After last weekend's bumper catch I thought it was best to change location, we never fish the same swim consecutively any way. Back in work on Monday and the weather was poor, it rained all morning and we had a gutter job to do, far from ideal weather. Me and Bernie had a look at the job to see what bits we might need then set of on a reccy. We first called in on a stretch canal near Dunham, as we walked up the path to the canal we was greeted by a Kingfisher directly opposite us on the other bank, he stayed there confidently for a short while before heading of, I think we spoiled his swim. The canal looked promising and we will return there in the near future to try our luck. The next stop was a small river that I've looked at a few times, I've told Bernie about it many times and we had the chance to call in and pay it another visit, This river as most certainly got potential with good fish known to have come out not to far up or down stream from where we were, the only think that has swayed me from trying it out was that each time I've been I have only ever seen a small shoal of fry and not one single fish break surface. I will spare a morning in the near future, just one rod, a net and a few necessities and see what's hiding beneath the surface! We later had a look at the Manchester ship canal, its a massive body of water and I am sure it has plenty pike in it but where do you start, we don't even know if you can fish it but we have a few places in mind and one day, well we'll see. Its not all about fishing for me, I spend a lot of time looking for new venues, and swims on current venues, I occasionally prowl the internet looking at forums in particular match related forums, many match anglers hate pike and I can understand why, they spend a fortune on fresh bait, spend hours and hours building up a swim then bam, Mrs Lucius comes along and spoils it all, if you ever want to find out if there's pike in a venue just ask the match men. Another fantastic tool is Google earth, if I am going to fish somewhere I've never fished before the first thing I do is check it out on Google, there is a great little tool bar a the top of the page that lets you measure things like how far it is to the island in the middle of the lake or even how far you will have to walk to a favoured swim, the quality is that good you can even see shallow areas but one of the best features as got to be street view, this only works on certain roads and not public foot paths, its a 360 degree view that you can zoom in on, so if the venue you want to check out is by a road have a better look at it on street view. I got a little side tracked the, we called in on a few more rivers we fish on the way home, looking at new areas. Having found a few swims on one of the rivers I then began to plan my attack for the forth coming weekend. The swim I wanted to fish was very tight with tall reeds 100yds to the left and right of me on the outside of a bend, it was an old swim with a tired old concrete platform, defiantly an old match swim. I grabbed hold of a striaghtish tree branch about 5' long and dipped it in in front of the platform, wow, there was only 2" of wood sticking out the water, this was the swim for me, I thought this swim might just have a good depth of water in front of it. The day before we planned to fish this area for the first time I called Bri up and asked him if he wanted a trip out to see these new areas, you don't need to persuade Bri, he was out like a shot. I took the bait boat and echo sounder to see what the bottom was like, just as I'd expected it was deep, I had 6' tight to the reeds either side of me and a steady drop of to 17' just 20yds in front of me, I was happy with that so we moved on to the swims Mike and Bri were going to fish, they to had good water in front of them so we headed back home to dream about the day ahead.
We arrived at Bri's house at 05.30, the plan was to get there an hour before first light and we did, we all got settled in long before the sun came out, as dawn broke confidence was very high, the river had dropped 4" or so and had cleared slightly from the previous day the only thing that bothered me was the amount of debris flowing down, constantly gathering on my line. I put the kettle on and made myself a brew and sat there relishing the moment, beep, beep from up the bank, then a shout "Keith", I grabbed the sling, scales and camera, as I got up the bank Bri and Mike were stood over a good fish on the mat, Bri said "it's a seventeen" I asked how he new, he said "its the same fish you had last week". Sure enough it was, this fish is a stunning fish and the only real defect it has is a boil on its lower jaw. Mike had caught the fish, I zeroed the scale and handed them to him, he struggled to keep them still so I helped out, 17lb 04oz, the very same she weighed for me a week before "Deja vu"
Our Mikes having a real good first season so far, this was to be his biggest English pike and biggest river pike, he's had loads of jacks, 2 doubles and a twenty all in the space of a few months, well done m8 keep them coming. I got back to my swim absolutely buzzing, Mike soon come over to look at the photos then I had a run on my down stream rod, the fish looked to be around 9lbs, it was top lip hooked in the upper jaw with just one of the three hooks, I didn't fancy getting the flying hook caught up in the net and the fish wrapping its self up in it so I thought I'd chin it, as I took hold of the trace the fish flared its mouth open and shed the hooks, saved me the job but I would have liked a photo for the records. Happy days, I too had had some action, Bri's turn next but we waited until 2pm before he had a run and put another double in the net to add to this seasons tally. The only other action after Bri's 10 was a lost fish to Bri, he played the fish to the surface but she shook her head and sent his trace back to him, an upper double, once again the pike gods let you down Bri, better luck next time m8.
Bri landing his fish
Give me back my hooks
10lb 2oz, another double for Bri
The next day I was due to work on a roof but with a good frost forecast over night I thought I'd leave some tackle in the van and if all was frozen on Monday morning I'll have a few hours out on the bank while the roof defrosts (Safety first). Well I was surprised to see that all the cars were frozen when I got up (an hour early) for work so of I went. I'm not going to go into to much detail other than it was bloody cold on Monday morning -3 on the way there but I managed one fish, I caught it on a live rudd close to the bank at around 9am, she weighed 12lb 2oz and was well worth missing work for. See the video below
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