First Attempt At LRF

As you may know I have been looking for different styles of fishing and things to try out and keep things a bit more interesting for anyone reading this blog. One thing I have been looking into for a few weeks now is a style of fishing call LRF, this for anyone who doesn't know stands for 'light rock fishing' and is a style of sea fishing. Once again the same group of people on twitter have been helping me again, this time I'm going to leave they're twitter usernames at the end of this post. These guys have made things so much easier for me over the last week or so, I asked about things I would need to get started and for videos they thought were good and full of information on this kind of fishing, the number of links I got sent was great, made the shopping side of things so much easier and the videos were so informative that I felt confident when I eventually set out fishing.

        That said once I bought some bits from the guys suggestions I was ready to head out and give it a go, one thing I have got now that had not arrived by the time I went out was the Sakura Rock Pouch that was suggested to me and that meant I have to take a relatively big back as I had nothing else, this made things a little bit slower as I was not as organized as I could have been with having to look about in bigger pockets for some of the smaller items. However now that it is here I am looking forward to heading back out and trying again, another thing that was suggested to me was to mark out centimetres on my unhooking mat, this will help with quickly sizing up my catches on practise sessions.

One of the main things I liked about the Rock Pouch is the small lure box that comes inside it, in the grand scheme of things and in comparison to most lure anglers I do not have many lures, however when the links came in from the guys I ordered quite a few of the suggested smaller ones. I also went on a quick shopping trip down to my local Go Outdoors store and picked up some small hooks  as well as so Fladen LRF lures, these are at the moment the only lures I own that didn't come in a re-sealable packet, so it made sense to me to put these in the box as at the moment, I have not tried enough to say I have any favourites. As always with any box I buy the first job is to add some stickers to it, this time I had a sticker from a clothing company called Fin and Tide, I will leave a link to their web page at some point in this post, I really recommend heading over and taking a look at the products on there as I think the are quite possible some of the best looking items of fishing clothing I have seen. Another great feature with the pouch is all the little wallets at the bottom, so far I have put all my packets of hooks in them and also my drop shot weights. So having just realised I have gone off on a massive tangent about this item I feel its time to move on, whilst I was in the Go Outdoors store I noticed some packets of Marukyu Isome worm, these are another product that was mentioned to me as something I should look into buying, so obviously having seen it here as well as being told it is good I had to pick some up, I have also seen this on a few youtube videos now and one of these was filmed not far from where I live, in this video it was said that this stuff has been banned in some of the local competitions because it is just that good.

So moving on, after speaking to a few people online and also some of the staff in local tackle shops I decided to head over to Swanage to give this LRF stuff a go. so after packing everything I thought I might need into the car I headed off, looking back at what I took with me now I was very much so over packed. With that though I feel very much so when it comes to fish care, when your heading to do something your unsure of or have never done before being over prepared and having to much stuff is always better than not enough, especially when it comes to the fact I took my big unhooking mat and all my pike unhooking tools, as it was something I have never done and I had gone alone I felt it was very much better for me and the fish if I went prepared for every eventuality. That being said the

only thing I didn't take with me was my side cutters or long cutters, this was due to the size of the hooks I was using, I very much felt that if I tried to get hold of these hooks with cutters in a fishes mouth I ran more of a risk of damaging the fish than helping it. So now I'm on my way to Swanage to do my first ever LRF session, all I wanted to accomplish on this trip was to catch a fish, basically I just didn't want to blank, this I know is the normal aim for any fishing trip but for me this time I had never done this style of fishing and was very much just here to learn. unfortunately when I arrived in Swanage there was some sort of pirate festival on and the pier and all the surrounding area was packed, now to be honest I probably should have checked online if there was anything going on before hand but in the excitement of finally getting out the house got the better of me,

