At Last

 I caught some fish, at last. In what was described as a lively breeze by the weatherman on tele, I went to the syndicate again. With only one other angler on the lake I decided to have a wander, chucking lures, a few casts in each swim. Mainly because I couldn't decide where to fish and hoped to spot bait fish scattering or some other sign.

First swim, fourth cast over a dying lily bed and I had a take. A lively jack of around 4lb had taken my Buster Jerk and became my first fish of the year. Somewhat relieved at breaking my duck I had a few more casts in this swim before moving to the next. First cast, again over a dying lily bed, saw a little 'un around 1½lb or so grab the lure. Four more of similar size were landed from the next few swims. All taken over dying lily beds. No lily bed no fish seemed to be the pattern.

The lively breeze was now very lively and despite landing the lure in several trees so far, trying to fish as close to features as possible, I attempted a rather clever cast along the tree line. A very strong gust whipped the line up over several branches. This time, however, the clip parted leaving my lure adorning the tree. It will be retrieved latter with the boat when the wind dies down. Thankfully I had another one and after replacing the trace was on my way again. One more fish, again from over a dying lily bed, grabbed my lure after a couple of attempts at grabbing it. 

Having made my way round the pond I settled in the last swim with the dead-bait rods. Usual tactics, sardine to the right, lamprey to the left, and a popped up smelt out in front. Before the kettle had boiled the left hand float was away. This produced another little jack. Despite moving the baits about no more came to dead baits. I did manage a couple more jacks on a deep diving plug.

It was nice to finally break my duck even if the fish were rather small. Quite were the big girls are I don't know. Nor did the only other angler there as he blanked. Roll on the weekend, things can only get better. Can't they?

Not Quite a Blank

Despite the heatwave, for January, I decided to continue pike fishing. Arriving at the syndicate water I found four others there, two carpers and two pikers, in my first choice swims. Serves me right for having a lie in  I suppose. I was informed that at least three pike had been taken the previous day, so they're still in there. The swim I selected though had plenty of features, a bay, point, old lily bed over hanging trees and an island with in casting range.

A popped up smelt was cast toward the island, with a sardine by the old lily bed and a half lamprey under the trees. After 40 mins. of inaction I moved the baits. The smelt was wound in a couple of turns, the lamprey moved from the top of the shelf to the bottom and the sardine further into the bay. An hour later, as I contemplated moving the baits again,  prey fish shot about he bay. A Salmo Slider was jerked through the area and after a couple of casts was lunged at by a fish around 6 - 8lb, which some how managed to evade the hooks. In fact it did this three times in all before disappearing. A few casts with a couple of other lures failed to produce any  more action. I moved the sardine to near the area I'd had the action. and there it sat motionless while I had some lunch.

With no further action I wound in and had a wander with the jerk bait rod seeing if I could get to grips with the Savage Gear Jerkster that had given me a a bit of grief previously. As I seemed to have got the hang of it, no more tangles, I had a try changing the metal balls about to see how it altered the action, or not. The only obvious difference they number of balls made, apart from the noise, was how quickly it sank.  Which is useful when faced with 12' of water. Not that this made any difference to the pike, who still ignored it.

Returning to the bait rods I decide to pop the sardine up as well. Casting this out in to the bay followed by the other rods. The lamprey over to towards the point and the smelt back towards the island. As I sat down the float on the sardine rod fell over. I waited a little while for something else to happen. As nothing did I wound down to find nothing there. I moved the bait about a yard and left it 10 mins. I then wound it in to see if the bait was still there. Its was, slightly chewed, but still there. I cast it back from whence it came. That, though, was it for the days action. Back at the car park it transpired nobody else had had any thing either. I hope things will get better when winter does finally show up.

A sad Loss

The hunt for the first fish of the year continued today with a trip to the river.  Down to it's normal winter level and colour, but still flowing through at a fair rate after the floods. It looked good and I was quite confident that my collect of noisy jerk baits would attract a pike. The only problem I could foresee were the banks. Would I be able to get down them and more to the point, back up.

