaves large areas of the reservoir untouched now so I guess there is scope to try out other methods with little competition.

With no fish on the shallows we decided to try fishing just off the shallows in 20-25ft of water and it was here that we had our only success. I picked up a very pretty fish of 19lbs 6oz on a perch pattern replicant fished deep and slow. Yet again my best Blith fish of the season (so far) came on the cast rather than the troll.

Trolling deadbaits on the second day I did get a take from what I think was a big fish but it came unstuck after a few seconds - c'est la vie!

Next came a trip to Chew Valley reservoir with Kevin. Chew's been fishing it's head off with some absolute monsters caught but our trip coincided with a sharp drop in water temperature. We had two days to fish, the first from a boat and the second from the bank so it meant two lots of tackle - the car was pretty full!

We spent most of our time fishing the deep water whilst on the boat, using both deadbaits and lures and surprisingly, it was the lures that caught most of the fish. In fact, almost everything came to bright yellow replicants fished deep and slow. Kevin had a couple of doubles while I struggled for a time but it came good for me in the end with a beautifull 21lb 3oz pike. If I'd caught everything that hit my lures I would have had a bumper day but the pike were being rather shy so it was a day of bumps and bangs rather than fish in the boat. At one stage I had a slack-line bite on the lure which I missed but I continued the retrieve and watched as the pike, a good 25lbs, followed it to the boat before wallowing around a bit and sliding away back into the depths. It wasn't to be tempted again.

Day two, off the bank was an interesting day. We chose shallow water this time and with special rigs I was able to leger baits out at around 120 yards (cast, no baitboats here!). The long casts seemed to work as I got six runs before Kevin got his first one on a bait cast much shorter. Nothing big was caught but we both got fish into double figures and went home comparatively happy.

Never Been Kissed

2010-01-30T12:37:00.000-08:00

Regular readers (yes, there are one or two) will be wondering why I've not posted for over a month at the height of the pike fishing season. Have I nothing to say for myself? Well yes, I have, but it's not really fishing related for the most part. Shortly before Christmas some fool drove down my road and ploughed into the back of my car. He admitted liability as did his insurance company but the rigmorole which followed has prevented me from fishing for ages. I was actually without transport for ten days and have had to spend numerous days waiting for people to turn up and do things.

That's not all, the weather this winter has been the hardest for some years with regular snow and frequent sub-zero temperatures even during the day. Most of our stillwaters were frozen well into the new year and even the rivers were unfishable due to the ice floes coming down. At one stage I crossed over the River Ribble and was amazed to see that what was coming downstream was 80% ice with just gaps of water in between.

I finally got out this past week and managed to catch on each of the three days I fished. Day 1 out in the boat was a busy day with a total of six runs to deadbaits and a fish caught on the lure. I missed a couple and lost one fish at the net but all those boated were doubles so it was a pleasing day. Biggest was only 14lbs 11oz which was a little disappointing but at least I had good sport. I stayed over and fished again the next day but the wind got up and the lake got very rough. This hampered the fishing and I only took three, the biggest around twelve pounds.

I followed this with something completely different. I've gone over to the dark side this year and joined a carp syndicate. CARP you ask! Well yes, but it's not really the carp I'm interested in. The lake is big and there are only fifteen members and since all of the others are interested only in the carp it leaves all the other species untouched. The pike potential is relatively unknown so my friend Kevin and I have them to ourselves.

I had my first day this week and fished two rods with static deadbaits and one on a waggler fishing maggots. The maggots produced nothing at all, not even a bite but I did catch a pike on the deadbait, a pretty nine pounder that took a pollan legered in sixteen feet of water. Without a doubt this pike had never been caught before, never been caught, never been kissed.

What will this new venture bring I wonder.

It's That Man Again

2009-12-28T05:46:00.000-08:00

This lacklustre season continues with little to show for the (little) effort I'm putting in. A trip out to the big lake produced nothing at all for Denis and I and I was dismayed to see that the lake was packed with pikers despite the fact that we were fishing midweek. I did hook a fish, on a yellow replicant, but it came unstuck very quickly and that was that.

I've approached my fishing in a rather casual manner this season and the results have certainly reflected that. We've fished lots of different waters too. Some I've fished before, though not for years and some are quite new to me. The 18lb pike I had at Blithfield remains my biggest for the season so far but one of the new waters was kind to Denis with rather nice 21 pounder.

The water in question is a sand pit, of which there are many in Cheshire. I fish sand pits quite a lot through the season and find them very productive for big fish. Over the years I've taken roach to over 2lbs, bream to over 12lbs, tench to over 9lbs and chub to over 7lbs from sand pits but never a twenty pound pike. I reckon I must be trying too hard, a problem Denis doesn't have it seems.

While I was busy moving swims, trying different baits, chucking lures about etc. etc., Denis sat tight with his two deadbaits. Six hours after casting in, his bait was taken and he reeled in his prize. It fought well and gave him a few heart-stopping moments when it almost reached the sanctuary of an overhanging bush to his left but all's well that end's well.

Denis has outfished me on almost every trip we've had together this season but he won't be outfishing me for a while now. Two days before Christmas he slipped on the ice and broke his ankle quite badly so it's a few weeks in a cast for Denis I'm afraid.

Get well soon mate.

More of the same

2009-11-18T07:37:00.000-08:00

November means Blithfield for Joe and I. This is a regular feature of our fishing every winter and probably the only time we can both be sure that we'll be fishing together.

Blith is ready to produce a very big pike again, of that I'm sure. Last season saw four thirties come out (or was it five?) and while the biggest was only a little over 32lbs it means that the crop of twenty pounders is starting to thin out and the big fish are finally coming through.

We've had three cool wet summers in a row now and that bodes well for the pike, though the summer of 2009 was warmer than I would have liked and the autumn was very very dry. As a result the reservoir was down by around eight feet. It doesn't fish well when it's low. The known marks are high and dry and it means we all have to get out and about finding fish in unfamiliar territory.

We started off at one of our usual autumn spots - one that's produced some big fish for us in the past but it was slow going. Here we rely on the fish holding up against some overhanging gabions in shallow water but of course the gabions were well away from the water's edge and so the attraction was not there for the pike. Recent rains had coloured the water considerably too so visibility was poor.

Joe started off with his old faithful burt while I tried various lures to no avail but ringing the changes with regard to the turbid water I decided to put on a spinnerbait. First cast with this produced a hard fighting 18lb 2oz fish which made an almighty mess in the net, spinning like a top once on board. This meant I had to cut the hooks just to free them from the ball of netting and get at the fish and so the spinnerbait was useless since one of the hooks I had cut was integral to the lure.

Guess what, no more spinnerbaits in the box! We fished on for just one more pike that day (to Joe) and then spent day two deep trolling soft plastics. It's a form of fishing I abhor, dragging a lump of rubber around on the bottom, since it seems there is so much luck and so little interest involved. We picked up two more small fish on day two and that was it.

Hopefully the next session will be a little more interesting - bring on the rain!

Risk

2009-10-28T11:09:00.000-07:00

To be successful at this pike fishing lark you've basically got to fish where the fish are. That's easy enough to do, after all I do know where I can catch pike, but it's not really enough for me. From time to time I prefer to go pioneering, fishing new places in an attempt to discover pike that no-one else is targeting. This can pay off big-time on occasions. Neglected pike are both easy to catch and potentially big and I've had some good fish in the past by getting off the beaten track. It's a risky strategy however, most of the time an area can be devoid of pike anglers for a very good reason - the fishing's no good!

All of the piking I've been doing has been on rivers. We're having an unusually dry autumn and it's meant that the rivers have remained low and clear - just the kind of conditions I like. I've caught plenty of fish but so far the risk I've taken hasn't paid off - they've all been small.
Big fish aren't the be-all and end-all of pike fishing of course. I've really enjoyed finding these new places and some of them have been breathtakingly beautiful. What's more I've been catching on a wide range of methods with lures, livebaits and deadbaits all taking fish.

The baits have been mostly fished under a planerfloat and there is always a real sense of satisfaction in catching a pike on that method. Indeed I've had several fish on deadbaits fished that way - as opposed to the livebaits I usually use and this will give me the confidence to do that more in the future. Overall though I've caught more fish on lures than baits - and that's been on all four of the rivers I've fished.

Fishing lures on rivers is a risk in itself. Rivers are always full of snags - mostly branches brought down on a flood and losing lures in such places is an occupational hazard. I could, of course choose light lures which don't get down so deep or fish them on a quick retrieve to try and keep them out of the snags but that defeats the object really. Snags hold fish and if you want to catch consistently it's better to fish close to the snags - or right in them!

In order to keep my lures but still fish in amongst the snags I've been using a new trick that's proved very successful. I've replaced all the split rings on the hooks of my jerkbaits with Pro Rigger 50lb bs split rings. This means that every time I get snagged, a steady pull with 100lb Power Pro will break the split ring and leave the hook in the snag. It's working a treat, I've been snagged up lots of times but haven't lost a lure on a snag all season so far.

It's Nearly Time

2009-09-20T07:35:00.000-07:00

The long hot days of summer are finally over and autumn is here. Well actually the summer wasn't so much long and hot as long and wet. We've had higher than average temperatures alright but it's been 40% wetter than the average summer. That's not such a bad thing since it means the waterways and reservoirs are pretty full up and that is good for the pike.

I haven't fished much at all over the summer. Mrs Edwards has had me slaving in the garden cutting down trees, concreting, fixing fences and the like but I have to say, the urge to fish has been pretty weak anyway.

More recently I've dusted off the pike rods and been out and about on various stretches of river. The pike have been easy enough to catch on livebaits and lures but there's been nothing of any great size as yet. The biggest fish so far was a fourteen pounder which took a dace fished under my new Mk III planer float. I've taken a bit more care than usual making this float and it works very well, as well as being very sexy.

Things will change in a week or two. Come October 1st the stretches of river that I really want to fish will be open to pike fishing and I'll hit it hard if I get the chance. It's nearly time.

Running In, Please Pass

2009-08-20T11:00:00.000-07:00

Not much fishing for me this month. Mrs Edwards is on holiday and I'm spending some time with her mostly but I did have a couple of opportunities to get out - and just for a change she came with me.

I've invested in a new outboard motor. The old 25hp Mariner two stroke was rather unwell and it was a choice between spending a lot of money to get it fixed and spending a lot more to replace it altogether. I've long lusted after a four stroke engine so I opted for the latter, trading in the Mariner and a small engine that I never use and buying a 20hp Tohatsu. Engine weight is quite important to me for a variety of reasons and that's why I've downsized slightly. Four stroke engines are heavier than two strokes and a 25hp four stroke would be quite a bit heavier than the old engine.

From time to time I take the outboard off and leave it behind because some of the places I fish will only allow an electric outboard. Manhandling engines is only going to get harder as I get older so a heavy engine would be a nuisance. The light engine is better for the transom when I'm towing too, so hopefully the boat will last a while longer.

The new engine had to be run in so I invited Mrs Edwards up to the big lake for a day's trolling. It was a nice enough day but after trolling for an hour or two it was clear that I was never going to run the engine in at that pace so we reeled the rods in and spent the day cruising around and looking at the sights. No fish were caught but then that wasn't really the object of the exercise. I was surprised to see several boats out - obviously pike fishing. This was midweek during the summer, not a time I would expect to see people out but there you go. The pressure the lake is under never relents nowadays and it's certainly showing in the catch returns.

Next time out she came along with me again. This was a different kind of trip as it was to a local river and with the engine run in now I was happy to spend the entire day trolling. I set Mrs Edwards up with a light spinning rod and attached a tiny crankbait, not much more than an inch long to it. The plan was that she would catch some perch and maybe some chub while I concentrated on the pike with larger lures. Well that was the plan!

Clare took the first fish of the day and it was a bit of a surprise as it was a flounder! She quickly followed that up with a perch and then it was my turn as I latched into a pike of six pounds or so. Shortly afterwards, as we trolled alongside a clump of bushes that hung into the river, Clare's rod pulled round hard. It was a pike of course and after a cracking fight on the light rod I netted the fish for her, a nice fish of nine pounds or so.

