A brief thaw...

Cold, cold, cold! When will we get some mild weather? On Friday night it was 50/50 if I’d make it fishing this Sunday, by midday Saturday it was 60/40. I hadn’t visited Eden for three weeks and hadn’t been fishing at all for a fortnight, stuff the weather I had to get out there! Giles was up for the trip too and as we made the journey north we discussed the prospects. The weather was cold but not as severe as it has been recently, we figured that after a couple of weeks of frosts the Pike should be used to the temperature and if we could find some, we could catch them. The journey seemed to take forever, we did pull over at a garage so Giles could buy food and I could get rid of some but soon we were pulling up at the yard and getting the boat ready.

When fishing Eden my usual starting point is somewhere near to where I last caught. This time it was on the south western side of the basin but it was a few weeks since my last visit and I wondered if the trail had gone cold. After 90 minutes that’s how it seemed, we scattered a variety of deadbaits around the boat but nothing picked up the scent. The day turned out to be not as bad as we feared weather wise. It was mostly bright but with some cloudy spells and a nice wind from the west rippling the water. The temperature was never what you could call mild but at least it wasn’t as cold as it had been of late.

For the next part of the day I had a plan and I had no problem convincing Giles to give it a go. Our plan was to use a method that had been very productive on other waters but one we hadn’t yet used here, for a variety of reasons. Come to mention it, I haven’t seen anyone else use it here either. Here and now is not the place to go into any detail on the method itself but today it worked. Just a small Pike to my rod but in poor conditions, with odds against us I considered this a result. I am sure this little Pike will be the first of many.
By early after noon we were back fishing the bay, way up in the north western corner, a spot I’d not fished before. It may well be productive but it wasn’t today. For our last move we were back in the basin, with the deadbaits spread around not far from our starting point. We spent the last part of the day here, in the same way we had spent most of it; chatting, laughing, putting the world to rights and theorising about the fishing. The sun began to dip and the temperature began to plummet. We could have stayed on into darkness but for once neither of us fancied it, so it was back to the yard. Time is running out on the 2008/09 season, another five months and the rivers will close. Will a BIG Pike cross our paths before then?