Friday, March 27th, found me once again wending my way back to the usual pike pool, usual swim for the penultimate pike session of my 2014-2015 campaign.
Although there is no legal pike season – and never has been although many clubs used to, and many still do, have a rule that pike fishing is only allowed between the start of October and the end of March – and although my club does not have this rule I do maintain my own season based on this tradition.
Partially because its enjoyable when the time creeps up to the start of a new season with its related preparations of checking tackle and readying baits and just the ‘looking forward to’ factor, partially due to with the warmer weather between March and October there are other species to enjoy targeting, and partially due to pike welfare… pike are seen as fierce predators and thus as ‘macho’ fish but in truth they are probably the delicate of all fish requiring proper and careful handling at all times but especially in the warmer months when they are more active and fight harder and thus become more exhausted after the ‘fight’ and more likely to succumb and die albeit possibly hours later despite having swum strongly away originally – thus the main reason that I don’t fish for them in the summer time…
Anyway, as I say this trip was the penultimate session of my season… a beautiful sunny day with minimal breeze….
The ultimate 2014-2015 pike session will be on Monday 30th March…
So, anyway, I arrived at the pool, prepped my ‘station’ and tackled up per usual… baits used were a red dyed sprat and a smelt both floatfished in laying-on style…and first casts were in the water at 0810.
BTW – following on the lack of bait I mentioned in my last posting- I was able to obtain a few extra smelt – well, enough to last me easily for the rest of my season :)
Again the smelt had almost immediate attention with the float bobbing from time to time but no real takes as such – obviously chub in the area… :)
Then, intending to take some scenery photos, I got out the camera and switched on.. beep..beep..beep, it said, message on screen saying ‘Lens Error – re-start camera’ – so switched off and on – same thing, took out batteries for 10 seconds, replaced, switched on – same thing, so go to change batteries and discover of the plethora of spare batteries I carry I’ve not got 1, never mind 2, of the required AA cells… So immediate thought was ‘This is going to be just the day I catch 10 30lb’ers and only have my phone to photo them on!’…
However, the day ended in a blank with just one fish felt on the strike – a chub, I should say – but the hook pulled after a few seconds…
Packed in at 1530 and headed home…
Once home, I fitted a new pair of new batteries into the camera – same error message!! And another pair of new batteries elicited the same response :( Wasn’t looking good. Anyway, I decided to Google for possible causes and the first couple of links were to YouTube videos… First one suggested running a thin slip of card around the lens – my camera is a Canon SX100IS and the lens opens out when switched on – to free any dirt/grit that may be jamming the telescopic action – nothing there, no improvement. Second video was basically an advert type for a camera repair shop with a guy saying ‘I took my camera to XXX and they fixed it for $90 and I had it back in 24 hours… etc’… BUT one of the comments below the video said to remove the memory card and switch on as that can at times cure the fault.. (strange correlation between fault and cure – lens error so remove memory card?)… which I tried – and VIOLA!! One working camera…! :) Extremely pleased! I love this camera – probably the best I’ve ever owned – great picture quality even at 40x zoom (10x optical + 4x digital) – and to have it back working and at no expense … wow!! :)
TEMPS:
Time Air Water
0810 5.3 11.6
0910 7.5 11.7
1015 11.2 11.7
1110 12.4 11.8
1215 13.2 11.8
1230 13.4 11.9
1330 14.0 12.1
1430 13.9 12.6
1530 13.3 12.3
TEMP TRENDS:
stevetheangler 
Leave a Reply