I followed with a couple more pike but none were as big as Clare's so she was top rod for the day!

Summertime, and the Living is Easy

2009-07-22T10:35:00.000-07:00

I'm making a blog entry just for the sake of it really this time. A month since my last entry and summer has kicked in big style. I don't fish much in the summer as I've said before so I'll roll a few reports up into one.

I managed another trip to Scotland in early July but I'm afraid I caught very little. It wasn't too surprising really as the weather was blisteringly hot and the surface temperature of the loch was 22 degrees. I had a few half-hearted takes from small pike on topwaters fished in the weeds but I only hooked three and landed just one, a seven pounder.

The only other fishing I've done is barbel fishing. There have been three trips in all, and I've been determined to fish new stretches rather than return to my old haunts. This didn't start well as i only managed a solitary eel on my first visit to the new stretch I had chosen but it gave me the opportunity to find out about the stretch and I laid plans for the next trip.

The next trip hit another snag. I turned up armed with all the tackle and bait only to find the swims I was interested in occupied by three anglers. Oh well, back to the drawing board. I didn't waste the day, but went instead to my favourite old stretch and had a good day, taking thirteen barbel and a chub. Sadly, none were of any great size with the biggest just going around seven pounds.

Trip number three was to be with my son, Joe and we made an early start at the new stretch to make sure we got the swims we wanted. We got them alright but i was soon wishing we hadn't as the spot I was in was terribly cramped with just a tiny ledge to sit on and a steep climb behind me.

I sat on that ledge for sixteen hours all though the heat of the day and got quite badly burnt by the sun, as did Joe. The forecast was for cloud and rain but guess what, they got it wrong again. We didn't get many fish, just two barbel and a chub for me and one barbel and a chub for Joe. My biggest went exactly nine pounds while Joe's barbel was 9lbs 6oz and his chub 5lbs 4oz.

A slow day but good-sized fish. We're planning the next trip already!

Long Time Comin'

2009-06-12T12:16:00.000-07:00

I was quite pleased with my bream success. I had decided on a target of a 12 pounder this year and of course I had met my target on the first fish. A twelve pound bream may not be big by national standards but it's a good fish for here in the NorthWest these days.

My tench target was more ambitious. I wanted a NorthWest 'nine' again and while I knew it would be difficult, it certainly is possible as I've proved in the past. As it turned out though, it was going to be a lot more difficult than I expected. May ended with no tench at all to show for my efforts and I was already lowering my sights. "An eight will do" I told myself.

Why the tench wouldn't come out to play was a mystery but I took comfort in the fact that most other people were struggling to catch them too. Indeed I never even saw a tench on the bank right through May and early June though they could be seen rolling in several places. The weed was one of the big problems. It's grown up much thicker and faster than usual this year and it isn't hard to spot the reason why. This lake usually has upward of a hundred coots living on it but this year I've never seen more than a dozen. The tufted duck are thin on the water too and with so few birds eating the weed it has grown out of control.

Where are all the birds then? Well that's another mystery but I'm guessing that the very cold winter has seen a lot of them off. With the water frozen for several weeks they will have struggled to find food and I expect a lot of them died.

The lake's been very busy too. The controlling club have stocked a lot of carp and the no-hopers who can't catch in a natural water have flocked to it. Every swim is now occupied every weekend - am I glad I work shifts and can fish midweek!

I've fished a different swim every trip, partly to try and find some feeding tench and partly to find an area where I could present some bait without it becoming buried in the weed. I nearly had a success last week when, after fishing hard and feeding maggots for eight hours I fanally got a bite - only for the hook length to part inexplicably in the middle. I was getting desperate and lowered my sights still further, first to a seven pounder and then to a tench - any tench!

Today, at long last I put a couple on the bank. I fished a deeper area - again to try and avoid the weed and as a result I expected to catch bream. I wasn't disappointed there, taking two bream in the night topped by a big-framed male fish. Both of the bream took mini boilies which pleased me rather since I've switched to a new, fruity flavour and this was the first time I've tried them. I was getting quite a few line bites early in the night and picked the two bream up both before midnight so I thought I might be on for a big hit. The clear sky and nearly full moon put paid to that though, all activity drying up once the white face was on show.

In the morning I started to get line bites to the maggot rods at around ten. This went on for some time until at mid-day the first rod was away and I pulled in a plump five pounder. I've never been so pleased to catch such a modest tench but there was better to come. An hour later I struck into a better fish and after a very hard scrap slid the net under a 7lb 14oz female.

I caught two pike too, one of them a double so it was a nice mixed bag.

Things That go Beep in the Night

2009-05-20T06:17:00.001-07:00

It's that time of year when I pack away the pike rods and try for something else and as usual, my choice was going to be between tench and bream. It's been a cool, wet spring so far and coming after a particularly cold winter that made me decide to go for the bream first. Tench are certainly catchable just now but I really prefer to do my tenchfishing in warmer weather when I think they are much more on the feed.

It was to be a two-night session this one, monday and tuesday nights to be precise. The carpers that occupy this lake 24/7 seem to favour wednesday onwards so I expected to have my choice of swims and I wasn't disappointed. There were two other anglers set up when I arrived but it's a big lake with room enough for thirty or more so I got the swim I wanted and it was well away from the others. I did get some company as I was setting up though. A family of swans arrived with the cygnets riding shotgun on their mother's back, it was comical to see them hopping on and off as if they were getting the bus home.

The tackle was in a bit of a state to be honest. I hadn't had time to sort it out beforehand and I decided to do it on the bank after the usual rigmorole of plumbing, putting out a marker, clipping up, spodding (for two hours) and setting up the bivvy etc. etc. By the time I'd got everything done I was quite surprised to find that it was after eight in the evening, no wonder I was feeling hungry! Creamy chicken and mash for tea, that was lovely and with the rods out I could settle in for a peaceful evening.

Noises in the Dark

I was fishing three rods, one with maggot and the other two with mini-boilies and corn fished on helicopter rigs. All three were set up with tight lines and heavy bobbins. This makes for quiet fishing since line bites are often not detected this way but it had another advantage. Tench and bream give quite different bites when you're fishing this way. The strong, bold tench always scream off, stripping line from the baitrunner and making the alarm scream but the bream give drop-back bites and often take no line at all.

Sure enough, at around two in the morning the indicator on the middle rod fell slowly to the ground. I pulled into the fish and knew at once that this was a big bream.

12lb 5oz and my biggest from this particular lake, I was well pleased. It had taken two mini boilies hair rigged on a size 12. I put that one back and immediately had a take on the other rod. Sadly though it didn't stay connected when I pulled into it.

The rest of the night passed uneventfully and the day dawned cold and windy. It's normal to pick up a tench or two in the morning when bream fishing this lake but for once this didn't happen and the indicators held motionless for hour after hour. I was pleased really, because as the day wore on it got wetter and wetter. The showers turned to steady, heavy rain and by mid afternoon thunder and lightening paid a visit too. I managed to dart out in between the lengthy showers to bait up, recast and tidy up the general swim but it was never long before another burst of the wet stuff had me running for cover. It was awful, I felt like a prisoner.

The only bright moment of the day was when a green woodpecker came down and started foraging in the undergrowth nearby. These birds are very shy and hard to spot but I even got a picture of this one - albeit a poor one.

Disappointing Conclusion

The rain stopped shortly before dark and the sky cleared which meant that the temperature plummetted. It was a cold night alright and I had to stay wrapped up in the bag all through it. Just one indication, almost certainly a bream since it was a drop-back but by the time I got to the rod it had stopped. I reeled in to try and find out why - it was obvious, the hook was blunt. I must have turned it on a stone whilst reeling in and not spotted it. Attention to detail Eric, that's what catches fish!

I suppose it could be the combination of lots of cold water entering the lake and a cold night that put the fish off. I rather think though that it was just the old bream enigma that did me. No-one has ever really got to grips with this species, though some may claim they have. Does heavy baiting work? Who knows, it didn't this time.

No tench again on the final morning. That's very unusual for this lake but at least it means I made the right decision in going for bream in the first place. I ended up with a good fish, albeit just the one, and that's better than a blank.

Home Thoughts from Abroad

2009-04-30T06:54:00.000-07:00

April's a tricky month, full of decisions. Do I continue pike fishing? Do I try for a spawny bream or two? Do I go for early season tench fishing? I usually split it between all three but this year I decided to stick with the pike and take the opportunity to fish a couple of waters in different countries - and neither of them England!

The Welsh lake I like to fish is one I've introduced to you before. A beautiful tranquil place with crystal clear water and the hardest fighting pike I've ever found. The fishing there is usually very good and the pike respond to all methods. I usually use livebaits and lures but this year I decided to try trolled deads instead of the lives. It was a poor choice I'm afraid, the trolled deadbaits failed to raise a single fish but in fairness the lures did little better. A handfull of small pike and a solitary double figure fish of 15lb 10oz was all I could manage. The fifteen was a lovely fish mind, fighting fit and still quite fat for so late in the season. It took a replicant in deep water.

I had been using a new replicant in perch pattern, my old one having been in the wars a bit but I have to say I was disappointed with it. The newer replicants are stiffer in the rubber than the old ones and have to be retrieved much faster in order to get the tail to waggle as it should. This means they are impossible to fish deep effectively. I chucked it around for a while with no response but eventually took it off and put the old, ragged one back on. The response was immediate, the pike taking it on the first cast.

This was an opportunity for me to try out my new echo sounder as well. It's an Eagle 642c with GPS - doesn't it look good? If you follow the track you might even be able to work out which water I was fishing.

Moving On...

The other water was in Scotland. It's a place I've fished before, many years ago, and fancied trying again so I treated myself to a three day session. I have to say that I didn't catch a lot of fish but I didn't mind that. This was an exploratory trip, searching out the water and its depths and filing away the information gleaned for future use. I wouldn't have minded if I had caught nothing at all but as it happens, in amongst the jacks there was a rather nice fish.

Livebaiting is illegal in Scotland so it was a combination of lures, static deads and trolled deads this time. Once again the trolled deads failed to score and while I did manage to catch a fish or two on static deads, the pike would only take them if they were suspended off the bottom.

It was a different story on lures with a fair bit of action. Most of the fish I hooked were small and a good few of them fell off on the way in. I watched a couple of them hit the lures and noticed that they were just nipping them with the end of their beaks.

One fish didn't nip though, it totally engulfed a purple Fox Raider and wasn't I glad it did. Completely spawned out, it went 23lbs 8oz!

It's Goodbye to All That

2009-04-04T13:51:00.000-07:00

I've managed three trips to the Big Lake since my last report but no pictures of fish to show you. It isn't that I haven't caught any you understand, I just didn't bother with any photographs. If I'd been with someone else I would have had a few quick snaps but it takes so long to set the camera up for self-takes when I'm in the boat. Anyway, I thought, there'll be a big fish along any minute and I'll take a picture of that. It didn't work out though.

During the last three weeks I've seen the water temperature rocket from 3.9 degrees to 5.7 degrees and finally a balmy 8.2 degrees and it's brought change with it. The biggest change is the dreaded spring bloom. In April, as the sun gets higher in the sky so it triggers an algal bloom. I expect this year's bloom to be a bad one since we had proper turnover this winter, releasing all those locked-away nutrients to feed the algae. So now the water is green and visibility has dropped considerably.

What's more, the last fish I caught, a twelve pounder, was completely spawned out. They don't all spawn at the same time these pike so there will be others there that are still weighing heavy but they won't be far behind now.

So that's it for this season. I'll still do a bit of piking on one or two cold, nutrient poor waters but it's definitely time to wind it down now.

What did I catch in those last three trips? Three jacks and four doubles up to 17lbs 10oz. Not bad really I suppose.

I did have a couple of amusing incidents on the last day. My only take on a lure ended in frustration when the replicant came back minus its tail. The tail of the one that got away eh!

Oh, and I bumped into a very experienced piker who had obviously forgotten the first rule of boat fishing. When launching your boat, remember to keep hold of the rope!

