Moving To The River?

Since my last post I have been enjoying my fishing so much that everything else has taken a back seat including my youtube and this blog, to which a apologise. My predator fishing exploits have been gaining in frequency and as I said in my last post they have been all I can think about. One thing that has changed however is I am no longer only thinking about Pike, my obsession is growing at a extreme rate and has moved on now from Pike to all predatory fish, I have even found myself wondering about things like Wrasse. That being said I have found myself wanting nothing more than to get on down the river and have myself a lovely river fish, as many of you may know river fishing is really only something I tried for the first time last year, it was something new to me and for that reason it was something I was really enjoying but at the same time frustrated me no end. I was struggling to come to terms with a lot of things I find basic when targeting a still water, even things such as plumbing up and feeding were something I had a hard time getting my head around, this to many of you might seem a bit ridiculous but I'm nothing but honest about these things. The main reason for the need to go river fishing and the obvious one is that it is now June and to many that is the month they are all waiting for and the 16th in particular. For me this day meant the opportunity to fish for all sorts of different species and as a budding specimen angler the pull and attraction of these fish was massive. I went out on the magical day in search of a big Roach this however was brought to a swift end due to a inconsiderate thunder storm that decided to roll in and spoil the day resulting in things starting were they left off at the end of the season and me drawing a blank. Only 2 days later and I was off down a different stretch of the river and this time I had a bit more time on my hands so decided to spend a lot more time practicing to plum the depths and concentrate on feeding, this did the trick and seen me catch a wide array of the rivers smaller species as I was doing last season, although I was catching things such as Bleak, Minnows and very small Chub I was still left with a slight feeling of disappointment as I had hoped to be able to bank something a bit bigger this time and not really start the season this way, don't get me wrong I had a great time catching and looking at these fish but could not help but feel my river fishing skills still needed massively improving.

         This leads me nicely into yesterday evenings trip back to the same stretch of river I started fishing on the opening day of the season, this time I made the journey carrying only my spinning rod, some spinners, a landing net and most importantly my unhooking mat, I'm sure many of you have felt the same excitement during the day I felt waiting for the coming fishing trip, for me however this excitement was a bit different this time, I was getting butterflies in my stomach, I found myself at random intervals getting vivid images of Perch and Pike in my head and the buzz that was growing was immense. As any of you that read my last post will know Pike are something I have found myself falling in love with and the thought of getting one as my first fair sized fish ever from a river was one that brought great joy to me, with that being said as I mentioned in the beginning of this post the obsession has moved on and in all honesty any predatory fish filling this slot would make the evening a success and make it a landmark day in may life as a angler.

           Although I have caught a couple of pike now it was only the other day I caught my first one on a lure, with that I spent a lot of time thinking and going through my lure box, any lure anglers are now all looking at that and asking 'only one lure box' and at the moment I'm afraid to say yes only the one, however my collection is growing. Anyway after a few hours of mulling over it in my head and going backwards and forwards to youtube and magazines and things to check out best ways to use which lures I have I decided I was being a fool, I finally decided that if I was that unsure of what lure to use and how to use it why not use a spinner. It was settled then the spinner it was, so off I went back to the lure box to pick out a small selection of spinners to take with me, I got the rod ready tied on a trace and off I went. Once again on this trip I had Dan Locke or Lockey for company, he like me is also learning lure fishing and a few other types of fishing, he if you ask him would call himself a Carp angler more than anything else as I probably would have done this time last year. We have been Pike fishing together a couple of times now and as you would have seen last post I was very grateful to have him there last time to photograph my personal best 15lb fish from the reservoir just down the road from where we were now heading. Up until now Dan didn't actually have his own spinning rod so it was a very good job I have enough stuff to stock a small tackle shop in my garage as do many of us I'm sure, so it was just a case of tying on a trace to a second rod and off we went.

I did not have many spinners to choose from but the ones I decided on taking were a set of 4 from Shakespeare these I picked up for something stupid like £4.50 from my local Go Outdoors store, one thing I have to say about this style of fishing is that it is by far the cheapest and for someone starting out I have been able to acquire most things I need without spending much money at all. So now we have rods ready we have decided on a venue and we are on our way down to hopefully bag our first river predators, when we arrived, unlocked the gate a headed in to the waterworks we both commented on the fact we could not believe we were the only people there, especially as it is only 4 days after the season began and on the first day we struggled to find a parking space, this was not something we were about to complain about though and we wasted no time at all in getting signed in and getting the gear out the car.

