stevetheangler

Monday, October 2nd – as a ‘traditionalist’ piker this was the second day of my pike fishing season (October -> March) – and thus this was my first session of the year in search of Esox Lucius. I was accompanied by Liz and we headed out on a lure session to Pike Pool 3, leaving the house around 0930 and arriving at our first selected swims at around 1030/1045’ish…. and we fished until about 1500 … and not another angler was to be seen on the 19 acre pool all day long … and only a handful of dog walkers and ramblers passed by too…

Throughout the day Liz fished with her favourite 16.5g Shakespeare ‘Devils Own’ Scale patterned blade spinner…

… whilst I used a variety of spinners and lures including a luminous twin-bladed blade spinner, a 35g copper/silver spoon, a couple of Savage Gear 4Play (soft and hard bodied) lures and a 12” eel with wriggly tail.

I had a couple of takes in the first swim but caught nothing … the closest to being caught was a small (8oz-12oz) perch that shed the hooks when it rolled about 20’ out…. Liz had one take and that resulted in the sole catch of the day – a pike of 1lb 11oz…

1lb 11oz Pike

And that was the day as far as ‘fishing’ was concerned … not eventful really? But the tackle happenings add to the tale of the day…

One rod tip was snapped off – as was the reel handle on that rod. Just before we decided to pack in Liz’s lure got caught by the wind on casting and the line drifted over an overhanging tree and on attempting to retrieve the lure itself got pulled up and into the branches – so Liz was holding the reel handle and yanking to try to tug the lure free when the rotating end of the handle broke off …. so far the rod was intact but then I grabbed the braid line and wrapped it around my lower arm and jacket sleeve to try to pull it free directly… but as I pulled the line to the lure I was also pulling on the rod tip … Liz got as far as saying ‘Be careful the rod tip is going to …’ and {{{SNAP}}}….. it was too late! Anyway, not an expensive rod – £9.99 when I originally bought it but the identical replacement (Ron Thompson EPV2, 10’, 30-80g spinning rod) that I bought today had gone up to £12.99 … daylight robbery!! LOL! I did eventually get Liz’s lure back too – but at the cost of having to wade out slightly deeper than my boots were waterproof to and ending with a soggy foot…

One reel seemingly packed in with a gearing problem to the spindle – quite a new reel and I’ve quite a few of the same make/model that I’ve had no problems with – probably from a ‘Monday Morning’ batch as they say… anyway, as spindle would not rise/fall the line wasn’t being spread up/down the spool and thus was building up on one area and causing tangles on casting….

Had problems with two other reels too – but my fault as I had fitted non-standard spools to the bodies eg a spool from a Shakespeare 140FD reel onto a TFG reel body in one case and another (poorly) cross-matched spool/body coupling leading to poor seating and consequently poor line lays or spools slipping. So reels would be OK with the correct spools fitted… problem is that generally reels don’t come with spare spools and I like to have alternate spools with different line strengths available – and so tend to mix’n’match spools across my reels at times. And on the day I made poor choices… not a problem as I’ve a fair few spare unused reels at the mo having bought a job lot in a local auction, just time consuming swapping the reels and re-tackling the rods..

The day ended OK though – at the local pub supping a couple of beers and munching on scratchings before heading home.

OK… so what for the future?

Well hoping on Friday 6th to head to Pike Water 14 for a session of deadbaiting and possibly a bit of wobbling and luring…. and on Monday 9th off to Burnham-on-Sea on our annual £9.50 Sun Holiday week to a holiday village that has its own, resident’s only, pool and so hoping to do a bit of general coarse, a bit of lure fishing and a bit of deadbaiting over the course of that week.