Bye Bye to the Rivers

2009-03-20T23:32:00.000-07:00

The last week of the river season saw me return to an old haunt, and while the results weren't spectacular, I had plenty to file away in the old memory bank for use in later sessions. There aren't many rivers where you can launch a boat and fish unmolested but I do have access to one and there's plenty of water to go at. I managed two days and spent most of that time exploring the stretch, finding out places where the pike might hide and looking in particular for the bait fish. The bait fish were easy to find right enough, huge shoals of them on every bend or in any area where the depth dropped off to more than 12 feet or so. Many of the bends on this river are surprisingly deep with holes of 20ft or more relatively common but the flow is quite strong and the pike are often to be found tucked in close to the bank. That said, they have to feed of course and with the bait fish out in open water the pike are bound to venture out there quite often too.

Midweek sessions meant that I had the river to myself by and large and the peace and solitude that was to be found upriver away from the slipway was very welcome indeed. Just one pike on the first day, a beautifully conditioned thirteen pounder that fought incredibly hard after it picked up my free-roving floatfished live dace. I had a few follows to various lures too but they were all from the same fish I suspect, a smallish pike of five or six pounds. It's a mystery to me why pike follow lures like this without striking when they aren't subject to any amount of pressure and have probably never been caught before. It followed a slider several times then after switching to a spinnerbait it followed that as well. I couldn't stay until late on that first day as I had to attend a meeting at work but as well as that the boat retaining strap had broken on the way to the river and I had to get another one made by Bennetts in St. Helens so I was off the water by two o'clock.

Day two, just a day later, was quite a different affair. Heavy rain had found its way into the river and the level was much higher with a greatly increased flow. I struggled to find the pike in these rather more hostile conditions and only had a single take, again on a free-roving dace, hooking a smallish pike that fought like crazy before shedding the hooks quite close to the boat.

My biggest ever pike from this river went just sixteen pounds. I'll be back later in the year to bag a bigger one that's for sure.

Brilliant Blithfield

2009-03-02T10:35:00.000-08:00

This weekend was one that Joe and I have waited for for a very long time. It was to be the last of our four weekends on Blithfield reservoir this winter and the one we expected the most from. We were only able to fish one session at Blith last season, the last one, and it turned up a bumper catch for us with a twenty to me and three twenties to Joe so we were expecting big things.

It's been a tough winter there, as it has everywhere, due to the effects of the coldest winter for ten years. Every session has been dogged by freezing temperatures and the dreaded snowmelt - guaranteed to put pike off the feed. Big fish have been caught but many many people have found it hard going and up until this final session Joe and I had struggled too with only one big fish between us, a 22 pounder to Joe.

This session was different though, temperatures had been rising steadily for a couple of weeks and we were in no doubt that the fish would be on the feed. It pays to have a plan and our plan was a simple one, fish the shallows with lures for the first hour or two and then float-troll deadbaits - a technique which we've used to great effect on other waters but which hardly anyone was using at Blith.

They're Off!

We got away from the landing stages first on day one and raced off to our chosen spot ahead of all the other boats. Conditions were good with a steady, warm southwesterly and good cloud cover and we were frantic to get started. The spot we had chosen was free (well it would be, we were first out) but as we approached it I spotted a cormorant surfacing just a little further along the bank. It seemed likely that the cormorant had been feeding and since cormorants and pike eat the same sort of things I switched direction and we dropped anchor exactly where the ugly black beast had just been. I told Joe that we would have a big fish in the boat within the first five casts and clipped on a sinking slider while Joe countered with his favourite burt and we proceeded to lash the surface with them.

One cast, then two and three, still no fish. All too soon the five casts were made and nothing hit the lures, I was wrong then! Cast number six was made and after two flicks of the wrist the slider was hit. I heaved away at the fish, keen to get it to the boat; "Only small." I told Joe, but as the fish got closer to us it seemed to grow, and it pulled back, boring down under the boat. A good hard pull got it up to the surface and I let out a great whoop as Joe slipped the net under what was obviously a good pike. Fat as a pig and in superb condition she went 23lbs 6oz, my first twenty pounder of 2009 ending a twenties drought of some four months - I was well pleased!

Rubber Band Man

We had a couple more boils, bumps and follows on the shallows before it became clear that the shallow water action was over for the day and we set up our rods to troll baits as per the plan. It was quite a while before we had any action on the baits and it was Joe who had the first run but it came to nothing. Missing takes when you troll deadbaits is something that happens a lot. The big problem is that the bait masks the hooks and prevents a good hook-hold. We lost several fish at Chew the week before though and it had set me thinking about how to overcome it. Bigger hooks helps a lot but I had a little trick up my sleeve which I hoped would help. I've invented a rig I call the rubber-band rig. The picture shows how it works and hopefully will save me typing a long explanation but basically the way it works is that I loop a rubber band around the tail of the bait and attach one of the hooks to this rather than sticking it into the bait. This does a number of things. Firstly it sets a nice curve into the bait, causing it to spin seductively as it's trolled. Also it presents the hook clear of the body of the bait so that bait does not mask it. Finally it allows the hook to move independently of the bait on the strike, also increasing likelihood that the fish will be hooked.

I was already using the rubber band rig and after his missed run, Joe switched to it as well. Four more takes followed through the day. The first three produced a fourteen pounder to me and then we had a jack each, all were securely hooked on the rubber band hook. As the day was drawing to a close, Joe's trolled mackerel was taken by something that was clearly in a different league. He dragged the fish to the boat on the heavy tackle and as it surfaced we could see it was our biggest pike for some time.

I scooped it up in the big boat net and at once the hooks dropped out in the net - whew, that was close! 28lbs 9oz, Joe's second-biggest pike, click the pic and look at that smile.

All Downhill From Here
I'd love to be able to tell you that we repeated our success on the second day but it was not to be. the wind swung round to the north and turned bitterly cold making the shallows much more inhospitable for old Esox. Indeed it seems those fish that were caught came mostly from very deep water on slow-trolled soft plastics and our methods didn't turn up the fish. Only one hit between us all day - and it turned out to be a perch!

Losing my Touch?

2009-02-20T09:12:00.000-08:00

The cold, cold weather that's dogged us this winter has finally gone away, and I would love to be able to tell you that the fishing has really picked up - but it hasn't. I've been out quite a few times this past week or two but haven't got a great deal to report. Where shall I start?

Bottom-Bouncing at Blith

First it was a two-day trip to Blithfield with Joe. Conditions were very poor with very low temperatures, little wind and a lake full of snowmelt and considering all that, it actually fished passably well. One or two real biggies came out, though not to us but we did manage a few doubles between us. Joe had fish to 13 pounds odd, that fish falling to a burt, his favourite lure on Blith, and I managed a few fish to 17lbs 11oz, our biggest of the session. The seventeen pounder was taken on a deep trolled "Big Curly" lure. They are good lures for trolling deep and slow since they are heavy, so they stay down and the tail is made of thin plastic so it continues to ripple even when the lure is hardly moving.

Colder Still up North
Next came a two-day trip to the lakes where I found the fishing to be very hard. There was still a lot of snow on the fells and of course as it melted it was finding its way into the lake. As a result the surface temperature had dropped to 3.9 degrees from the 5.3 degrees it was a fortnight earlier. This meant that for once, the lower levels of the lake would be warmer than the surface and not srprisingly, this had put the fish down very deep.

One the first day I fished all morning without a run so I decided to try something new and visit an area of the lake I hardly ever fish. That improved things a little and I picked up a few small pike to around nine pounds or so, two on deadbaits and one on a lure. The next day I went back to the same area and sat it out for the day. Most of the fish came late in the day but I did get six runs in all, one dropped, one missed and four fish landed. Three of the fish were over ten pounds with the biggest going 15lbs 12oz.

I though about staying for a third day but as I was starting to talk to myself quite a bit I thought it best for my sanity if I went home.

Not Having a Chew
Next came Chew Valley Reservoir and once again it was to be a two-day affair. Surprisingly this turned out to be the worst trip of the lot. Joe and I both blanked on the first day, in the company of many others and day two was little better. Joe got our only double - around eleven pounds and I had to make do with a solitary jack. I did hook something very much bigger on a float-trolled mackerel but it shed the hooks after a few seconds so I never got to find out how big it was.

Secret Squirrel

2009-01-17T02:31:00.000-08:00

It's 17th January today, but you won't get to read this for a while yet. I had a good day yesterday you see, the change in the weather has brought the pike out to play and I was fortunate enough to be there to get some of them. I had five pike in all, an 11 pounder, a 13 pounder, a 16.05, a 16.07 and a nice 19lb 10oz fish. All were very fat and fit and interestingly all gave terrific screaming runs. Pike that run off with the bait in that fashion are usually in the company of other pike - that's why they run, they don't want anyone else snaffling their prize.

I missed out a bit though. Four of the fish, and a missed run, were all in the same swim. I fished there for a while and decided to move on, try a couple more spots and then go back to the same place later in the day. I caught nothing in the other spots but when I returned to the hot swim there was someone in it! Pretty unlucky since there were only two other boats out and it's a very big lake. Binocular syndrome methinks!

That's the reason for the secret squirrel. I know the pike are feeding but you don't yet and until the word gets out I'm not going to tell you. With luck I'll get a few more fish and squeeze a couple of reports into this one. Surface temperature was 5.5 degrees

One Week Later
Well its been a cold wet week and the lake's a different place just now. The surface temperature has fallen to 5.3 degrees and the level has risen considerably - by over two feet!

I was able to get there for two days this week, staying overnight in torrential rain followed by snow! The promised high winds didn't materialise however and in fact it was quite pleasant out on the lake. Day one went ok with four fish in the boat, the biggest going a little over sixteen pounds. Interestingly they all came from different swims and from widely varying depths, 25-50ft. The fish that came up from deepest water was bubbling and gurgling away on the surface just before I netted it - obviously venting air from its swimbladder through the pneumatic duct that pike have.

Day two was much more difficult with only a solitary twelve pounder to show for my efforts. I had another bait (half a bluey) grabbed by a pike just as I attempted to reel it in but I didn't hook the fish and it wouldn't be tempted by another bait.

Might get one more session in before the end of the month if the weather holds out.

Up For a Fall
A week later and I now know that I set myself up for a fall with this secret squirrell nonsense. We blanked! The cold weather and copious quantities of snow water seem to have put the fish right off the feed and despite fishing lots of good quality swims neither Joe nor I could attract a bite.

Question is, is this really an opportunity in disguise? If the fish aren't on their usual marks then they are obviously somewhere else and it just might be that they are in a big concentration somewhere. I won't get back to the lake for a while now but the snow and very cold weather are due to continue so I can't see much improving anyway.

Maybe a change of direction is called for!

The Big Freeze

2009-01-12T12:31:00.000-08:00

More than a month without a blog entry - says it all really doesn't it? Sub-zero temperatures have gripped the country for almost all of that time and the pike have been SO hard to catch even in the deep water. That's not all mind, the flu bug took it's toll on me, then there were the Christmas and New Year festivities to get over as well so we haven't been fishing much.

Joe and I have been out a few times but only had a few low doubles for our trouble, Joe getting the biggest at 16lbs 7oz on a deadbait. The surface temperature of the big lake has been dropping steadily, 6.5 degrees one week, 6 degrees the next and just 5 degrees a week later with ice forming in the sheltered areas. Meanwhile the conditions have been very still with only a gentle breeze and often, bright sunshine for most of the day. Ordinarily I wouldn't mind the sun but it's been very noticeable that the fish have all come very late in the day when the sun was low in the sky or even absent from it. We stayed out until well after dark one evening to see if they were coming on the feed at night - they didn't!

The few runs we've had have all had something else in common too - they were all in deep water. Not a single bait has been picked up in less than forty feet and some were quite a bit deeper than that. So what's been going on?

When times are good I can usually find the pike using the echo sounder. They show up as nice big arches, usually a foot or two off the bottom and usually, they are close to shoals of bait fish. Find a big shoal of bait fish and there's almost bound to be a pike or two nearby. Just lately though the bait fish have been absent. Those shoals that I have found have been small and tight and always in deep water and it's been a rare event to pick up an obvious pike on the sounder. I suspect the prey fish have been away somewhere very deep and in a big lake where most of the water is very deep, that presents a headache in terms of location. It also means that the pike are going to have a lot more water to hide in, difficult water to fish too since anchoring up over 100ft or more presents its own problems.