       The first pool we headed over to was one I had spoken to a guy about before and he had informed me that there was a lot of Trout and Perch in so it seemed to me like the best place to start. After about 4 casts I had a take and it felt half decent unfortunately though it dropped off before I had a chance to see the fish hopefully it was not a sign of things to come, we decided to have a few more casts in the swim before heading off as nothing else had happened and we had a large amount of water in front of us and wanted to give as much of it a go as we could, so we now took up position in a smaller pool round the corner one that I see people drop shotting in from time to time, after once again maybe my third cast I was once again into a fish this time however I was getting a lot of frantic head shakes and small erratic jolts so there was no doubt in my mind it was a smaller fish, I could not have been happier though to have another chance at landing a fish and was even more excited when I seen it was a small Perch.

 

It was now mission accomplished for me, however I would not be able to call myself a angler if I stopped here I had to get myself another, same as before a few more casts in this pool and after no further action we decided to move off to the last section we wanted to cover this trip, it was a faster flowing area I'm not sure entirely what it was but there was a gate type thing that was letting water through that was absolutely crashing out the side we were on but there didn't look like any movement at all the other side. Not knowing anything about river fish at all I was not sure if we would catch in this fast flowing water or not but what I did know was that we had been fishing slacker water and only had 2 takes and landed a single Perch so for us it was most definitely worth a go. After a cast or two we realised the section was a whole lot deeper, it was around 10foot deep on the edge but after about 4foot down it was extremely thick with weed, this meant luckily for someone with a shocking memory like mine I was counting the spinner down for around the same time as I was in both previous swims. It was only a couple more cast and I was hooked into something that felt a little more substantial, this time I banked my first river Pike a small Jack but for me now the session was really coming together and my mood was growing with every cast just wondering what was coming next.

After I released this fish Dan was having a bit of trouble with the reel on the other rod, I had packed another reel in my bag just to cover anything that could go wrong so gave Dan my rod to use while I checked out the other and decided to change the reel over as the handle had seized up for some reason. Once I had done this I cast in to see how the reel felt (as it was slightly bigger) on the rod and in this retrieve I felt a smash on the spinner and was hooked into something in a different ball park to what I had caught on the session so far, after playing it for a few minutes the fish finally came to the surface and I got a glimpse of a Pike that was a comfortable double, I actually screamed like a girl in excitement to Dan to ask him to grab the net for me and he came running, however the fish did not like the sight of the net and gave it one massive thrash and went hurtling towards the bottom and unfortunately the spinner pulled free. One thing I find with fishing is that no matter how happy you are felling up until the moment you loose a fish it all disappears immediately.

         The rest of the session went by, we headed back to the pool where I had caught the Perch Dan managed a couple of Jack Pike and I didn't get anything else, I could not be upset at all with the trip as I had done everything I wanted to do and much, much more. 

        

A Growing Obsession.

As some of you may know I am a budding specimen angler with goals for a variety of different species over the rest of the year. However for any of you that don't know me by now let me start off by saying welcome to my blog and the beginning of my quest in the world of fresh water specimen fishing, my adventure began not to long ago and I have now decided to start writing a blog again, you can check out any of my previous trips by following my YouTube link above, also you can find out a lot more about me and what I'm up to by following the various social media links. Now just a little about me before we get into details of my latest angling mission, so as you may have gathered my name is Danny, I'm 27 years old, I am a member of Team Sticky Sharp Tackle, follow the link above for their web page, I work as a greenkeeper on a golf course in my home town of Bournemouth and I have a passion for all things fishing.

          That's enough of me boring you with details about myself now lets get on to some angling shall we, so as the title of this post suggests i am begging to develop a slight obsession, this is referring to my growing fondness of the Esox Lucius or the Pike as its better known. To say a slight obsession is a bit of a understatement as over the last few weeks I have been able to think of nothing else, other than the occasional thought of a nice big Perch.

          My Pike fishing story began about 3 weeks ago when I went for a walk around my local reservoir, I didn't take any fishing equipment with me on this day I was only going to see what I could find out about what the water held, I believe I only made it about a quarter of the way around when I spotted a small jack sunning its self in the shallows, after sitting staring at the fish for about 30 minutes it slowly began to slip away into the deeper darker water where I lost sight of it. I did not bother to walk any further as from that moment on I knew exactly what I wanted to fish for. So I headed back home jumped straight on the computer and ordered a spinning rod and reel and then began searching on many different sights for lures of all types. It was now around a week later and having spooled up my new reel and unwrapped my lures like a child at Christmas I headed off down to the reservoir and began trying to teach myself to lure fish. I started of with a small jig and after a full circuit of the venue I hadn't managed to see a fish so swapped to a silver spinner which I managed to get a Pike to follow but not take. I saw this as more a success than a failure as I went out knowing nothing of the style of fishing or my quarry and I left having managed to see another one as a direct result of my actions.

