Houdini pike

Last week Fisky predicted when my fishing on the river would be best, he said they'd be feeding like mad and that evening I managed an hour and got three fish including the seventeen pounder. So when early this week he told me that Thursday would be the day I was already looking forward to it. From Monday I was tracking everything such as weather and moon fazes, even trying to get the seagulls to shit on me for luck, and as the week progressed it looked more and more like the man could be spot on with his predictions. I decided against a crack of dawn start and leisurely got up, nipped to the shop for some bread and milk etc before getting back in the house and having a nice pot of tea and some toast while I had a quick catch up on the internet. I flicked through my usual sites and did the mandatory weather check which while was a little gloomy, would be pleasantly warm and the rain would luckily stay away.

I clicked the river levels link just to check and see how my river was. We've not had much rain round my end but then that doesn't matter, it's what's been happening elsewhere that counts, up in them hills. The river has been up a foot or two and back down again this week already which has put a damper on my fishing but when I clicked this morning to my dismay the river was up around a meter on it's normal level. Well for me and my lure fishing that is a disaster because my peg, which is about 60 meters from the weir, turns in to raging monster. I have caught before using baits tucked right in the edge, but the constant battle against the flow back and forth and the tree branches, beer barrels and everything else makes it not worth the hassle.

Time for a different approach. With the river closed season fast upon us I've already been wondering where I should go when that time comes. There's some ponds local to me that don't get too much attention and I have had some decent fish out including my pb. But I don't fish it much and when I have recently it has been full of weed. It's so shallow the weed seems to get more and more each year to the point that sometimes I wonder if there is actually any water left in the pond. I was hoping the recent lid the ponds have had would have knocked the weed back a bit and I could get to fish but after the first few casts I found out this wasn't the case at all. Any diving lure was a waste of time, spinner baits dug in to the weed and even shallow baits wouldn't really work. I was pretty gutted I couldn't get to use my rainbow lip lure here and realised why as a kid I only ever used surface poppers. I figured on one last try with my larger lures and decided to put on a 12cm floating Salmo Slider. It's a new lure to me and I've not caught with it yet on the river but then since it's more of a surface lure I didn't really expect I would except maybe in the summer. If I could keep the lure up in the water away from the weed I might have a chance of catching something. Another good thing about the slider is you can cast it quite far, much further than the SG lip lures. First cast I managed to get it out about 60m virtually to the middle of the pond and within ten seconds of retrieving, the lure darting one way then the other, there was an all mighty commotion as a pike broke the surface and smashed my lure. It wasn't much of a battle since it turned out to be around 5lb but the take was fantastic.

 I netted the fish out because it was easier then me trying to reach down for it. I don't like using the net for jacks because you often get in to a tangle and that's exactly what happened. I quickly freed the pike leaving my hooks tangled in the net, that reminds me I keep meaning to get a new one, and decided I'd take a photo of the fish even though it was only a little one. Since I was in a tangle I thought the easiest thing to do was to sack the pike while I sorted my mess out. The fish seemed fine and I securely tied off the cord. I took a couple of minutes to get my gear sorted while the jack had a little splash and a wriggle and then got the mat and camera ready. Returning to the sack I untied the cord and lifted up the sack. Where the chuffing hell has the pike gone? All I had in my hand was a wet sack, still with the draw strings tight but no fish inside. I thought it must have somehow managed to bite through my sack and quickly checked for the hole. I couldn't see one at first so looked again, and again. How the chuffing hell did the pike get out? I still couldn't see a hole. The only thing I can think of is that when I sacked the fish I didn't even get it in the sack and instead just wrapped it up somehow, what a cock! Either that or this pike was the long lost relation to Harry Houdini. I chuckled to myself and got back to fishing glad that I hadn't just managed to lose a massive pike. If nothing else, at least from now on whenever I sack a fish I'll be that little bit more careful.

The next two hours passed without so much as a sniff which was a bit of a shame but at least I managed to get out for a few hours before work. The bird life is fantastic and I'm surprised there weren't any of the twitchers about. They missed the heron, kingfisher and all manner of ducks, some geese, the annoying swans and constant battles of the water hens. While at work I watched the river level slowly  drop as the day went on. It still didn't really look fishable but If I'm lucky and that graph above continues to drop then I might be in with a chance of an hours lure fishing on the river tomorrow. I really don't fancy watching Jeremy Kyle and the rest so if there's a glimmer of hope I'll be out even if it's just for half an hour.

2012 pike tally

Total 10

Largest 17lb