Things have changed this week though. We had a stormy weekend with strong southerly winds and a big rise in temperature to over ten degrees. There's been a lot of rain too and this combination is certain to have had an effect. The water is unlikely to have warmed up very much but as it would have been very close to 4 degrees by the time the winds came, there's just a chance that the lake will have turned over, bringing the deep layers to the surface.

The prey fish are the key, I'm sure of that, and if the change in conditions has moved the prey fish, it will have moved the pike. Let's see how I get on next time out.

Fun in the Fog

2008-12-09T08:54:00.000-08:00

Woe is me, I'm down with the flu. What's worse is that I'm ill at a time when I've got a fortnight's break from work so all my fishing plans have gone out of the window.

Last time out was at Blithfield for the second of our four visits this season. It was a bitterly cold weekend and to be honest I didn't much fancy the thought of casting all day in freezing weather. casting with braid and a multiplier tends to throw up a lot of spray which, naturally enough, covers your fingers making them very cold very quickly. In the event it wasn't as bad as I had feared. It was cold right enough but the absence of any wind meant that there was no wind chill factor and we were able to keep on casting.

It was completely obvious where the fish were going to be, we knew it and so did everybody else so it was going to be a scramble to get to the hot area first. Joe and I loaded the boat up carefully so as to get maximum speed - most of the weight being up at the bow end and we waited expectantly for the "off". When it came, we were away from the landing stage before you could say "jerkbait" and found ourselves ahead of the pack by a good way. All except for one boat that is. A certain Mr Fickling somehow had permission to launch a little further along the bank, stealing a hundred yards or so on the rest of us and he and his boat partner were ahead of us. We gained on them fairly quickly (because of the way we had loaded up) but in the end it didn't matter. It seemed they were the only boat not headed for the hot area.

It was foggy, very foggy and I know how easy it is to get lost in the fog in a boat. The only way to keep your bearings is to keep the bank within view but if I had kept the bank within view I would have to go the long way round and risk losing our hard won advantage. I hatched a plot. I realised that other boats were keeping the bank within view so I decided to rely on them and keep them in view instead. It worked a treat and we made the swim well ahead of the other boats.

We found our spot and anchored up as quickly and as quietly as we could, absolutely certain that we were going to catch - and we did! I clipped on a slider and Joe his trusty Burt which he's done so well on at Blith and after just five casts Joe was into a fish. "Only a jack" he said. "Doesn't look like a jack to me." I told him and I quickly set the net up. We soon had her aboard and sure enough it was yet another Blithfield twenty to Joe - that's five in just seven days fishing! 22lbs exactly.

We should have packed up and gone home there and then for it proved to be a very tough weekend. We scratched around after that for a handful of pike up to 13lbs or so and we each had a rainbow trout, Joe's was on a Shad Rap and mine, at 6lb 7oz on a bright orange slider of all things.

Well that's all for now, hopefully I'll shake this awful virus off before Christmas and try and get out to catch a fish or two.

Tough Going

2008-11-15T01:18:00.000-08:00

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.

In The Doldrums

2008-11-11T12:20:00.000-08:00

Every season I seem to hit a patch of the doldrums. It's not that I don't have the drive and the passion to get out and fish for pike, it's just that from time to time, life gets in the way.
I've fished a few times since my last entry but haven't had anything spectacular, just one double figure fish and a few jacks in fact.

It's all the old favourites that have held me back. Blithfield came and went with little to report. Snow in late October coupled with a very cold easterly wind appeared to put the fish off rather and all Joe and I had were jacks. Some good fish did come off on the second day of the weekend but typically, since I had to work a night shift, we had to leave early. It was especially annoying that the big fish caught came from the very spot Joe and I had chosen to fish first on the first day but they just weren't feeding then and no-one got any. A day on Chew Valley Reservoir followed hard on the heels of Blithfield but once again the cold snap had done its damage and very few people caught anything of significance. I'm only glad I hadn't booked to go on Brenig this year because that too fished very badly over the same period.

The weather has worked against me several times lately. Apart from the drop in temperatures we've had more than our fair share of rain yet again. the worst thing about the rain is the timing. While I'm at work the weather is dry and the rivers will be running low and clear then each time I have a day off due, it rains the night before and the rivers start to rise. It's very frustrating, especially since I'm hearing of some very big river fish on the grapevine and whilst I can usually get by by choosing the right river, all of them have been up and coloured lately.

Work is another demon that's stopped me from fishing. I had to do some extra shifts to make up for the ones I missed due to going to Blith and Chew and guess what, the weather was perfect so I missed out again. I know I shouldn't complain about work, it is a means to an end after all but I shan't be sorry when I finally get the opportunity to retire.

Last of all was that damned car. Oh how I hate it. Four days off the road last week (yes, the river was low and clear) and while I feel as if we've made some progress at fixing the thing, I feel as if most of my life is being devoted to it.

Four days off now, the car's working but it's rained again. Where am I going to find some pike?

Luck

2008-10-22T13:55:00.000-07:00

I have this thing about luck. I believe your luck balances out over time, you get so much good followed by an equal amount of bad and vice versa. The only thing that varies is the time scale, so you might have to suffer a long period of poor luck before one big lucky event comes your way.

I had a particularly big river fish early this year, then a few days later I crashed my car, even-stevens you see!

I really wanted to fish the rivers this week. The weather was perfect while I was at work then the night before I was due to fish the heavens opened and the rivers were soon on the rise. That was my first bit of bad luck and I cursed it so I decided instead to get the boat out for a two-day session of deadbaiting and lure fishing.

Day one saw me at the waters edge with the boat fully loaded by dawn but the wind was a bit stiff. Nevermind, I was there and I was going to fish so I set off to a spot I often fish at the mouth of a stream where it enters the lake. Of course the heavy rain soon put paid to that. I picked up a six pounder on a smelt but the constant bombardment of leaves, twigs and weed brought down by the stream soon had me on the move.

I was limited by the wind strength to fishing sheltered areas and had to anchor up with care so as to keep the boat steady in the blustery conditions and on one occasion I managed to get the back anchor rope around the propellor. Luckily the engine wasn't damaged but the rope was and it will have to be replaced. I tied a knot it in for the rest of the trip and that did me ok.

Late in the day the wind subsided and I got to fish a spot I really fancied. I caught three further fish there, the biggest a little under ten pounds and this one had a bit of a surprise for me. As I was removing the hooks it kicked and drove one of them through the middle finger of my left hand. It was a hairy moment with me attached to one end of the trace and the fish attached to the other and thrashing wildly but I managed to keep my cool, reached for my cutters and ended our brief union. I chopped up the hooks and pulled the remaining bits of metal out of my flesh, only to prompt a welling of considerable quantities of blood - nice!

Darkness soon fell and I motored over to the bank and began to cook my evening meal, curry and rice. It took around twenty minutes to get everything cooked but as I reached down to take it off the stove I clumsily knocked the whole lot over into the mud. I had no more food and had to make do with the bits left in the pan that hadn't spilled, boy was I having a bad time. I was fed up by now and my throbbing finger and rumbling stomach nagged at me to abandon the idea of staying over and go home. I was sorely tempted but something in the back of my brain said "hold on, your luck's got to change sooner or later" and so I wearily curled up in the car and tried to get some sleep.

Next morning the day dawned with promise. Gone was the wind, gone was the rain, though there was the odd shower to remind me who was boss. I headed for the spot I fished last the day before. I had had three small fish there and reasoned that there might be a better one if I stuck at it.

With three deadbaits in strategic positions I set to with the lure rod casting a replicant. I was soon into a fish of around eleven pounds and this brightened my mood a bit. I tried to take a quick photo of the fish lying on the mat but the camera batteries were flat so I just slipped it back and changed the batteries afterwards. As I was doing so, with my attention turned away from the rods for a moment, I heard the familiar buzz of a baitrunner. Sure enough one of the deadbaits, a whole mackerel, had been taken. I pulled into what was obviously a big fish and soon had her aboard. It was all worth it after all! I flicked out the hooks and held the fish up on the scales - a nice weight and one that I'll use in a guess-the-weight at my next slide show.

Two more fish came later in the day, a jack and one of around twelve pounds and I went home a happy lad - to a big meal! Surface temperature on the day was 11.5 degrees.

Trout and About

2008-10-17T14:16:00.000-07:00

October brings the first round of trout water visits each year and this year is no exception. I managed three days out this week, two to Grafham Water and one to Chew Valley Reservoir. I pike fished at Grafham once before, many many years ago when it first opened but that was before I knew how to approach trout waters. That said, my result was the same this time, a blank!

Grafham is not a noted pike water these days but is known to produce some very big zander and since I've never caught a decent zander I decided to give it a go. The method most people use is to jig lures at considerable depth. Now I've tried jigging before and didn't do very well at it then either but armed with a soft rod and a box of jigs I set out onto Grafham's 1500 acres to see what I could get.

Day one I was on my own in the boat. That left me at a slight disadvantage since it meant I had to carry the anchors, battery, sounder and all the boating paraphernalia on my own from car to boat. As a result I was one of the last boats away and of course, when I got out on the water all the best spots were taken. My jigs were not taken by any fish that day but there were some very big zander caught with the biggest going 17lb 8oz, a very big fish. I did see a couple of good ones boated and at one stage saw that one of them was struggling on the surface. Zander don't deal with changes in pressure very well. That's because they don't have a pneumatic duct to vent excess air from their swimbladder like pike do and sometimes when they are dragged up from great depth they over-inflate and can't get back down again.

Fortunately I had made myself a contraption I'd spotted on one of the websites which is designed to get zander down into deep water again. This basically involves the hook from a coathanger with an eye whipped on and a heavy weight. You hook the hook under the zander's gill cover and let the weight take it down to the bottom before shaking the fish off with a couple of flicks of the rod tip. It worked a treat. the fish went down to the bottom and I didn't see it come back up so either it's lying dead on the bottom or it recovered.

Day two was only slightly better in that I did actually get a couple of hits to my jigs but still nothing in the boat. I spent the day with Dave Horton though and we entertained each other with tales of our exploits, both fishing and non-fishing. So nothing was caught but we got to know each other a little better and that makes it a successful day as far as I'm concerned.

From Grafham I had a mad dash across country to Gloucester where I collected my son, Joe from the railway station. We spent the night at a Travelodge and in the morning drove on to Chew. I really like Chew, it's a water I fish every year and it usually produces a good fish or two. Things were hectic out on the water this time and in contrast to Grafham, we had lots of pike, 27 in all but most of them were quite small. It was opening day, the first I'd ever had on there and the problem of location was always going to be the one to overcome. The choice we had was either to go on the drift and just fish lures or "gun and run" fishing static with baits and lures but for only brief periods. We chose the latter and moved many times during the day. Best fish came to me, a lovely tailwalking specimen of 20lbs 14oz but Joe was close behind with an equally fit 18lb 14oz pike, both of which fell to float-legered smelt.

The drive home from Chew was a long one and Joe fell asleep on the way. We were both exhausted but very happy, roll on the next session!

In Full Swing

2008-10-03T08:22:00.000-07:00

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!

Off We Go

2008-09-15T10:59:00.001-07:00

Early start for the pike season for Joe and for me - and it was much better than last season's start. It took me several trips even to catch a pike last year but we both had fish this week and I managed to begin to claw my way back into the friendly (?) competition with Joe since I had easily the biggest fish. We took the boat out onto a big glacial venue with livebaits and lures. It's a water I fish from time to time - a lovely lake with the prettiest pike you'll see anywhere.