            The second trip down there came about 2 days later after speaking to a friend of mine down the local tackle shop, he told me quite a few things about the water as he had fished it himself a few years back for the carp, he helped me put together a small rig for ledgering dead baits and then helped me with a couple of packets of frozen Roach and Smelt. Now having acquired some new gear and some fresh knowledge I headed off a whole lot more confident of getting my first Pike to the net, I went down with only about 3 hours to fish before needing to go get my son from school so wasted no time at all getting to the swim I was told was called 'Pike central' and getting a bait out the rough distance I was told, with in literally ten minutes I was hooked into my first fish which proved to be not the best of hook holds as I pulled out of the fish, this did not faze me at all as for the first time I felt what it was like to play one all be it for a maximum time of thirty seconds, after getting another bait into the water and after around forty minutes this time I had another take and this one I did manage to get in the net and I was over the moon. I left the fishing there for that trip and headed off buzzing to show my boy the pictures to which he relied with word all fishing fathers love to hear "when can I come see on with you".

          I was next back at the fishery on the Friday but this time I was fishing for the big Bream as I have been told they go up to 17lb in there, this to someone who has set there self the goal of catching a 10lb Bream for the year is something that could not be turned down. they day however didn't go to plan at all and after unhooking my second Golden Eyed Duck of the day I called the other half and asked her to bring my boy down and we would have a go for a Pike, about half an hour went by and having landed my third duck I was very happy to see Jen and Kieran arrive at the water, by this time I had made my way around to the swim casting for Bream as I went we were in position to get straight on with the next task of the day and possibly the most important keeping a potential future angler interested. Jen brought down the two remaining Roach baits from my fishing freezer so I knew I had a very limited opportunity to land one. The rest of the trip seemed to start off the way my day had been going as I hooked a fish within five minutes of the bait hitting the water but once again pulled out of it, by this point feeling very deflated by my days angling mishaps and knowing we only had one bait left to keep my son happy I was not looking forward to the disappointment on his face if it all went wrong once again. This was not to be the case though as after another fifteen minutes when by we had a small jack in the net and had a very happy boy on the bank.

It was now a week later and brings me to yesterdays session, a good friend of mine Dan had joined the club earlier that week and had received his club book on Saturday morning, this meant we had to get him out on his first trip as a member. I had only the night before seen Dan's first video on his YouTube channel go up and after watching and hearing he had set himself the goal of catching his first ever |Esox it was very obvious to me where we were heading to for this trip. We met up on Sunday morning and headed to Go Outdoors in Poole to pick up some Leeda Pike rigs that are in there for something ridiculous like £1.30 for a full ledger set up, run ring with lead clip, buffer bead and trace for that price is a bargain I thought and for the beginner you cant got far wrong. From here we headed to Wessex angling to get some more dead baits, we then went are separate ways for a few hours to get our gear ready and agreed to meet again at about 3.30pm to head out. Just before leaving home some of you may have seen a tweet of mine saying I would like to come away from this trip having caught my first double, I knew this was going to be a difficult thing to achieve due to the sheer number of small Pike in the water and the fact I had up until the session only caught 2 fish in total both being small jacks, I was however very confident in helping Dan to catch his first one. Not long into the trip at all and I slipped the net under Dan's first one for him and helped him carry it up to the unhooking mat after giving it a bit of time to rest in the edge, the look on his face was a great reminder of why we all do what we do and after taking a few stills and weighing the fish at 4lb 8oz for him he slipped the fish back and went about getting his rig and bait re-set in the water.

Within minutes of slipping Dan's fish back I had hooked and true to form lost another fish, once again though this did not slow me down in my pursuit as I knew where there is one there was sure to be another and got my rig back out as well, almost as soon as I returned my rig Dan's rod rattled away again and this time he scooped up a 5lb 14oz fish and he was very excited indeed.

After about a hour passing I found myself wonder weather or not it was down to there being no fish in my swim or was it maybe down to the fact there was one big one in the area that meant I was not getting bites, I headed over to discuss this matter with my fishing partner to see what he thought was the case but obviously with us both being new to the species we both had no idea and we decided leaving the bait a bit longer was the best idea, I don't know what made me do it but seconds after this conversation I had the smallest twitch ever on my rod tip, for some reason my head said to me 'there's a fish on that' and I picked the rod up, reeled tight and struck into what felt like a motor boat, the fish ran so hard and so fast the drag broke on my reel and I had to play the fish using the back wind, finally though after what was by far the longest battle I have ever had with any fish and having my heart in my throat the whole way through out popped the croc ready to be netted, Dan did a great job slipping the net under the fish for me and after unhooking it and sitting it in the margins to rest whilst we got the weighing gear and camera equipment ready we slipped her into the sling and onto he scales where she went 15lb on the nose. I have never before in my life felt the same buzz and excitement as I have in my short time catching these fish, I can no longer get them out of my head, I can think of nothing I want to do more than to get out and catch some more so stay tuned and be prepared for a lot more Pike related post and videos from me in the future.