stevetheangler

Oh well, the plans for last week didn’t quite come off … the evening before the planned trip on the 8th, the hot water system in the house packed in (although heating was still working fine) meaning I spent the planned fishing day waiting for an engineer to call to fix it – and as it turned out he didn’t come until the following day. Cause of the problem in the end was that a mouse appeared to have climbed inside the boiler’s cabinet and chewed through some control cables! We knew there were mice in the garage (where the boiler is) from various chewed bits of wood and carrots, etc and I’d put traps down but the baits were never touched. More traps out now though but still no captures despite finding a chewed carrot in the centre of the floor this morning….

And I didn’t make the usual outing on the Friday either…

Anyway, the originally planned trip took place yesterday, Tuesday 15th November, and I headed to Pike Pool 5 armed with maggots, worms, etc for the original ‘silvers’ session and also a few deadbaits as a contingency plan in case I caught nothing usable for bait purposes.

Weather was generally good until around 1330 when all went quite dark and grey and light drizzle started and  I decided to pack up completely at 1400 instead of the planned 1430 tackle down of the main gear followed by an hours lure fishing. Air temp on the way down in the car at 0730 was 12.5’C and rose to a max of 14.8’C over the day. Water temp was consistent at 8.1’C.

Arriving at the waterside around 0800, the usual setting, tackling and baiting up took me to around 0845 when first cast was made on the silvers float rod with a size 12 hook baited with worm & maggot and resulted in a nice roach of around 8oz. This was returned to the water as it was too big for bait – I prefer 2oz-3oz (4”-5”) baits. After that I was getting a bite a cast but missing most of them resulting in over time dropping down hook and bait sizes to 2 maggots on a size 16 and by 1215 I’d got 6 suitably sized silvers in the bait bucket.

So silvers float rod was switched to the pike equivalent and one of the silvers was attached to the 30lb BS wire trace fitted with two double hooks and fished about 4’ deep in a water depth of 9’-11’. Within 10 minutes the float started to glide across the water and a strike met solid resistance … and a minute or so later the net was slipped under a jack pike of 4lb exactly…

As you may see on the photo, a bit of blood about! Don’t worry, it was all mine, the fish was fine!! A combination of out-of-practice-pike-unhooking, the 2nd hook being caught in the landing net mesh, the forceps being just of reach, and plain ‘stoopidity’ was to blame. I caught my fingers and dragged them across the pike’s teeth … OUCH! Hence one very red handkerchief that used to be snow white…

So, next trip? Friday, and depends on if Liz is coming out to play or catch up on her sewing… forecast is for quite cool temps… so possibly a short lure session? Maybe a strolling deadbait session on the canal? Time will tell….