There's a particular restriction on this lake which keeps the boat traffic to a minimum - petrol outboards are not allowed. This has the double advantage of keeping the Hooray Henries away whilst at the same time cutting down on noise pollution. There's a downside of course, in that it's very much slower going when you have to rely on an electric motor to get about and if there's any wind at all, it can be downright impossible to make any progress against it. In the past this has resulted in me never venturing out if the forecast is for winds of more than 10 miles an hour and of course that means I don't get out on there too often. My electric outboard is a high quality Minn Kota model with maximiser that delivers 55lbs thrust but even that isn't powerful enough in a blow so this year I've taken the plunge and invested in a second motor. I picked up a cheap 54lb thrust Rhino off ebay for £150 during the summer and I put it on the back of the boat alongside the Minn Kota. Using the motors together like this made a big difference to the speed we could get around on the lake and so allowed us to fish more potentially productive areas.

The water was quite coloured, unusually for this lake and the fishing wasn't so good. Joe took two small ones on livebaits and I had two on lures, a six pounder and a lovely 15lb 6oz fish. Both of my fish absolutely engulfed the lure and I had to use the cutters to unhook the bigger one, chopping up the hooks to get them out. Hooks are easily replaced and it isn't worth risking the life of a decent fish by spending too long unhooking it.

Wet Wet Wet

2008-08-22T12:22:00.000-07:00

Nope, nothing to do with the band of the same name, it's just been a very wet summer and to be honest, I haven't fancied going out fishing much. When I have been out, it's invariably been with Joe and we've fished for barbel. He's continued his lucky streak mind, thrashing the pants off me almost every time we've been out with more and bigger fish. No more doubles though, the biggest fish (to Joe of course) went 9lbs 15oz - and before you ask, he weighed it so it wasn't a case of me knocking an ounce or two off.

Catching the river right has been a real challenge. One minute it's rising fast and bringing down tons of weed with it, the next it's been running off and dropping like a stone and it's been carrying colour all the time. The last session produced a bit of a surprise. It's a stretch I fish fairly often for barbel, with a tight bend and steep bank on the far side and the latest floods have caused major damage. Part of the bank has slipped down depositing a hundred tons or more of rubble into the river - hopefully there weren't any big fish underneath when it fell. This will undoubtedly change the character of the river at that point - whether it's for the better or worse only time will tell.

We fished one evening when the river was particularly high and I caught a solitary small barbel. Nothing odd about that you may say but that fish did cough up quite a lot of its stomach contents into the landing net. What had it been eating? - fry!

It's late August now and already the weather is feeling cooler. Autumn is just around the corner and that means pike. We can hardly wait!

Done Again

2008-07-12T08:20:00.000-07:00

Working shifts as I do, I get to fish midweek most of the time. That's great, since it means I can avoid the crowds and usually get the swim I want. Every few weeks however, my rota works around so I have my time off at weekends and so it was last time out. The tench pit is far too busy for me to bother with at weekends and so I decided to have a day or two on the river fishing for barbel.

Another good thing about fishing weekends is that I get to go with my son Joe. Regular readers will recall the last time Joe and I fished together, at Blithfield, when he beat me soundly, catching more and bigger pike than I did. Well in an effort to prove that that was a one-off, I took him with me to show him how it's done - bad idea!

We'd had a fair bit of rain the previous day or two and the Ribble was up by a couple of feet with plenty of colour in it. Now those are good conditions generally but high water often brings a big problem with it - weed. The weed was fairly bad in fact and most of the anglers on the stretch had a poor time of it, many of them packing up early, but Joe and I chose swims where there is a bit of shelter from the current close in so we were able to hold out without having to reel in every five minutes and clear the line.

There were six anglers on the stretch and only one of them caught any barbel - but it wasn't me! I had to be satisfied with five chub, a bream and an eel. They all took mini-boilies glugged in a strong fish flavour and fished over a bed of hemp, birdseed and pellets. The chub were awful old tatty creatures with big heads and long thin bodies and while the biggest weighed little more than three pounds I'm sure they were much bigger in their younger days. The bream was a very odd creature. A male, it was heavily encrusted with tubercles all over its body, not just on its head. This too was around three pounds and it fought like no bream I've every had before, leaping clear of the water several times and giving its all.

So who caught the barbel? Well I'm sure you've guessed. First bite of the new season produced a rather nice barbel of 10lbs 11oz and he followed that up with a six-pounder. Methods and bait were the same but he was obviously in a better spot. I followed up that trip with a day out on my own on another stretch of the river and did catch a few barbel but nothing near that size.

All at Sixes and Sevens

2008-06-18T06:29:00.000-07:00

Well my quest for a big northwest tench continues. I'm making progress, it has to be said, but that progress is oh-so-slow. My run of males has come to an end and I've started picking up some female fish. As you might expect they are a good bit heavier than the males and I've just heard that the water record has recently been broken again - not by me though.

I'm just not getting the fish shoaled up. It doesn't seem to matter whether I feed heavy or feed light, I only get one or two bites a session and the bites always seem to come just before I'm due to head home. Don't get me wrong, it's not as if I'm fishing the same times every day, sometimes I leave early and sometimes I leave late but the fish always come in the last half hour of the session. I stayed until dark last night and picked up my only fish of the session at half past ten, with the light well on its way. The bobbins hadn't moved all day and I only had a couple of line bites shortly before I caught the fish so it was probably that fish that caused them. I stayed on for another half hour, packing up in the dark but never got another indication.

I'm feeding maggots and casters at the moment with a third rod out fishing method at range. the method rod is picking up the odd bonus fish and I'm catching with corn, lobworm or caster on the hook. I've had four fish since my last report but nothing big, all sixes and sevens with the biggest a nice fish of 7lb 13oz. The water and the weather are still cold and I expect they won't spawn for a couple of weeks yet so the chances of a big fish are still high.

While I'm waiting for bites I've been creeping up on some of the bird life and trying to get a good picture. It's not easy without specialist gear but I'm quite pleased with my pic of a yellowhammer.

Boys are Back in Town

2008-06-07T17:22:00.000-07:00

What, I hear you say, no blog entries for nearly a month! Edwards must be struggling. Well you would be right, the tench fishing has been quite hard work for the last few trips. I've not been blanking, in fact I've not blanked at all but what I've caught has been fairly unspectacular. Four days fishing has produced just four tench and strangely enough, every one of them has been a male fish. Male tench are nice to catch, they fight like stink, but they aren't as big as their female counterparts, especially at this time of year and the biggest I've had over the last month weighed 6lbs 8oz. It's been a long wait in between bites and most of the fish have come to corn fished at range but on the last session I was determined to get them feeding closer in. I ladled in half a gallon of maggots just twenty yard out and fished two rods over it, one on maggot and the other on worm. As a contingency I also fished a method feeder rod some fifty yards out and as you might expect, that's the one that produced my only tench of the day - another male.

I picked up a few pretty little perch on the worm rod but the maggot rod remained untouched with just the odd line bite to move the bobbin. I had to leave at seven in the evening and I packed up the method rod first. As I turned to put away one of the other rods the bobbin on the worm rod slid steadily upwards. I struck into a heavy, ponderous fish which steadily took line for maybe thirty seconds before the hook pulled out. That was the fish I was after, no doubt about it. The line was covered in tench slime when I reeled in just to confirm that I had, indeed, lost a big female tench. I cursed as I put away my remaining gear, back to work the next day and no chance of a fish until next week. Bah!

Missed Opportunities

2008-05-11T05:14:00.000-07:00

Well after the modest success of the last post I was poised to build on that but as usual, it didn't go according to plan. I got back to the lake to discover that two anglers had moved into the swim I had vacated and bagged up with a good catch of double-figure bream. What's more, one of the anglers had stayed and was preventing me from getting back onto it so I had to find another spot. I chose a swim I'd never caught much from but that had produced some bream a week or so ago - the result? a blank! It was a bad blank too, in that I hardly even had a bleep the whole night and at six o'clock the next morning I made the decision to move.

The worst thing about this kind of pitch fishing is the moving. You have so much gear to break down, lug about and then set up again that it really puts you off. The end result is that most people, once settled in, never move at all. I chose another swim as far away from that one that I could get, right at the far end of the pit and the whole process probably took me a couple of hours. It was worth it, I got a tench of 6lb 13oz very quickly, but I then proceeded to make a complete mess of things.

The next bite resulted in another tench hooked. It was at long range and I did all the hard work, playing it in from seventy yards, steering it past the snags near the bank, and I had it beaten and wallowing under the rod-top only for the hook to pull out at the last moment. I cursed at that but an hour or two later I had a repeat performance, losing another tench as I was reaching for the net. Denis joined me and I got another run which I struck at but failed to connect. I discovered the problem when I reeled in. I had been using a single grain of plastic corn on the hair along with three real grains and the plastic corn had been pierced by the hookpoint, masking it completely!

Denis took a small tench in the evening but it was another very quiet night for the pair of us. Dawn broke with another tench apiece, Denis's went 6lb 7oz and I got a nice surprise with mine when, after a terrific scrap I realised it was a big male of 6lb 9oz, the biggest male tench I've had from this pit. The morning ended with another failure though when I struck at a bite only for the hooklength to break after a couple of seconds. The line looked as though it has been cut and I do suspect that a pike was the culprit, especially since fishmeal boilie had been the hookbait.

Overall the session was a bit of a failure, but I did enjoy the surroundings. The bird life at this pit is quite breathtaking with green woodpeckers, chaffinches, linnets and bullfinches in abundance. The bullfinches in particular are spectacular birds but they are very shy and I couldn't get close enough for a picture. Here's a shot of a bold cock chaffinch for you to enjoy though.

Innit Hot!

2008-05-07T05:54:00.000-07:00

Ok, so we're not having spring this year, it's gone from winter direct to summer in about a week so it's off with the thermals and waterproofs and on with the shorts and shades. It's 24 degrees today and the tench and bream have decided to come out to play. The tench are still desperately thin mind and I can't really see them packing on the weight that they did last year so my chances of a northwest double look remote.

I've been out twice in the last week and managed to catch some decent specimens of both tench and bream but I soon switched preference from tench to bream since I've more chance of a specimen of the latter species just now. Later in the year when the water really warms up the tench will be catchable in the margins but for now everything is at range, so I took the plunge and bought myself a spod rod.

I've been using a pike rod for spodding for years but having watched a couple of guys using a proper tool for the job - and getting far better results than me, I went and got a Fox spod rod - and it can't half chuck some bait out. I selected a part of the pit where there's a gravel bar, five feet deep some seventy yards out and piled a load of pellets and corn onto it with the rod and a big spod. It was fairly effortless and by clipping up both the spod rod and the fishing rods at the same distance, I was confident that I was fishing right on top of my baited area. Of course it's a bit hazardous to actually fish clipped up - I might get a rod dragged in, so I marked the distance on the fishing rod lines using a piece of high-viz fine pole elastic tied on the line like a stopknot.

Most of the action is at night just now but the odd tench is taking during daylight. By ten in the morning however it's over twenty degrees and neither tench nor bream will feed so it's just overnight sessions for the moment. Results have been ok. this week with five tench, best one going 7lbs 8oz and three bream, two over ten pounds with the biggest a be-tubercled male of 11lbs 1oz. Sadly some of the tench are starting to show signs of mouth damage - something I've never witnessed on this particular pit before. Numbers of carp have been stocked and there are many carpers fishing the pit now with their heavy rods and fine braided hooklengths. I do wish they would play the tench with some consideration instead of skulldragging them in!

Winds of Change

2008-04-26T08:05:00.001-07:00

It's getting so you've got to get your blog written quickly these days - before the obvious titles get pinched.

With a big swing in the wind direction, from easterly to a balmy south-westerly, it was time to try again for the tench and bream. I've got a new bivvy I wanted to try out so I opted for a 30hr session this week, fishing for the tench during the day, with maggots as bait, and the bream at night.

Advantage me?

The wind was blowing into one corner of the pit and I was quite surprised to find no-one fishing there when I arrived. A c*rp fisher was nearby but I had the corner swim to myself and the wind was blowing steadily onto my bank. It was a warm wind, not a bit like the biting cold one of last week and I knew it would be warming the water steadily. Question was, "would it be enough?" This is turning out to be a very cold spring and the cyprinids are taking their time waking up this year.