Traveling Light

I started off with a, recently acquired, Savage Gear Jerkster in Rudd pattern and  just couldn't get the damn thing to behave. No matter how I timed my taps and retrieve the trace kept getting tangled in the front treble.  I persisted for a bit longer with it, but only one in four retrieves worked. I need to try it in clearer water to see what is happening really. A change to a large noisy, fire tiger, sinking beast had me fishing with confidence again. A couple of dozen cast in each swim, counting down to various depths and retrieving at different rates was the plan. Working my way down stream, I was able to access more swims than I thought I would, but get back up proved a bit tricky at times. The banks had collapsed in a  few swims and there was just a sheer, six to eight foot, cliff left. Working  a jerkbait at that height doesn't really work as they tend to pop out of the water.

The inevitable then happened, when fishing a tree lined river, the lure snagged up. No problem, I'd hauled the beast out before. I'd changed the hooks and split rings to something lighter after an earlier incident that had seen the lure left on the far bank, resulting in an hours walk to retrieve it. Having wrapped the braid round my pliers I started to pull, only to start sliding towards the river. Moving to the top of the bank I proceeded to pull again from a slightly different angle and something very heavy started to move. A branch popped out of the water some twenty foot out. Having backed up to a fence I started to move along the fence when every thing went slack and the branch disappeared back under water..  Retrieve the rest of the line showed the last few inches to be frayed. I'd obviously rubbed the braid along something rough, probably another branch.

The annoying thing about the loss was, the fact that I have a lot of confidence in this lure. It had worked really well in deep water on rivers. It never worked well on still waters for some reason. The problem with replacing it is I don't know where I'd bought, nor it's name or manufacturer. I now know how River Piker felt when he lost 'Burt'.

After a cup of tea and some fruit cake I tied on a new trace have inspected the last few feet of braid. Not sure  which lure to try next I opened the lure bag to find a perch pattern jerkster at the top of the pile. Despite my previous problems with this lure I decided to give it a go. After a few casts I seemed to be getting my rhythm with it, no longer was I getting the trace tangled in the treble. On one cast it was accompanied in by a couple of perch no bigger than the lure. Buoyed by my sorting this lure out I fished a few more swims, but to no avail.

Savage Gear Jerkster

By now the sun was behind the trees and after a nice warm day, for winter, needing only a fleece it was starting to get cold again. I then managed a rather nasty birds nest  as I was too busy watching a sparrow hawk on the far bank. The lure had hit a branch above me and caused a backlash. Rather that faff with it on the bank I used it as an excuse to finish for the day.

Bird's Nest

The pike clearly have no intention of cooperating this year. I may have to try a different species this weekend.

Blankety Blank

The title says it all really. An early start, on Saturday, had me staring through the gloom at frozen ponds and flooded rivers. I ended up fishing a small estate lake with the lure rod. During two circuits of the lake I fished a variety of crank baits and soft  4 plays with out even a follow. Part way through the session a mate turned up,  after a half hearted go with lures he gave up and fished dead baits. Dropping them around likely looking features for 20 -30minutes at a time. This tactic can normally be relied on to produce a few jacks, especially to sprat. He'd fished four swims, and was on his way to a fifth, when I left at lunch time. A phone call that evening revieled he'd also blanked.

A new trend among pike anglers?

The nearest thing to excitement that day was my fetching yellow gloves. There was a bit of a cold breeze initially, this coupled with the spray you get from multipliers and braid was making my hands cold. I realized I'd put my neoprene gloves in the wrong lure bag the night before. A quick rummage round the car produced a pair of old work gloves which, despite their alarming colour, kept my hands warm until the sun shine turned up.

A slightly later start on Sunday found me at the syndicate water. A couple of hours fishing jerk baits produced nothing. So after watching the only other angler catch a couple of 15lb carp, I settled in my chosen swim.  Lamprey under the tree to my left. Smelt over by the remains of a lily bed to the right at the edge of the ice tat had formed in the bay. A popped up sardine was cast out in front. 

We had noted that the ice seemed to be spreading as the morning had gone on and sure enough, after an hour in that swim it was now surrounding my floats. Although only thin at this point as I wasn't sure if it was going to get thicker. So I decided to move. As I moved a slight breeze got up and after half an hour the ice had cleared.

Encroaching Ice

Despite regularly moving the baits to different features. Fishing the top, bottom and halfway up the drop of. Adjusting the pop up to various depths nothing happened. At one point a Heron landed on the far bank had a look around before flying off. This should have been a hint to give up and go home, especially when the Grebes had a few dives near where I was fishing and came up empty beaked, before swimming off out of my sight.

