stevetheangler

Monday 6th November, started on the wrong foot as the alarm failed to go off and I awoke 45 minutes later than intended. However, it was actually fortuitous as, due to staying up later than planned the previous evening to watch a TV programme and then having to do my usual pre-bed chores (glass of milk, blood sugar measuring,…), I went to bed more tired than usual and in my mind numbed state I set my alarm for 5:00PM rather than 5:00AM … which, had I done that correctly, would actually have been far too early and the actual 0545 rising was spot on to allow breakfast to be partaken and the last bits needed to be put in the car loaded without rush or loss of sleep.

At about 0630 I set off to a club water (AA-GH) with pike in mind arriving to any empty parking area – and it remained so all day despite actually starting off as the best day weather wise for ages with blue skies, sunshine and a light breeze although from around noon a couple of showers appeared.

So, ‘millionaire fishing’…. and I elected to fish Peg 1 which abuts the owners own private bit of the pool … his lawns in the cartilage of his house includes a  30 yard section of the pool that are out-of-bounds to the club but he has built himself (and his friends) a fishing platform there. From peg 1 that section lies off to the left and has an length of overhanging bushes and, in the summer, reeds before the more cultured land is reached and I’ve, in the past, had a few pike down that edge.

Two rods were set up … a float rod  for fishing a smelt down the edge of the ‘rough’ on the left and a leger rod to be fished with a popped up sardine out in the open water in front between the main land and the pool’s island.

As usual setting up didn’t go smoothly – the battery cover of my alarm fell off and was last seen sinking into the bankside waters – a  scoop around with the landing net was fruitless due to the rocky bottom providing crevices for  the elusive item to hide in. Luckily the alarms came in a set of three and I only ever use two so it was easy enough to remove the cover from the unused spare once I got back home… now you ask (possibly), why didn’t I just swap the full alarms? Well, the alarms have different LED colours (red, blue and white) and the blue and white the better colours for me so rather than swap a white alarm to a red one I just used the red’s battery cover.

So I fished until about 1400 … without a single take from any pike at all. Not a single nudge on the smelt rod at all BUT interest by ‘something’ on the leger rod in the form of small pulls/2 or 3 beeps of the alarm. When the leger rod was retrieved the sardine was of a stereotypical ‘cat eat the fish on the dish’ comic cartoon depiction – a head and a tail and betwixt just a perfectly clean skeleton with the flesh all removed. Prime suspect being an eel or eels … I was told a large eel was caught there some time ago and as the pool is fed from a brook running alongside not to distant away that’s really not outside the realms of possibility … other possible I suppose are chub, perch and crayfish although I’ve not heard of any of the latter having been found there.

PLANS

To be decided …. hopefully Liz will accompany me next week.