I did a bit of plumbing and got set up with three rods, two of them close in in twelve feet of water and a third, fishing method, further out and to the right in fifteen feet. The close-in rods were baited with maggot but the further one had corn on one hook and mini-boilies on the other. No weed this early in the year so it's ok to use two hooks and by fishing them helicopter style on a lead-core leader the rig is safe should a break-off occur.

After a while the bailiff came round and told me things had been very slow. Only odd tench and bream had been showing and nothing of any great size. We both commented on the advantage of the warm wind that I had and he told me how he might have been in my swim if I had not got there first - that's the beauty of shift work of course!

A Result - of Sorts

Did I catch? Well yes I did but it was slow, just as the bailiff had said. I picked up a 6lb 12oz tench on the method rod at four in the morning and it turned out to be my only bite. Corn was the successful bait once again - it generally knocks spots off most baits on the waters I fish for both tench and bream. The fish was pretty lean for the time of year with no signs of a build-up of spawn yet - it sure is a cold spring and I doubt that the tench will spawn before July this year.

I went round to talk to the bailiff in the morning and all he had had was line bites. Looks like it might be a long haul to a big fish this spring.

Innit Cold!

2008-04-23T18:35:00.000-07:00

Two days out last week in the coldest, strongest east wind I've experienced in years. I followed up on some information I picked up in the tackle shop and fished the Shropshire Union canal for the big perch it's reputed to hold and while I didn't get any perch, one or two interesting things did happen. The canal, it has to be said, is dirty. the water is a muddy brown and not really very nice to fish but it's a place where fish seem to thrive and I did catch quite a few.

The strong East wind combined with the general direction of flow on the canal to make fishing difficult on both float and leger. I baited up a nice feature I had on the far side of the canal with red maggots and fished a legered worm across to it. That didn't last long though. The flow/drift was sending masses of weed along the canal and within minutes I found that the bobbin was creeping up all the time. After three or four casts, removing several weed stalks from the line each time, I decided to abandon that idea and fish the worm rod short in the middle of the canal.

It wasn't long before the bobbin went up in a much more decisive fashion and I struck into a strong fish. Unfortunately it was an eel of a little over a pound and as eels often do, it had swallowed the hook. What made things worse, as I wrestled with the creature, trying to extract the hook the eel bit through the line so that was the end of that. I dropped it back in, somewhat relieved but covered from head to foot in slime.

A little later I hooked another sizeable fish, this time on the float rod. This turned out to be a four pound bream - quite a nice fish for a canal I thought. Then I hooked a fish which ran me all over the place. I really hoped that this was the big perch I wanted but it proved to be something much rarer. A beautiful brown trout of a pound and a half came to the net - I couldn't believe it!
I finished the day with some skimmers and roach and a hatful of gudgeon. Perhaps I'll try there again some time, there are certainly plenty of fish.

Next day it was back to the commercial. The wind was much worse this time, again from the east, cold and very strong it was blowing directly onto the swim where I had had a catch of perch the last time. I could see that the fishing there would be very difficult and I opted to fish directly opposite that bank and cast across towards it. It was a good call. Another angler, an elderly scouser who I know, tried to fish that spot but gave up after only an hour of being blown around but I was able to fish a full day from my comfortable position.

With the weather dealt with you might think I would have ahd a good day but something else spoiled the party. The c*rp found my bait very quickly and simply wouldn't leave me alone. How on earth people get enjoyment from catching pasties all day long is a mystery to me. I managed to shake a few off so I didn't have to dirty my net on them but inevitably most had to be landed and unhooked. I did manage one nice perch - a fish of 2lbs 3oz which took a lobworm but it looks very much like the c*rp have really woken up on there now . Time to move on I think.

A Change of Direction

2008-04-11T12:03:00.000-07:00

Nearly a month since my last blog entry - and what a miserable month it's been. Transport problems have dogged me once again, the van I bought to tide me over has had to go back due to a major defect so I've not been able to tow the boat. A couple of bank fishing sessions didn't produce much so I've only managed one double, a fish of fourteen pounds odd, since the last blog entry.

It's with some reluctance that I've had to admit my pike season is over but what should I do to fill the void? Too early for tench, though that didn't stop me from trying but the water was far too cold and I didn't even see a tench. Looking around for something else to fish for I settled on perch as a viable alternative. It's been a cold spring so far and I knew the perch would not yet be into spawning so I selected a commercial fishery off the internet and went off down there armed with a bucket of red maggots and a tub of lobworms.

I've never been to a commercial before and it was quite a culture shock. Commercial fisheries attract anglers of all description and persuasion ranging from the very experienced and well equipped match angler, through the pseudo carp angler (all the gear but no idea) and down to the absolute beginner who's there for a day out with his mates, drinking, smoking dodgy substances and generally out for a good time. Guess which type parked themselves next to me!

I can't complain. For a first try I think the day was quite a success. I managed seven perch in all, four of them over two pounds with the biggest a personal best fish of 2lbs 12oz. I expected to catch my fish on lobworm but red maggot turned out to be a better bait on the venue and so it was small hooks and fine line. This was a bit of a problem since the rods I had taken were fairly pokey 1.25lb tc models and they were just too stiff. I lost several fish due to the size fourteen hook pulling out and I'm quite sure I would not have lost those fish if my rod had been nice and soft so I'll be better equipped next time.

In time, the vermin found my baited area and moved in en-masse, hoovering up all the bait and giving bite after bite. That was the signal to leave and I headed for home well pleased with my day. I certainly caught a great deal more than the galloots who set up next to me with their barbecue, wooden picnic table and waccy baccy!

Six of the Best

2008-03-13T12:48:00.000-07:00

Mobile at last and although it was rather windier than I would have liked, I just had to get the boat out for a two-day session. It's close to the end of the traditional pike season now and you can never be too sure what to expect. Some pike will have spawned by now for sure but others may not spawn for another month or even more. On a big water you can get both of these extremes as I found out last year.

It stayed fairly dry for my trip but the wind was a pain and at times it seriously restricted the amount of water I could fish. I hardly fished my usual swims at all but that's no bad thing as it means I'm forced to experiment a bit. In the end most of the fish i caught were from new areas and I'm glad to say I learned a few things.

Day 1 started slowly but at around 9.30 I had a nice fish of exactly 16lbs on a sardine. That was followed some time later by a 14.14 from a new swim. I went on to do a little trolling and had a terrific hit on a slow-trolled replicant that turned out to be a fin-perfect 14lb 3oz fish. I noticed that there were a lot of bait fish in the area where I caught this one and fished it for a while with deadbaits but nothing more came to my rods. One more came at the end of the day in another swim though, a four pound jack with ideas above its station. This took a whole mackerel and absolutely tore off with it, producing my fastest run of the season.

Day 2 was windier and a little slower with a twelve pounder early on before the wind forced me to take shelter. I moved over to the place I had caught on the troll on day one and found that the bait fish were still there. I also found several nice fish arches hanging just off the shoal of bait fish and dropped a marker on one of them. I anchored up and fished close to the marker and had a fish within minutes. It was only a ten pounder but that's the third occasion this season that I've caught by doing that and it's certainly something I'm going to do a lot more of in the future.

I finished the day with a 15lb 5oz pike which took a mackerel while the wind was really roaring. Not too bad really, six doubles with two of them over 15lbs. No biggie though!

River Surprises

2008-03-02T03:38:00.000-08:00

Still no car but in truth, it's been a windy week and I probably wouldn't have got the boat out anyway. The weather has been very unsettled with rain in most parts accompanied by strong winds and I took the opportunity to do some more river fishing this week.

I'm currently targeting three rivers for pike and conveniently, they are all covered by the Environment Agency's "Rivercall" service but it was mostly bad news when I rang the numbers. Two of my rivers were high and rising but the other was only up a little and was falling so that's the one I chose. I decided to do some exploring, fishing areas I didn't know too well and to an extent it paid off - well at least I didn't blank!

First session in a new spot and amazingly I had a deadbait picked up within five minutes of casting in. It was a scrappy little eight pounder which had picked up the sardine and I'll certainly recognise it again as it was a pug (see pic.) I was delighted at catching so quickly in a new swim but disappointed shortly afterwards when two anglers moved in opposite me. I had been casting across to the far bank but their presence made this impossible and I soon moved on.

I fished two more swims that day and while I didn't catch any more pike, I liked the look of them and I'll be back at some point. Next day I decided to move to yet another new area and it proved very interesting. This swim was in a wood and it meant a long walk was needed in order to get to the place I wanted. I expected to have the place to myself due to the long walk but surprisingly another angler was soon to move in just below me. He busied himself catching chub and he seemed to have a good day but he hampered me a little since he was in a spot I wanted to try.

Nevermind, I had plenty of river to go at and I put out two baits in slack water near to me. Nothing happened for a long time until a guy came down the bank inquiring who had the fishing rights. As we stood chatting, my float slid under and I struck into a jack of around five pounds. This was an incredibly fat fish and looked in good health.

The capture of the jack seemed to be a one-off and after an hour or two, during which I was able to admire the wildlife and the snowdrops that lay around me on this early spring day, I moved upstream a little. This was a good move as I quickly caught three doubles - all around the 11-12lb mark. I strongly suspect that there was a repeat capture in amongst those pike but there were definitely at least two different fish.

Late in the day the chub angler packed up and left. It was close to dark so I just had time to move into his swim with a wobbled deadbait. First cast I had a follow from a big pike - maybe a twenty pounder. It followed the bait right back to the bank but would not take and eventually it spooked.

I'll be back for that one!

Bonanza at Blithfield

2008-02-25T07:23:00.000-08:00

I'd been looking forward to the weekend of 23rd and 24th of February for ages. Joe and I had the weekend booked at Blithfield Reservoir so I had the opportunity to fish with my son and the chance of a big fish or two. I'm pleased to say that the water didn't disappoint - especially for Joe.

Saturday was dry if a little blustery and we started off in the north part of the lake casting jerkbaits. Joe was first into a fish with a fine 20lb 12oz pike which he took on a burt. He followed that up with several more pike including one which was just into double figures while I only had a solitary jack. Things went quiet after the morning spell and we went off down into the south part of the lake. There I had a nice fish of 21lb 4oz on a slider. We were really chuffed. It's the third time we've had a twenty apiece and amazingly on each occasion it has been in a different country.

We finished the day with seven pike in all, a respectable total and we looked forward to fishing on the sunday with a good deal of enthusiasm. "Wouldn't it be great," we thought "If we had another twenty each on day two!" Well that almost happened but it didn't quite turn out like that.

Sunday was a little less windy but a lot wetter. We decided to start this day in exactly the same way we started the other - and it was a good decision. Joe picked up another twenty at 20lbs 4oz in almost exactly the same spot where he had had his twenty a day earlier and on the same lure. This was a beautiful fish - almost buttercup yellow in colour and after a bit more casting we opted for a change of plan this time and started slow-trolling soft plastics. When I say slow I mean it. We were actually scraping the lakebed with the lures and for Joe at least, it turned out to be very effective.

To cut a long story short he caught another five pike, one of them an absolute cracker of 24lbs 4oz while I had to make do with a solitary thirteen pounder.

Joe is a boz

Halfway through the day, the wind changed suddenly from the mild, wet southwesterley we'd been enjoying to a biting northerly and with that the sport just died.

Who cares? I don't think I've ever enjoyed a weekend's fishing as much.

Fun in the Sun

2008-02-17T02:46:00.000-08:00

With the car still in dry dock I was faced with some more local fishing this week until my old mate Denis stepped into the breach. Denis has a good towing vehicle and he suggested we take my boat out for a day - so we did.

I don't like fishing weekends because it gets so busy and sure enough there were many many boats out fishing for pike but Denis is a monday to friday worker so we had no choice. In the end that didn't matter, we had a great day out.

It was one of those days that most pikers dread, with a very hard night-time frost followed by cloudless skies and brilliant sunshine. On shallow waters that would, indeed, be a disaster and sure enough I was in touch with a few other people who were fishing shallow lakes during the day and they didn't catch. It's different in deep water though and we were able to enjoy good fishing and good weather.

