stevetheangler

Tuesday, March 10th and I was off to the pike pool again in search of a few pike before my self-imposed pike fishing season of October 1st to 31st March is over – a matter of only three weeks now – how time flies!!

Anyway, I set off from home at 0730 and arrived at the pool around 0800 to find I was the first there – and although three or four others arrived later in the day but it looked that I was the only piker there on the day – and thus had first choice of swim – and so I chose my usual….

Tackle for the day were my 2 pike leger rods both coupled with 40lb braid main line, 12″ 30lb multi-strand wire traces which were each fitted with two size 2 single hooks (fitted as per for usual treble hook snap tackle with one hook at the end and the other fixed at about 3″ up trace) – and 1.5oz freerunning leger weights on short garden wire links stopped about 18″ above the trace so that the baits were fished on a tail from the weight of about 30″. Baits were smelt injected with Lamprey Oil on one rod, and sprat injected with a fish oil mix (mainly Cod Liver Oil – actually it’s what we use for our ferrets when we come to trim their claws, a little is spread on their tummies and they get pre-occupied licking it off otherwise left to their own devices it would take a week of battling to keep them still enough! :D).

And so, after setting up the fishing station (prepping landing net, unhooking mat, scales, pliers/hook cutters, etc) and tackling up the rods and pod/alarms the first casts were made at 0900….casting both rods out about 25′ just off overhanging trees, smelt to the left and sprat to the right of me.

And I also cast out my Water Wolf underwater camera just short of my left hand swim where it was left to record for the next 3 to 4 hours….

At around 1000 there were a few small nudges on the smelt rod, followed by a longer drawing of line at which I struck…. however, I had the freespool/baitrunner switched on – and at almost zero friction – and striking I failed to hold down the spool with my finger and result was that the strike effectively applied virtually no force – or certainly not enough to set the hook anyway – to the business end at all but was enough to scare the fish off.

Yep, that’s one problem I have when freespool using – its something I usually only set/use about 3-4 times a year I suppose, generally preferring when fishing all methods that allow line to be taken, to either use the reel with backwind switched on (or anti-reverse switched off depending how you prefer to refer to it) OR to leave the bale arm open with a drop off indicator hanging directly below the spool so that line is kept on by the vertical pull of the indicator or tucking the line under a rubber band on the rod handle… BUT… and I *partially* blame Mick Brown for this as I was watching his deadbaiting video in bed the night before when he used a front mounted alarm/indicator and a loosely set freespool – I, of course, copied that on the day! :D Oh well, as Fleetwood Mac said… :) Also, at that time, a few small nudges were being noted on the sprat rod…

Anyway, the rest of the day saw the continuation of ‘nudges’ on the smelt rod and a few line bites too but the sprat rod was very quiet even after casting out towards the island (in that stretch the water depth varies between the 7′ depth just off the main bank and the 11′ or so by the island in a series of sudden drops and rises with level areas lying at 14′, 28′ and 40′ deep – the rises at most times seemingly vertical, perhaps an old building used to be there with deep  cellars or dungeons?

And so I fished on to 1530 when I decided to call it a day as I needed to pick up Liz from work in the evening and needed to sort tackle and put the baits back in the freezer and bath/shower previous to that…and more importantly as I value my life… make some tea for Liz’s return home! LOL!

Anyway, back at home now, I’ve been editing and enhancing the video taken by the Water Wolf, which has come down to just under 5 minutes of ‘highlights’ – and show that despite my lack of results there WERE pike – as well as chub who were probably the creators of the nudges I’d been having (and the stealers of my smelt’s head!)  plus a few random roach and bream. The video is now online at YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1aLGIDwFcZ0) if you fancy a look :) – not the best quality but why is explained in the comments along with the video…

Plans – well, Liz and I were intending a visit back to the tench/silvers pool that we suffered a lock-out from last Friday tomorrow BUT weather is not looking at all good and so we’ve abandoned that idea and I’ll be doing some tackle sorting instead whilst Liz does housework and possibly some dressmaking, her other hobby. Tuesday next week, weather looking reasonable again, so I’ll most probably return to the pike pool – but will floatfish the deadbaits – looking at the video the pike looked well up in the water and I think I may possibly fare better with that style of presentation. I’m also going to try adding a torch in conjunction with the Water Wolf – I’ve a couple – a 6″ 4*AA battery diver’s one and small penlight 1*AA battery one too which appears to be waterproof enough at least for my purpose as its been tested by immersing inout water butt for several hours! LOL!

TEMPS:

Time               Air                  Water

0900                12.6                   9.5
1000                22.1                   10.0
1100                15.5                   9.8
1300                14.6                  10.3
1430                13.3                   10.4
1530                12.8                   10.5

TEMP TRENDS (Since September 2014):