New Rod Curse

 Thursday the river level looked about right at 3.3m up. This meant it would be near the top of the bank giving a flat surface to fish from rather than having to slither down the bank. It also meant there would be some large areas of slack water between the overhanging trees for the baitfish and thus the pike to lounge about in.  This was the theory anyway.

I had two rods set up. One with the usual float-ledger rig and one plain ledger rig. The ledger rig would be cast out to the crease where one would normally fish for barbel, etc. It took an 8oz lead to hold bottom in twenty foot of water, but by casting upstream it did settle just down stream of me. The float rig was cast into the slack water which was around ten to twelve foot deep. Staring baits where smelt and lamprey.

 

 

I'd recently obtained a couple of more powerful pike rods for the rivers as throwing big leads and baits was really too much for the Purist Apex Predators. I'm still using them on small still waters and rivers, but for the heavier work I now have a couple of Agitator BR-S. While classed as long range rods they do bend well down to the butt as pike rod should. They had no problem throwing the heavy lead and a large bait about. Unfortunately they weren't tested on a fish. I alternated between four swims but failed to get as much as a dropped run.

I set up one of the older rods to drift  small roach about n the slacks but this didn't attract anything either. I even flung a bait out into the middle of the river in the fastest of the current.  I would of fished more swims but it was hard work trudging about in the alluvial mud that had been deposited by the floods. I'm just going to blame the curse of the new rods.

 

Hopefully I'll be able to test them against a fish when if the rivers drop a bit.