        The day was not a total waste though as I headed back a bit closer to home, me and Jen decided to take Kieran crabbing down Poole Quay, when we got there we drove a bit further down the road and parked up at Baitor Park and walked the short walk to the old life boat launch hut, which is now a museum, a few years back a sea wall was built to create a mooring area for local fishing boats and things. This creates a nice slacker area of water and lots of cover for the smaller species of fish, I very much felt that this was going to be the best area to try out my skills against these small sea fish. With all this talk about LRF you may remember another style of fishing I wanted to learn was drop shotting so it made total sense to me to try the two styles at the same time, I tied on a small size 8 hook and nipped on a small Fladen lobster pattern lure. After a few knocks and half takes I started to realise that something was not quite right with what I was doing, so decided to change to a size 10 hook and chop a small piece of Isome worm up and threaded it on after two more put ins I was into my first ever sea fish, I know this little Common Blenny might now be the biggest fish you have ever seen but he is by far for his size on of the hardest fighting little fish I have ever hooked.

I'm at the point now where I'm going to put links to all the guys who have helped me out with so much over the last few weeks.

First up Mr G! or Gudgie:

Follow him on twitter @TheGudgeon

Also go check out his facebook page his 'G-Rakes' are awesome!

https://m.facebook.com/TheGudgeonsGadgets

Also Ant

His twitter is @worldangling_ go give him a follow

He writes a great blog to!

https://worldangling.wordpress.com/

Next up J R Wheeler

Give him a follow on twitter @JRWheelerlure

He also writes a great blog

https://jrwheelerlurefishing.wordpress.com/

As well as makes really good youtube videos!

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC5yg1am8bv6PcBk2lu4CEag

Last but not least for the thank yous a awesome group of guys!

Follow them @LureNuts

Last link to share is to the Fin and Tide website seriously go check out these guys products you will not be disappointed!

They are on twitter to @FinandTide

http://www.finandtide.com/

Once again guys thanks for reading and showing your support, for any of you who enjoy reading this blog I am going to be trying harder to get more posts done a week, as I said before the aim is to get at least two posts per week done. The problem I have at the moment like I said before is I have had a operation on my feet and I found it very hard yesterday to spend the 30 minutes I did manage, I was in a lot of pain when I got home but in the end it was worth it! The buzz I got from that small fish was epic and also the joy on my sons face after he managed to get two crabs with the help of his mum. Its all these things that make our sport one of the best!

New Blog Plans.

It's been a while since my last post and as the title suggests I have been thinking quite a lot about where to go with this blog and I have made some new plans. Ok so one thing I did say to you before, I think on my twitter, I am going to be doing blog posts more regularly, I believe I said weekly, however I have been thinking about this and I have decided to try and do 2 a week. Generally I fish one or maybe two evenings a week, if I'm lucky enough, and I also fish on weekends, with that being said I had only planned before on making every Friday 'blog day' this has now changed. I am still planning on publishing a post every Friday but this will cover anything that has happened during the week, I am now also planning on doing one every Monday as well. There are two main reasons for this, one is that when I left doing my blog post until the following week before I have found that I struggle to remember a lot of the details from the trip, and also I feel that the more posts I publish the better I will get at writing them.

          Moving on from plans for regularity of posts and on to some other things I have been thinking about, one thing I have been thinking I need is to get better pictures to brighten the place up a bit, this is something I will be able to do a bit more easily now I have a working camera on my phone again, this may not mean the best quality pictures but it does mean that I don't need to be caught out with not having time to get cameras out and set up leaving the fish on the unhooking mat whilst doing this, I realise I can put this fish back in the net to rest in the edge whilst I do this but its not something I like to do with bigger fish, I am new to predator fishing and lure fishing, I feel that sometimes letting a fish recover only makes it harder to hold up for a picture and I worry about not being able to handle it safely, so I find it much better for me, if I'm on my own, to unhook and snap a quick picture and then release the fish as soon as it is rested. Another thing I have been thinking about is that maybe I should be taking pictures of more than just the fish I catch, I enjoy my surroundings when fishing so maybe take some pictures of the nice places angling takes me for others to view as well? I'm not sure if it is something you guys would like to see but if I enjoy it maybe you do to. Lastly I feel that maybe my descriptions of my rigs and or lures and other bits may not be up to scratch so taking pictures of these will make it easier for you to see what I am trying to describe.

