Opening The Account

Due to a late start I decided to drop in to the car park swim and have a quick fling about with the lure rod before reverting to dead baits. It wasn't long before a little jack, just over twice the length of the lure, grabbed hold to provide me with the first fish of the year. After another 20 minutes, or so, of fling lures about a dropped the dead baits in. One on the bottom, one popped up and one drifted about at various depths. Around lunch time I had a few casts with a small jig, bounced along the bottom, it produced an even smaller jack.












Despite moving the baits to all the likeliest looking spots there was no interest from the pike. A wander round with the lure rod produced just a single follow. Still I'd had a couple of fish so another blank was avoided.

Same Old, Same Old

Happy New Year to you all.

First post of the New Year and we're back in familiar territory.

After spending half the morning wandering around the lake with a lure rod and nothing to show for it, I settled in my chosen swim with the dead bait rods out awaiting the first pike of the New Year. After half an hour the drop off indicator dropped off, no line was been taken so I tightened down to something which soon turned out to be a twig with a couple of hitch hikers on it.

A while later, a proper run on the same rod which again amounted to nothing. Followed by the float falling over on the left hand rod and an unmarked sprat been retrieved. It's hard to know what's going on at times when this sort of thing happens, I'm inclined to blame eels, bu I'd expect some damage to the bait.

Every 30 minutes or so I'd been releasing another foot of line on the popped up bait so it was now about six foot of the bottom when I got another run. This time I latched on to something which kitted rapidly to my right. After an unnecessarily long struggle a large carp surfaced, clearly foul hooked in or near the pectoral fin. As it wallowed on the surface it rolled upside down and the hook came adrift. Thankfully, after a bit of hesitation, it seemed to swim off strongly.

That was it for the day. Looking back through my scant records January first doesn't appear to have been a particularly good day for angling. Not for me anyway. Oh well, only the rest of the year to go.