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.
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