It was after nearly three hours fishing that we got our first run. It's fairly common for a hard frost to lead to a slow start so we weren't too surprised and the first run came to Denis's rods. It was a scrappy little eight pounder that took a half mackerel and we hoped it would herald a purple patch but it wasn't to be. An hour later we hadn't had another run and so we opted for a move to a swim we knew was often very productive.

Bread and Butter

It was good move to a "bread and butter" swim and I was quickly into action with a 16lb 3oz pike. That was followed after a few minutes by another of 17lb 14oz (pictured).
We waited a while before moving again and then later moved onto another banker swim. This turned up a 15lb 5oz pike, again to me and though we stayed there until dark, no more runs were forthcoming.

Not a bad day in all, with three upper doubles to me. Poor Denis had to make do with the eight pounder he caught in the morning. The huge numbers of boats that were out on the day hampered us a fair bit, preventing us from fishing a few good swims and cutting down on our movement but I can't complain. Good fish, good company and brilliant weather - what more could you want?

Back to Blank

2008-02-12T13:46:00.000-08:00

Perch Fishing Bombs
No fish for me this week - and it might be a few weeks yet before I can threaten the local pike population further. I'm off the road for a while after a minor road accident which has left me driving a Vauxhall Corsa. Not much room for tackle in that - and it certainly won't tow the boat so I'm limited to short sessions on local waters.

There's always a silver lining of course and I took the opportunity to try out the perch fishing at a local bomb-hole. I've heard of some big perch from this particular place and so I forked out a few quid for a permit and gave it a go. It's a small pit, no more than forty yards across and I targeted it with lobworms - legered on one rod and floatfished on the other.

After three hours and just one missed bite I had a visit from the club bailiff. He checked my permit and asked how I had got on. "Nothing" I told him. "That's a surprise." he said, "We only stocked it two days ago with 6000 little roach and bream."
I visualised a group of fat perch sitting on the bottom of the lake stuffed to the gills with stockies as I packed up.

No Joy on the River
I had to give the river another go after catching the thirty but despite working very hard, moving swims time and again and fishing all over the river, I didn't get a run.
I did get back to the car park though to find that the local scallies had been having fun with the padlock. It was dripping with glue, still wet and while it still worked for me, I guess it wouldn't have worked for much longer so I was pleased to have packed up a little early or I might have been there all night.

Better luck next time hopefully.

Thank you Carol.

2008-01-30T23:56:00.000-08:00

The start of 2008 has been dogged by wind and rain. The wind in particular has prevented me from getting out in the boat quite a few times already this year and when Carol Kirkwood gave this week's forecast on the BBC my heart sank. Strong winds were set to sweep across the country yet again - but for a change it was going to remain dry, for a day or two at least.

Unable to get afloat, I took advantage of the dry conditions and got out on the river yesterday. The plan was to fish two rods, one with a livebait fished under the planer float I've been developing and the other a float legered deadbait. I had a couple of stretches in mind and opted to split the day, fishing the morning at one stretch and the afternoon at another. I couldn't fish too late as Mrs Edwards and I were attending a concert in Manchester in the evening so I decided that the morning session would last until eleven o'clock and the afternoon session would last until three.

It was a nice start to the day, clear and cold but with a blustery wind (just as Carol had predicted) and no need for any umbrella. I positioned the planerfloat rig first, setting it to catch the current mid-river and then whacked out the float-legered sardine right across the river into a deep slack. I did have a bit of trouble keeping the leger rig's float on the surface. It was a long cast and despite the use of a Gardner Skyliner to keep as much line as possible off the surface, the current was catching it and the float pulled under. I eventually opted to tighten up to the lead and rely on the tight line and baitrunner to signify a take should one occur.

Stay or Go?

The morning passed uneventfully, neither bait being troubled by a pike, and at 11, I dutifully stuck to the plan and reeled both rods in ready to move on. When I did so, I was surprised to discover that there were several deep slashes on the flanks of the deadbait - it had been mouthed by a pike!
Now I was in a quandary. Should I stay and hope that the pike could be tempted to pick up another bait or should I continue with the plan and move on? I opted for the move and loading the gear on my back, I tramped off to the car. It was a ten minute drive to the other stretch, followed by a fifteen minute walk to the swim I wanted and by the time I had got myself installed with the two rods out, it was around mid-day. I was soon glad I hadn't waited any longer in the first swim as another angler arrived just after I had got set up and it was clear he wanted the swim I was in. The other angler was fishing for chub and after a brief chat he elected to drop in a few yards below me.

I spent the next hour working the planer float this way and that across the river, searching out the various little features I had in front of me trying to find a pike. The float leger rig had been swung out about two rod-lengths and while the float was clearly visible this time, I decided to set the rod on an alarm with a drop-off bobbin as well just in case my attention was distracted.
I continually tweaked and amended the position of the planer float and at one stage after doing so, I looked out for the other float and it was gone! The bobbin hadn't dropped and the alarm hadn't uttered a beep but the float was nowhere to be seen so I picked up the rod, tightened down and struck.

My God!
All went solid at first and I did wonder for a moment whether I was snagged. Then slow ponderous thumps on the rod told me that this was a fish - and a big one at that. I pulled hard and slowly the creature came up until I could see it through the clear water. "That looks over twenty" I thought to myself. The fish opened its great mouth and started to shake its head violently, trying to rid itself of those annoying hooks, but the hooks stayed put. I was sure by now that this was a twenty pounder but what happened next changed my mind in an instant. The fish went absolutely mental and came flying out of the water like a rocket, tailwalking halfway across the river and landing back in the water with a mighty splash.

"My god", I thought "It's huge!"

The pike jumped again, then ran across the river out of sight in the deeper water. Steady pressure told on her though and before long she lay before me, beaten and ready to be scooped up in the big net.
I hauled her onto the bank and saw at once that the hooks were just nicked into the scissors. She would have got away if she had fought just that bit harder. I flicked out the hooks and hauled her up in the weighsling.

31lb 15oz said the kindly Avons. What a pike, if it wasn't for Ms Kirkwood I'd probably have spent the day catching doubles in the boat. Thank you Carol!

Good Day Bad Day

2008-01-23T10:59:00.000-08:00

I just can't make head nor tail of it lately. I go fishing expecting a good day and fail to catch, then I go fishing expecting to blank only to bag-up. I managed one day out in the boat this week with Ian Whittaker from Tyldesley. Ian had never been out on the lake before and I was really hopeful that he was going to have a good day but it didn't turn out that way.

We started off in a banker swim where I had had three runs last time I fished but three hours later we had not had a touch. We moved on to the next "good" area and at last Ian got a run - within moments of casting in as it happens. Ian was pleased with his pike which weighed a little under nine pounds, but I was hopeful he would catch something bigger.

We moved again and Ian got a second run but sadly he failed to hook that one. Then a little while later, as I was explaining that takes to lures are very rare at this time of year, I had a take on a lure! The fish was around the 17lb mark but was very lightly hooked and as I brought it to the surface we only had chance to get an estimate of its size before the hooks pulled free.

We moved once more but that swim turned out to be a duffer so we went back to the last swim to sit it out until dark. That's when I got my only run of the day on a deadbait and pulled in a pike of around thirteen pounds.

I did my best to look after Ian for the day and he said he had enjoyed himself but I can't deny I was disappointed in the fishing. Surface temperature was 6.0 degrees and once again, the level of the lake was very high. Weather was overcast, with low cloud but there was no wind to speak of.

What a Difference a Day Makes

2008-01-17T11:50:00.000-08:00

The wind abated for two days this week and I decided to make the most of the opportunity by getting the boat out for both of them. The lake was high - very high but the rain was determined to make it higher yet. The first day was murky with lots of low cloud and frequent showers but there was no wind whatsoever. The lake usually fishes well in still conditions but there was something a bit odd about this day. I got runs ok, four of them, but never caught a single fish. Every run was a slow, tentative, twitchy affair and on each occasion I struck, I failed to hook the fish properly. I did hook one briefly, but after a couple of feeble kickes the fish was off - it felt very small anyway. The final run of the day was the oddest of all. The float bobbed a couple of times, then moved two feet to the right before all went quiet. When I reeled in, some time later, I discovered that the bait had been snatched from the hooks! Surface temperature was 6.1 degrees.

It was wet that first day - very wet, but not as wet as the night that followed it. I was staying over and barely got a wink of sleep due to the sound of the rain hammering on the roof, so i was a bleary eyed angler that rigged the boat out for another grueller on day two. It started pretty quietly but I wasn't too worried as the action hasn't been starting until around ten in the morning lately. Ten o'clock arrived and sure enough the first rod was away. What do you know, another slow take that I failed to connect with. "Oh no!" I thought "Not another day like that."
I needn't have worried for over the next mad half-hour I took a fifteen pounder, a ten pounder and an eight pounder. Things were looking up.

Sounder's a Pound

I decided, after a while, to move swims and as I motored slowly along I spotted a little piece of gold dust on the sounder. There, on the bottom in 32ft of water, was a big fish arch. I stopped the boat and dropped anchor. Four baits went out around the area where the fish was sitting and I settled back to await developments. It didn't take long. Just five minutes later a bluey was taken and I struck into a nice fish - 20lbs 14oz as it happens.
No more fish came from that swim and the final move of the day put me on a big clay mound - a favourite spot. I took another fish from that one, 16lb 2oz and with work the next day, packed up at that and left.

It had been a good day but it was tinged with disappointment in the end. After comparing photographs I found that the twenty was the same fish which I had caught just before Christmas at the same weight. Still, the season's shaping up now with twenty doubles, four of them over twenty pounds.

Blankety Blank

2008-01-11T14:28:00.000-08:00

Not an auspicious start to the new year with two blanks in quick succession. High winds prevented me from getting the boat out at first and so I tried a trip to the river- to fish for pike this time.
It was a mistake from the off. The river report suggested that the level was up a bit, but falling but when I arrived, it was clear that my choice of swim had been a bad one. I wanted to fish a slack on the far side of the river but the current was far stronger than I was hoping for and I found it impossible to hold out in the flow. I packed up without even putting a bait on and wandered back to the car, a mile or so away. There were two blokes waiting to get into the gate where they worked when I got there. They watched me lug half a ton of fishing tackle over the stile and load it, piece by piece into the car. then one of them walked over

"Are you here for the bird watching?" he said!

I moved on to another stretch of river where I knew the slack water would be on my side of the river. I found I could fish this ok but it was then that I realised just how fast the river was coming up. It was visibly creeping up the grass stems around my feet and it wasn't long before I gave it best and headed for home. The river never fishes well when it's rising.

Next day Joe and I got the boat out. It was a wet and windy day on the lake and very unproductive. I had the only run of the day and pulled a fish of around 15lbs up to the boat, only for Joe to knock it off with the net. There were two other boats out, both of whom packed in early and left so I imagine they had a bad time of it too.
Surface temperature was 6.3 degrees, a fall of 0.4 degrees in just a week - quite a big drop for such a big lake.

Bye Bye 2007

2008-01-06T04:15:00.000-08:00

Well the year closed quite well with a twenty pounder and a 16.10 for me on New Year's Eve. I was fishing with Denis and while I managed to convert both of my runs into fish, Denis lost two pike before finally boating a fourteen pounder at the very end of the day. The twenty was a really nice fish, showing none of the handling damage I've seen on so many fish lately. Surface temperature was 6.7 degrees

2007 in a Nutshell

It wasn't a great year pike-wise but there have been some highlights which bear mentioning again. The early part of the year produced a lot of double-figure fish, many of them over 15lbs but big fish just didn't come. March brought a twenty pounder from The Lake of Menteith but the best part of that trip was the fact that I had managed to persuade my wife to come and fish with me - and she caught!

Another twenty came in April but by May I had switched to other species and the pike were put on hold. The "other species" fishing was good, and while I didn't catch anything spectacular (no personal bests), I did get good quality tench, bream and barbel from northwest waters and was well pleased with them.

Autumn brought the rush to the trout reservoirs and with one exception it brought disappointment for me. Llandegfedd was very hard and I doubt I'll be back while Chew produced lots of pike but again failed to turn up the big one I wanted. Brenig did produce a twenty pounder though and I was absolutely delighted to catch it.