This year I've fished four different venues, twice or more, that can normally be guaranteed to produce a pike and failed. Things must pick up soon, surely.

Mud Glorious Mud

At the end of 2015 I decided that what I really needed for 2016 was a blog. So off I went angling, and blanking. In fact, after several trips, I haven't caught a fish at all this year. This makes writing an angling blog rather awkward. Perhaps I should write about the lessons I've learnt from blanking, after all there have been plenty of articles over the years extolling the virtues of this. Sadly I've learnt nothing I didn't already know. Fish just aren’t very very cooperative at times, if ever. Perhaps I should of tried for something other than pike, given how badly my pike season has been so far. I flung all manner of exotically priced bits of plastic at them. Served them up the finest poisson cru. Sadly to no avail. I did however get my self a rather nice new bait-casting outfit for Christmas, so I'll offer up a review of that.

With a few bob saved up I decided I'd squander it on a new 'pointy stick and windy thing". I've been upgrading my predator tackle over the last couple of years as much of it was in a rather sorry state. The last item needing replacement was my bait-casting outfit. I knew I needed something longer and stiffer than the old 5' 9" pistol grip rod and had been contemplating a fixed spool outfit when somebody with similar taste in rods to me recommended the Quantum Smoke PT-A range. As luck would have it those nice people had Bobco had two of the range in stock and with their New Year Sale coming up I opted for the 7' 4" SKC747XFA and an EXO EX101SPT  reel to go with it.

When I picked the rod up from the shop I realised I should have read the spec with more care, as it was a one piece rod not the two piece I'd imagined. The guides were also tiny, a lot smaller than I'd thought they would be. About the size of the guides on a quiver tip. The rest of the spec was OK though. Casting 12 to 45g and rated for 12 to 25lb line, fast actioned. Just what I'd wanted. The only surprise with the reel, despite reading several favourable reviews of it all emphasising it's light weight, was how light it was.

Having loaded up the reel with 45lb braid I had a few practice casts, over grass, with a variety of weights to set up the brakes to my liking. A couple of stops on the brakes and a few twiddles of the end float soon had the set up and behaving nicely with a variety of weights from 10g to 40g.

The new outfit

For my first trip out with this set up I picked a local lake that, to be honest, I'd never caught a pike on a lure from in winter and I can count on you hand the number I've seen caught despite seeing a large number of angler throwing lures at it. On top of this my lure angling this winter has been pretty dire. I spent a couple of hours throwing crank baits, shads, soft 4-plays, fat vibes and small jerk baits about, all of which the new outfit handle with aplomb. The only lure to prove problematic was a small, 7g, spinnerbait.  Careful thumbing of the spool was required to stop it over running as I just could get the brakes set up for it. A lighter, 5g, crank bait cast without problems, but light spinnerbaits a a bit like trying to cast a kite at times so I wasn't surprised. Sadly the pike proved as uncooperative as ever.
 

Keeper ring below the handle

One nice touch on this rod is the position of the keeper ring, under the hand grip as opposed to above found on most rods. As the outfit balanced nicely when held just above the handle you don't have the problem of trebles hooks near your fingers. This proved a boon when moving to different swims and having to negotiate errant brambles and fallen branches.

Mud Glorious mud

 

Path or stream

The next day I decided to try a pond that normally produces a few jacks to lures. Having paddle up what looked like a stream where the path used to be I arrived, at what was now a hippo wallow instead of the normally clear pond. With a couple, of field drains and two ditches feeding into the pond it wasn't really surprising it should look like this. Never the less I gave it a go. Putting on the noisiest, gaudiest lure I could find. I didn't last long though. Due to the lack of cold weather the lily beds had still to die back fully and a lost of rubbish had been swept through the ditches into the pond. At least I got a bend in the rod from a couple of sunken branches. I gave up and moved onto another lake.

The new venue was nice and clear, despite been stream fed and looked promising. Again, though, the fish proved to be rather uncooperative. So I still have to get a proper bend in my new rod, but I did enjoy using it and it did prove to be a major advance on the old and now retired outfit. The longer length balanced with a nice light reel made it pleasurable to use and more accurate to cast with. I'm quite looking forward to using it again next weekend. Definitely money well spent.