On Tuesday 6th December I headed off on a trip out with a fellow club member, Mike W, in search of pike at Pike Pool 3 with Mike picking me up from home at 0730 and arriving on the car park of our destination around 0815.
We sauntered down to the first swim of our planned lure roving day and started to tackle up. The day was foggy/misty with the dampness of very fine water particles drifting in the air (molecular rain?? LOL!) and mild in temperature with no air movement discernible …. which made what happened next very surprising indeed!
Having connected a Big S lure to the line I dropped it on the water at the front of the platform we were to fish from and … yes, I said ‘ON’ … because the lure hit the surface of the water with a ‘PING!’ as the water was actually frozen like a sheet of glass right across the pool – and it was around 3mm thick too! No wonder it looked calm!
Anyway, not much we could do at that point so we gathered our gear and wandered up to the far end of the pool where there is a submerged dam and the water depth increases greatly… and the water all the way to the dam location was almost completely iced over excepting a small bay of shallow water – why that was free of ice I don’t know but it was too shallow to fish anyway. However, the deeper water area that makes up about 1/3 of the entire pool’s area was ice free and fishable – and so we did, fishing around the pool, over the new dam, and on until we met the ice again and then fished back around.
Mike fished a silver Big S lure and I fished a selection of lures – 13cm perch and fire-tiger patterned Savage Gear 4-Play soft lures and a Fladen Shad Spinner among them – and I also floatfished a sardine for about an half hour or so.
I had not a touch all session but Mike did have one take that was missed, and this was quickly followed by a hooked pike of around 5lb from the same spot a few casts later … probably the missed one.
It was an enjoyable day though and better than being in the house!
Anyway, next outing for me now is an informal/fun charity ‘fur & feather’ competition on the River Severn on Saturday 10th December….
stevetheangler 
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