Can I Lick Your Float

Due to family illnesses, of the non COVID variety,  I haven't been able to fish as often lately. With Saturday of, though, I was able to get out. Following a conversation on Friday I decide to head to where they'd been fishing. They'd had some nice catches of roach on Wednesday. One lad had 17lb and the other two had bags of 12lb of roach. All three had also had attention from pike as well.

Standard float ledger rigs were used. One rigged with a sardine and one a roach. I fished six classic pike swims, nice slow water behind trees, for about 30-40 minutes each with nothing to show. In the seventh swim I changed the sorry looking sardine for a piece of lamprey. After half an hour a small jack swam in close to the bank. In an attempt to have a blank saver I moved the roach into the area.

It sat there for quite a while being ignored by the jack. I wound it in slowly so as to have it suspended in the water. The jack had other ideas and attacked the float instead. I took the weight off and lowered the stop knot so the bait was about two foot deep and allowed it to drift about in the little eddy.  Again the jack floated up to have a look at the float, before a considerably large pike shot in and nearly hit the bank. Neither fish showed any interest in the roach though.

 

The pike had been feeding elsewhere. A couple of anglers that came past reported a 15, 12 and a jack. They showed me pictures and the 15 was a big fish with a large head that looked like it could easily make 20. The 12 was a more normal looking long thin river type pike.