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.