Putting On Weight

 My cunning plan for Thursday was to spend an hour or so in each swim and work my way round the gravel pit. Providing no other anglers got in the way there was enough daylight to fish every swim.  I started in he first swim with the usual sort of setup. A small smelt was dropped near the tree roots and a lamprey tossed out next to the dying weed bed in the middle. After moving the baits a couple of times I moved on to the next swim. A cup of tea and lunch had been consumed as I got ready to move to the far side of the pit.

 With everything ready to move a few fish scattered over to my right. It looked like the only swim I could reach the spot from was the first one I was in. As I stood there more fish scattered. A quick move back to the first swim and out with the bait. Because of the height of the water, it had gone down a couple of inches since last week, you are a lot closer to the tree branches above. This can make casting to certain spots a tad awkward, but kneeling down I managed to get the bait within a couple of yards of the spot. The smelt which was now a bit raggedly was replaced with a small roach and swung out to the tree roots. A robin had a wander along one of the rods, no doubt hoping to be fed. Three quarters of an hour later some fish scattered just to my right in a small bay. I quickly moved the roach there and a few minutes later the float slid away. After a rather hectic fight a decent pike was in the net. 93cm and 12lb 4oz it looked somewhat familiar. A scan through the phone showed it to last week's fish which had gained 9oz.

 

Just after I released the pike there was quite a splash to my left but all I could see was a twig in the middle of the ripples. I then what I at first thought was a rat swimming to the bank as It shot up a tree I realised it was a rather soggy squirrel that clearly picked the wrong branch to wander about on. There was then another scattering of fish to the right of the float out in the middle, so I decided to stop put. I put a pop up ball on the lamprey, which was still oozing blood, and recast it. Another small roach was dropped back in the bay. After this there was no more fish scattering or anything. As usual I waited into dark before packing up.