              As some of you may know I have recently had a operation on both of my feet and have not been able to get out fishing, this has given me a lot of time to sit and think about where I want to take my fishing and everything else linking to it such as this blog. One of the main things I have been thinking about in my fishing is other ways to get my predator fishing fix, I have spent quite a lot of time on the internet looking around for new things to buy and also spent a long time on youtube learning a lot about lure fishing in general. I have also spent a lot of time, probably annoying you, with questions on twitter, some of you more than others, thank you very much to everyone who has helped me over the last few weeks and sorry if I have bored you the many questions I have asked, you guys know who you are I have taken on board everything you guys have told be and also looking into any links you shared and have learned a lot from you all, for that I thank you!

One main thing that has been on my mind recently is that I would really like to get out and give drop shotting a go, I realise that by putting this picture on here I have just gone against everything I said about better quality pictures but I can barely walk at the moment and could not get out to start getting better camera equipment. However these Fladen soft baits where recommended for me by a guy on twitter that has helped me a lot recently, you know who you are and thank you again. These are the first lures I have bought to start my drop shotting kit and look forward to finally be able to get out and use them, with that being said I currently don't have a specific drop shot rod and will be using the lightest spinning rod I have to start with, this is another thing I have spent a lot of time thinking about but I kept coming back with the same answer, I have recently bought myself a Korum Snapper Lure rod and really like the look and feel of it, so for me it makes sense that if I like this one so much why not buy the Snapper Drop Shot rod. Unfortunately due again to the operation I had to have I have not managed to get out and try the rod yet, I am however hoping to soon.

Moving on from here I have been looking at lot of pictures on twitter and also reading a lot more blog posts from you guys than I used to, it is because of this that I have a new found interest in something that until now has never interested me, that being see fishing, or at least sea lure fishing like LRF mainly. I personally think that one of the most awesome looking fish I have seen to date is some of your pictures or Wrasse. So as you can see my obsession for Pike that then transformed into one for fall fresh water predators has now expanded again, I had no idea when I started lure fishing there was going to be so many different styles and things, even more to the point I only set out one day in hope of catching my first Pike due to some goals I had set myself for the year whilst setting up my youtube channel, I had no idea that when doing so I was going to end up feeling the way I do now about the species and all predators alike!

           One more final thing that I have been thinking about quite a lot is the reason I started this new blog and left the old one behind, my main reason for starting a new blog was because it had been so long between posts I kind of felt that a new start was the only way, that said one of the other key reasons for starting this was that I was taking a new direction with my angling and that was when I started specimen fishing as a whole. There was something I said to myself at the start I would not let myself do and that was to make this blog go in one direction and only be about one style of fishing and or for a single type of fish. I kind of feel that even though I am planning on fishing the sea, rivers, lakes and reservoirs for the predators, I am still going in the same direction with this, with that I am going to be spending a bit of time now that it is warmer fishing the club lakes for its big Tench and Bream, this does not mean I am not going to be predator fishing as from now on my weekday evening sessions will now be dedicated to trying all these different types of lure/predator fishing I mentioned above, that will then leave my weekend longer trips to set my stall out for the other species I planned on fishing for at the beginning of the year.

            I would just like to take a second to thank every last one of you for your support on the blog and with all other things you have helped me with.

OPD? Obsesive Predator Disorder??

So far on this blog for anyone who has read it you will have seen that since the first day I caught a Pike I have very rapidly become obsessed with the species, this however took another turn in the last post as I caught my first ever predator fish from a river and that was a Perch. Recently though I have found myself looking on the club waters, forums and the angling press for information on other species such as Eels and Catfish, however it has not stopped there I have even been looking into things like Wrasse also and sea fishing is not something I have ever been interested in!
        
