Lost a good fish

Finally the weekend has arrived, Saturday morning was my planned session on the local river but unfortunately Sefo had to give this one a miss because he's broken a bone in his left hand and requires surgery, our Mike decided to opt out, I think he wants to spend some quality time with his play station. I got up on Saturday morning just before 3am, a bit too early, I blame that on an early night and a few beers before bed time, needed to get up for a pee and couldn't get back to sleep. At 05.30am I started to get ready for my morning assault on the river, I loaded the van and set off to a swim that I did my first ever session on and have only fished it once since, its a popular swim that gets fished by lots of different anglers, pleasure, carp and pike, the swim is on a big bend with lots of scope for bait placement. I arrived at 06.40 and had 3 rods in before 7am, 2 with live baits and 1 with a dead. I didn't wait at all long for my first run, I was re making a damaged trace from my last session when the bobbin dropped off on one of the live bait rods, it was a scraggy little fish of around 8lb, the fish had an hole through its bottom jaw as though someone had used a boga grip or hooked their scales through it to weigh it, a lucky fish in my opinion, the sort of people who handle fish like this don't usually return them. That was me content, I had made a good decision to fish this swim and caught from the offset, this turned out to be one of them mornings, the same rod went again soon after the re cast, another jack to the same rod followed by an other two around 9lb. I sat down poured a coffee and rolled a cig, I was happy that I'd caught 4 fish but dissatisfied that I'd not bagged a double yet, the bobbin dropped on my right hand rod, this had a mackerel hard on the bottom, the fish was running with the bait when I picked the rod up, just as I was about to strike the fish stopped, I struck but the pike had dropped the bait. I done quite well this time last year on deads catching just as many as I did on live bait, that was my first run on deads in 4 trips to the river. I re cast and sat down to finish my brew but it had gone cold so I poured a fresh one, the bobbin dropped on the live bait rod, I run over and picked the rod up and struck into some solid resistance, the fish headed slowly up stream and wasn't giving at first, it was heading to my other rod so I piled on the pressure and turned her, once I had the fish heading in the right direction I thought about getting the net in place ready to land the fish, the net was behind me on the unhooking mat, bugger, I cant believe I'd left it there, not when I had what I thought could be a new PB. I slowly backed up to the net maybe 12' behind me and bent down to pick it up, this is the point where I mucked up, I eased the pressure on the fish for a split second and with a shake of its head she was gone, gutted. The baiter was still hooked and upon inspection it was unscathed, im pretty sure it was a good fish. I put a fresh one on and sat back, it went quite, maybe 20 mins then the live bait went again, I hit the run I turned out to be my first double of the session a scrapper double of 11lb, I put the fish back in water in a recovery sling and got the camera set up, as I returned to the river to get the fish out the left hand rod went, another jack of maybe 8lb but a welcome first brace of the season. I managed another jack and another double of 12lb which I caught on my last live bait, I had another jack on the ex live bait that I'd lost the good fish to earlier then the fishing switched off. 9 fish including 2 doubles, a dropped run and a good fish lost, a very good morning by my standards and all in the space of 4 hrs, I think I'll sneak out again for a few hrs in the morning. O I almost forgot, one of the smaller fish I caught was deep hooked, the bottom treble was well and truly in its stomach, after a few failed attempts and a nice cut to my finger (first aid kit)I decided to cut the wire and unfortunately leave the hook in the fish, I think I've been fortunate it's been 4 - 5 years since i had to leave a hook in a fishes stomach, I've had my fair share of deep hooked fish too, I had one recently while fishing with our Mike and although not something I like I had the opportunity so show him how to unhook a deep hooked fish.