Pike Anglers Nil - Perch Anglers Loads

Tuesday's fishing trip had been carefully planned Monday night. I was going to run an errand, call in the tackle shop, then meat a friend at a club lake I'd never fished before. The first two went off reasonably well. The tackle shop didn't have everything I wanted, despite which I still managed to spend a small fortune. Things then started to fall apart. I arrived at the lake, which required a key to get through the gate. I don't have one, but I'd arranged to give him a ring when I got there. I could see the car park and there was no sign of his car. I gave him a ring to see what was happening only to be informed he had to do a spot of babysitting, due to an emergency. He offered to pop down with the key, but I told him to deal with the family, I'd go elsewhere.  Thus I found my self on the Aire & Calder Navigation. The next, slight,  problem was of my own making. I'd brought lure rods for both pike and perch, but no lures! Somehow the lure boxes had failed to transport themselves from the garage to the back of my car. Oh well, I had the bait rods with me so all was not lost.

 By the time I got to a swim and had got set up it was time for elevenses. I put a dead trout out just over an inside ledge. I thought the trout might be something they hadn't seen before. A sardine went out about a third of the way across on what was the pole line for maggot drowners, hoping the bait fish may be used to food been there and be swimming up and down looking for it. The first angler I spoke to was a pike angler who'd had nowt. As we had both seen, there appeared to be a bit of pike activity with them swirling at the surface. With increased activity near the boats I moved the sardine into a gap between them. Moving it a metre closer to me every twenty minutes or so. I had a go at wobbling a roach. Drifted a bait in the tow at various depths, but the pike rally didn't want to know. In the mean time the three perch anglers were having quite a good day of it, once they found them. I tried a variety of baits for not even a dropped run.

 

 Despite the obvious pike activity the perch anglers and me were never bothered by pike at all. Don't know if I'd have caught a pike even if I'd had my lure with me, but I could have entertained myself with some perch. Even though I had very little to do I only took two photos. I don't know why, but the less I have to do while fishing the less photos I take. I don't even have anything from the action cam either, as I appear to have corrupted the memory card. Things are not brilliant on the pike front, I'm currently averaging less the one pike per trip. This is actually quite normal for me over a season though. The good news, though, is that my friends family emergency ended with everybody being well.