Substitute Bank Holiday For Christmas Day Pike Expedition

The river had started to rise on Christmas Day and slowly continued through Boxing Day and into the Substitute Bank Holiday For Christmas Day before levelling off. It had only come up a couple of feet since I was last there on Christmas Eve. I'd gone to the same stretch, but started further down and intended to head back towards the car. Same tactic as previous. Float ledgered lamprey and a paternoster rig, but I started with a small rainbow trout.

The fog was quite thick bay the river, I could hear the trains behind me but couldn't see them. The first swim was rather deep, a full three fathoms. over the drop off in the crease of a slack. The paternoster rig was dropped on the top of the shelf behind and over hanging tree. After half an hour the rigs were swapped round, but no runs were forthcoming. This was the pattern for the first five swims, apart from the injection of a bit of oil in the baits.

The final swim was also the final swim on the previous outing. Just as I was going to swap the rigs round the paternostered trout produced a rather iffy run which produced nothing. I checked the hooks with the 'does it draw blood when the point is poked in the thumb method' and all seemed OK so I swung out the same chewed trout back in to the same spot. A couple of minutes later I was in and like the previous outing a small jack spat the bait out when it got to the surface. The same very chewed trout was swung back in and just before it got too dark to see the floats properly the float was away again and again I failed to contact.

I sometimes wonder why I bother pike fishing. Sitting on a damp, misty, muddy river bank just for the pike to drop off the hooks does seem to be a rather silly pastime. It only takes a decent double to get my enthusiasm back up.