Piking Weather At Last

 Up until this week the weather hasn't been bad at all. Even now we haven't had much to complain about even though the temperatures have halved. It does, however, now feel more like pike fishing weather and I'm lucky in that I can get out on Friday before storm Arwen arrives. Having made up a batch of new traces and tidied my pike gear up I was pretty sure I'd find something missing at some point in the day. I did have to make a U-turn at the end of the street as I'd forgotten the bait, but apart form that everything seemed in order apart from the memory card in the camera which kept claiming to be full despite being reformatted a couple of times. The parking spot was empty when I got to the river as the barbel lads seem to have given up their weekday sessions. As I was fishing the north bank I'd be facing south straight into the low sun. There was just enough of a chilly breeze to get the woolly hat out for it's first outing, but no need of the big coat until late in the day.

After a spot of plumbing about in my chosen swim a float ledgered sardine was placed upstream by the over hanging willow. A reverse hooked smelt was st so it's tail just dragged bottom and drifted under the branches downstream. The first sign of action was around mid morning as I was having a cuppa. A pike attacked the float with quite a clunk. Not long after the float wander away out into the river but I failed to contact with anything. The bait had a couple of small scars on it. not long after I'd cast back in the float was attacked again. This time nothing more happened so I gave the bait a twitch or two. When this didn't produce a take I tried drifting the smelt about after shallowing it up, but this didn't elicit any action. Sometime later as I was gnawing my way through a butty the float trundle off again. Like previous nothing came of it apart from a couple of teeth marks on the bait. Just after lunch the down stream float disappeared below the trees. I thought at first I'd failed to contact again as it just felt like a spinning dead bait coming back. There was, however, a nice little jack attached which decided on a display of cartwheels as I got it to the surface and also managed to leap out of the landing net before I had the chance to lift it.

As I had my afternoon cuppa the upstream float slid away again, but this time I contacted with something only for it to come adrift very soon after. Again there was very little damage to the sardine. More damage had been caused by the hooks. That was it for the day. Stayed until I could no longer see the floats.  It was mission accomplished and  my pike season is under way.