Barbel Fishing For Pike

As I had a couple of days off I spent a bit of time on Sunday contemplating what to fish for and where. Monday and Wednesday afternoons looked decent weather wise. I initial considered pike fishing on Monday, hoping the rivers may get a bit of a flush through from the forecast rain and waking the barbel up. I then decided what with the dry ground and things the rivers wouldn't benefit much from the rain, so decided I'd give barbel fishing a go on Monday. With some recent discussions about cheese paste and a reminder that it used to be a very popular barbel bait around here I'd made up a batch, so that was one bait sorted. My bait bucket also contained some Peperami that was getting on a bit. This had ben doing well over summer apparently. Now I have to say I've never done particularly well  with the stuff. Probably because I put one bit on the hook and then eat the rest.

The meat went down with a hemp filled feeder and the cheese past upstream with a small cage feeder filled with crumb. The meat attracted attention very quickly. After a couple of missed bites the tip rattled about and I was into a small fish, a chub at a guess. Strangely it seemed to get heavier as I reeled it in. Eventually a small pike and a large branch appeared on the surface. The current forced the branch into the dead and dying bankside vegetation. Rather than try and drag the branch through the weed I wandered down stream until I was opposite it. The jack then flicked itself and the hook off the branch. Oh well, saved a bit of faffing about. The sunshine disappeared and the wind and rain turned up. During which I had several bites to meat which couldn't hit despite tying different sized pieces. The cheese though was steadfastly ignored.

After the rain the sun popped out again and I enjoyed a sandwich and cuppa while nothing much happened. I'd swapped the baits around to no effect. Not long after I returned them to the original arrangement I got a couple of sharp tugs on the downstream rod and was into something heavy. A decent barbel I thought, but no, a decent pike rolled on the surface. It didn't really put up the struggle It should have done at this time of year. After a bit of a problem with the net snagging with the pike only half in, I got it to the bank, all 12lb 8oz of it. A rather skinny beast with what looked like and otter bite to it's dorsal fin.

There had been quite a bot of pike activity. Bait fish scattering downstream of me. As somebody came down the far bank looking like he intended to prebait, until he saw me, a swim a pike swirled on the far bank. A bit later a fish shot out of the water in front of me. A couple of anglers who'd been fishing downstream reported pike activity with one taking a jack on pellet. Looked like I'd made the wrong choice. I fished on into dark, but apart from a couple of rattles on the meat caught nothing more. In the half hour between the sun dropping behind the hill and dark the temperature had dropped from 13C to 7C.