Sullen September

Ok the pike season starts in October really, but I've turned to piking a couple of times this month. It's been wet, with the biggest, wettest September storm for 30 years and as happens every year now, a number of places were flooded. I had a lot to do this month, what with coaching sessions for various clubs and the all-important Pike Angler's Club convention so I didn't really have a free hand at the fishing but I've experimented with a newish venue, visited a new lake as a one-off and been back to an old haunt.

The newish venue is a stretch of river which I know holds pike, but where I've not yet caught one. I spent the day fishing lures, jerkbaits mostly, but I failed to raise a fish. The river was in good condition with reasonable clarity but they wouldn't have it on the day. I did bump into a salmon angler who assured me there was an eighteen pound fish caught from the stretch during the week before so I have another piece of evidence that the fish are there but I've still to catch one.

The new lake was an opportunist visit as I was fishing as a guest. I went across the pennines to give a slideshow to the Selby region of the Pike Angler's Club and as a treat their RO, Mark Green took me on his favourite water. It was only half a day's fishing, I couldn't cope with an early start and very late finish, and I arrived at noon to join Mark in his swim where he'd had a couple of double figure fish during the morning.

Mark moved his rods to one side, giving me room to fish alongside him and I cast out two deadbaits on leger rigs. The first rod, cast out toward a lily bed, had been out less than five minutes before I spotted the rod tip nodding as a fish picked up the smelt. A quick strike saw a long lean low double come to the net, not a bad start. That was it though, we didn't have any more fish between us although I did have a run, failing to connect on the strike.

At the end of the month the deluge hit the UK. This was bad for many people but it was something I had been waiting for because I wanted more water in the rivers. I planned a trip of a couple of days and I thought I had got the river level exactly right but there was a fly in the ointment which caused me some problems. A late burst of heavy rain, not predicted by the Met Office brought the river up again when I expected it to be going down.

This killed the fishing rather due to the extra colour and the marked drop in temperature and I only had two runs to deadbait during the three day session. The first fish came unstuck on the way in. I had seen it and extimated its weight at around ten pounds so it wasn't a great loss. The second fish made it to the net though and proved to be a fine 17lb 2oz pike, stocky and thickset, it didn't look like a September fish at all.

October tomorrow, time to get stuck in properly.

Here We Are Again Then

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

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

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

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

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