           One good thing that has happened lately is a few friends of mine have taken a interest in the lure fishing aspect of the sport and a small group of us are beginning to come together now, Dan who is someone I have mentioned on here before as being the first person I fished with in years and really sparked my love for all aspects of fresh water fishing, more recently though we have been joined by another old school friend, Bironn. As a group our first trip seen us go to the very place I caught my first Pike as I knew there was a whole lot of fish in the water and at the very least we would be able to help Bironn snare his first and hopefully one of many to come. I had a gone with him the day before to help him get a rod, reel and some braid, I told him not to worry about lure as like most lure anglers a have a couple he can use, the idea I put to him was that he can use a wide array of mine and then make his choice from there where to go with starting his collection. I cannot fully remember as he tried so many but I believe his only fish of the session fell to a savage gear 3d sardine shad in yellow. I could tell he was a very happy angler and I was also happy to see him with a fish as to be fair to him he worked very hard for the bite, he had hooked into a few and lost them and then it seemed like everything he tried after that wouldn't work but then he struck into a mint little jack and landed his first Pike ever.

I believe at the start of this trip Dan had set his stall out to catch himself one of the handful of nice Carp that reside in the reservoir, this however didn't last very long as he had a chat with the clubs lakes manager and was told the baits he had would be pretty much useless on here. With that it didn't take him very long at all to have the carp gear packed away and the Ugly Stick out. It didn't take him long to have his first trip of the session this one would also turn out to be his only one. Myself however had set up in a swim I knew nothing about as there was a Carp angler in the only known decent Pike swim on the water, I had put together a quick dead bait set up and cast a popped up Roach into about 16ft of water and sat eagerly waiting, I did not at this point attempt much spinning as the water in front of me that was at a cast able distance was very shallow and after a few goes I had no confidence there was any fish there. There were also no real features to cast at in this swim as I had chosen it mainly because I knew I could get a bait out into the deeper section and I could keep an eye on the angler in the better swim, it was not long into the session and he had began to pack up and at that point I started to pack down what little kit I had ready to move the exact second he did.

The moved proved to be the right move as I had a fish first cast, this one fell to a Berkley Soft Shad in the Perch pattern. After five or six more casts I decided to switch over to the Savage Gear lure that Bironn had his fish on as I had only just bought those and wanted to give it ago, again this proved to be the right move as for the first time ever I had a fish take on the drop, not only was that a first but the Pike was also my biggest on lure tactics to date weighing in at a mighty 4lb on the nose.

I had originally planned on publishing this post about a week ago now but with all the problems with work seeming to be sorted i did return on Monday last week and have found myself extremely tiered because of this. I feel like I'm making excuses and do not want to look that way as it genuinely did take it out of, so much so i needed a fishing trip this weekend just past to relax from it! This time it was to be just Dan and I as Bironn had hurt his back and was in no fit state to go fishing. With that being said this meant we were open to any of the club waters as Bironn is not a member and if he wanted to fish we would have made sure to find a water that offered guest tickets, it was because of this though we headed out to the Northfield White Lake in Ringwood, Dan aiming to get his first club Carp as he had not been a member very long and me, well I fancied a go at some of the double figure bream that drive the Carp anglers like Dan so mad from time to time.

            It was this trip though that would show me that my obsession had reached a new peak as I found myself only thinking one thing the whole time i was there, that was the water is stocked with Pike, Perch and Cats, a thought i could not drive from my mind so i could concentrate on the task at hand of hauling some monster bream from the depths. These for a time were only thoughts until Dan sat looking in the edge of where my rods were positioned and called me over to show me a Perch of a few ounces swimming through a group of small fry, again for a little while this just added to the thoughts and i went about bringing in my rods to re fill the feeders and get them back on the spot. After a further three or four casts with the feeders I could no longer take it and brought in the rods, headed to the car and grabbed out the spinning rod and my lure boxes. I began frantically thrashing the water to a foam casting a fair few times with each lure in my swim to no avail, by this point Dan had fallen asleep so a had a few cheeky chucks in his swim before heading of to some of the more likely swims with overhanging cover and things. Unfortunately I still had no takes and after bringing in my other rods earlier in the day no Bream either, what I am trying to say painfully is I blanked.

           Sorry it has been so long between posts again and I will try a lot harder to get more published more regularly! Thank you for reading and I wish tight lines to all!

           

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.