I flirted with river piking for a little while and will do a lot more when I can but it seems every time I have a day off, it rains and the rivers flood. Not much time left now before the rivers close so it may be next autumn again before I can catch a river pike.

December was kind to me with a biggish roach and some good pike. I got the boat out and was able to fish with my son Joe for a couple of days, which was a joy in itself but also got two twenty pounders and a few good doubles.

Things are looking up, welcome 2008!

As Good as a Rest

2007-12-28T05:26:00.000-08:00

Now and again it's nice to take time out from piking to do something a bit different. Not good for your "twenties tally" of course but only the saddos care about that anyway. Roach are a species that I've always loved to catch but specimen roach are very difficult to find in this part of the world. I have a few waters nearby where a two-pounder is a tough, but realistic target and yesterday I spent the day at one of them to see how I got on.

I've fished this stretch of the River Ribble for roach off and on for a couple of years and have taken them to a pound and a half in the past so I was hopeful as I set up to fish the stick float. As I started fishing the heavens opened and heavy rain set in - for the rest of the day as it happened. I much prefer to floatfish given the chance - particularly on a river but after two hours of feeding and trotting I hadn't had a single bite and was getting soaked to the skin.

I rigged up a tip rod armed with a blockend feeder and cast this into the swim while I settled back under the brolley to enjoy a brew. Imagine my surprise when, after only a couple of minutes, the tip banged round hard. I missed that one but the next cast produced a similar bite and this time I made no mistake. I hooked a good fish which gave a slow, dogged fight and when it surfaced it was clear to me that this was my biggest Ribble roach yet. The scales confirmed this and though I went on to take several more fish, none were as big.

Before long the incessant rain took its toll, the river started to rise and the bites stopped. I'll be back for more!

Festive Fun

2007-12-19T14:00:00.000-08:00

Think you're busy? Try being me!

I have hardly had chance to get out fishing for weeks now but the Christmas break has brought an opportunity for me to get out with my son, Joe - a rare event these days. Joe is home from university for Christmas and just for once, I'm not working so we snuk out at five this morning with the boat and a big bag of deadbaits.

It was so cold that we stuck to everything we touched and the line constantly froze in the rod rings, yet by dinnertime, clear skies and the lack of any breeze saw us stripping off layer after layer of clothing with sweat running from our brows. These are just about the worst conditions for pike fishing (or anything-else fishing for that matter) but we were still hopeful as we were fishing deep water. Surface temperature was a fairly mild 6.9 degrees.

I guess it was a fairly slow day with just three runs to show for our trouble but we had lots of fun together with the usual father/son banter that only a father and son would understand. We took along a couple of Christmas hats to reflect the season and we were lucky enough to get some good fish. Joe had the first run and caught a 16lb 10oz pike on float-legered joey mackerel but the old man soon showed who was boss with a 20lb 14oz pike on the same bait and method. I was very pleased that this fish was the first pike I had caught on a new rod - a loch tamer which I had built up myself using components obtained from Dave Lumb. Christening a new rod with a twenty pounder is great but it's even better when you've made it yourself.

Joe completed the day with a ten pounder and though we stayed until after dark, no more fish came our way. A celebratory pint in a local pub brought the perfect end to a perfect day.

Merry Christmas to all.

Footnote;

I managed another day out, on my own this time, just before Christmas and took a 16.14 and a nine pounder. I lost a good fish when the hooks pulled free.

Rig Revolution

2007-11-29T13:03:00.000-08:00

Remember that river session I had a few weeks ago when I hooked, but lost, a big pike? Well today was the first opportunity I've had to get back there and try for it again. I'd love to tell you I caught a humungous pike and removed the corroded trace from its jaws but I'm afraid it didn't happen. Plenty did happen though.
The big fish I'd lost escaped because it had gained the sanctuary of a snag which I was fishing tight up to. This time I fished a few yards further upstream so there would be less chance of a big fish getting into the snag but I also made an elementary change to my tackle, I exchanged the 18lb mono for 50lb braid!

Arriving just after first light, I gently lowered a legered mackerel into the swim and set the rod on an alarm with a dropoff bobbin as indicator. I was quite shocked when, just two minutes later the bobbin fell and line started to peel from the spool. I picked up the rod, clicked over the bail arm and WHOOOSH...

...I struck into thin air.

A sardine took the mackerel's place on the hooks and this was also lowered into place. It took a little longer to get action this time, maybe five minutes, but when it came, all became clear. Pulls, bleeps and twitches on the bobbin signalled the attention of something that certainly wasn't a pike. I reeled the bait back after a few minutes of this and was confronted with the sight you see in the picture. The belly of the bait had been eaten off. Chub were almost certainly the culprits and I resigned myself to a morning of the bleeps.

I got lots of these silly indications over the next hour or so but then they stopped and, coincidentally, a dabchick entered the swim. Dabchicks, or little grebes as they are also known, are shy, secretive little birds and great swimmers and divers. This one popped up and down in front of me for several minutes before fleeing the swim in quite a panic. Was there something there that had alarmed the dabchick? The answer was soon to come as the bobbin dropped and line peeled from the spool. A spirited fight ensued and I soon put the net under a lovely pike of 13lb 6oz. Another of just under ten pounds followed and then I hooked, but lost, a fish that might have made fifteen.

As a finale, I set up a second rod with a secret experimental rig on it. Can't say too much just yet but this rig just might revolutionise river fishing for pike when I finally spill the beans. First cast produced a double figure pike and I followed that with an eight pounder on the same rig.

Watch this space!!!

Winter's Here

2007-11-26T03:57:00.000-08:00

We've had some cold weather just recently, raising hopes that we may actually get a proper winter for once - I certainly hope so. Sudden cold snaps tend to put the fish down of course so the fishing's been a little tough of late.

I had an enforced layoff from piking due to a trip to Scotland to do a slide show for the North Lanarkshire region of the Pike Anglers Club. They're a great bunch and I really enjoyed the evening with lots of cut-and-thrust banter and some really intelligent searching questions. It always makes for a good slideshow when the audience join in like that. They looked after me very well and as I made the long journey home the next morning I made a promise to myself that I would spend more time in Scotland in the future.

I did manage to squeeze two fishing trips in just lately though. One was a two-day session at Chew Valley with Kevin. This produced only low doubles and jacks to both of us but on each of the two days a thirty pounder was caught from the nearest boat to us so we weren't far off the mark - just far enough!

I had a day out with Dave Kelbrick too on a large glacial lake. We trolled livebaits all day and it started promisingly, with a take to Dave which he lost followed by a pike attacking my float (!) It soon went downhill however and it eventually became obvious that the bait fish were shoaled up in just one or two spots with the pike being in close attendance. We ended the day fishing over one of these bait balls trolling back and forth and this did produce a couple of fish, a low double to me and a jack to Dave.

Still, it was nice to get out and that fish makes it ten double figure pike since the start of October. I would normally expect to get around fifty in a season so I'd better get my finger out and start catching.

Brenig Bruiser

2007-11-14T09:11:00.000-08:00

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.

It Never Rains...

2007-10-22T08:54:00.000-07:00

...but it pours, that's the old adage. What it means of course is that when things start to go wrong they go wrong badly and my recent trip to Chew Valley Lake just about proved it.

I was there for four days last week, two of them I spent in the boat with Denis Bird and two with Kevin Dunne. The fishing was fairly average for Chew, we caught plenty of pike but most of them were small with a sprinkling of mid-doubles thrown in to make the heart jump a little when one of them hit a lure. Yes, lures took the majority of the fish with only two falling to deadbait.

Day 1 brought a few trials and tribulations for Denis. He hadn't put his braid on the spool tightly enough and as a result it was overrun after overun. The pic shows him doing a bit of knitting in the boat - he spent quite a bit of time doing this and it meant more fish for me since I was probably getting three casts in to each one of his. Every cloud has a silver lining though and by the end of the day he finished with two scarves, a pullover and a pair of mittens.

It was an awful day weather-wise. Torrential rain poured down on us all day and we were glad to get on dry land at the end of it.

Day 2: We re-spooled Denis's line the next morning and he had a much better day of it. This was the best day of the trip with six doubles coming to the boat amidst a barrage of jacks but it was spoiled a bit by me having a good pike, a possible twenty pounder, shake the hooks out right at the boat. The day nearly ended in disaster too. On the last cast of the day, Denis made a mighty heave with his six-ounce replicant in an effort to get it as far out into the lake as he could. Unfortunately, instead of the lure sailing out into the blue, it connected violently with the back of my head, whipping off my cap and almost knocking me out. "Ah well" I thought, "At least we'll get a picture of it and it'll make a good story." That was the plan, but as you can see, Denis then made a hash of the picture too!

Days 3 and 4, both spent with Kevin on the tiller were much the same as each other. High pressure brought hard night-time frosts and hot, cloudless, still days, just about the worst kind of weather for autumn piking. I was even wishing for the return of the torrential rain we'd had on day 1. This meant just more jacks and a solitary double to me, while Kevin had to make do with the jacks.

This is when things really started to go wrong for me. One of my reels stopped working - I later discovered that the internal spring had snapped. Then another reel started to play up. Only wear and tear this time but the effect was getting worse with every cast. Eventually I dismantled both reels to see if I could cobble up a good one between them. the result? neither reel was any good now. Then I started to crack lures off. Three Replicants were sent to the bottom of the lake before I realised what was going on. The tip ring on my main lure rod had broken and it was slicing through the line. I had left my other rod in the car (as I had no reel to put on it) and this left me with no tackle at all that I could use to fish lures. Kevin came to the rescue and lent me a rod and reel but it meant we were restricted in what we could do.

Oh well, these things happen, at least we got to see a spectacular sunset and got to share the water with a couple of piking "elites". Can you identify them sillhouetted against the sun?

Disastrous Start

2007-10-14T06:25:00.000-07:00

Well the new pike fishing season has been under way for two weeks now and to be honest, I was rather hoping to catch something worthwhile before posting to the blog. Truth is though, I've had a succession of blanks followed by something even worse - read on!

First it was an experimental trip to a new water. This is a very big lake which I had had my eye on for a while. Formerly run by a trout fishing club, they have had to let it go and it's currently free fishing. Access is very poor for a variety of reasons but I did manage to get on for a few hours and fished with both baits and lures. To cut a long story short, I caught nothing and didn't even see a pike but it's early days yet. Lovely spot though and I'll definitely be back.

Next it was a trip to Oxford to fish a large reservoir with no track record. Twenty of the country's finest pike anglers were allowed on for two days to assess the potential. The result? Another blank - for everyone! Still, at least I blanked in very good company and at least we all know not to bother going back. It's not an attractive water, being just a concrete bowl and it's heavily stocked with trout, some of which I caught. The picture shows a series of buoys which mark barley straw bales, meant to keep blue-green algae down. They don't work, the place is full of the stuff.

A trip to record water Llandegfedd came next. I went with my old mate Grant Everson who appears in the picture. It was yet another blank after two days of very hard fishing. Only five pike were caught in total over the two days so it appears "deggy" is not up to its best just now. The company was good though and it helped me get my boat fishing gear straight for other trout water fishing that's just around the corner.

Last of all came a trip to, erm "a river", somewhere in Britain. At last I caught some fish, but really blew the chance of a biggie. The two I caught took a livebait and a bulldawg and both weighed around seven pounds. I had a take on a mackerel though that left me shaking rather. The fish picked up the legered bait and barely moved with it but I wound down and struck immediately. It was a very snaggy swim and I knew I would have to "hit and hold" if I had a chance of getting a fish out of it. The 3lbTC rod and heavy line made no impression on this fish however and despite heaving as hard as I dared I never gained an inch of line. Indeed the pike made the sanctuary of the snags and I knew I was in trouble. There were several minutes of see-sawing back and forth with the fish stuck in the snag but it was hopeless, it wasn't coming out and eventually, the 30lb trace snapped just above the top hook. I was gutted. It was a very big fish, that I knew and not only had I lost it, I had left hooks in it.

I HAVE to catch that fish now. I know where it lives, I know it's big and I need to remove that trace.