It's time...

It’s that time of year when the dreaded Facebook has been up in arms because people are Pike fishing in early autumn!  Everyone knows that all Pike caught before October 1^st are 100% stone dead within a couple of days!  But to be honest it was a little too warm on the weekend in question and I wouldn’t have dabbled myself.  But a few days later when both the furore and the temperature had cooled a little I did spend a couple of hours chucking lures from a drifting boat.  The water was a windswept drain and the boat wasn’t mine.  When I arrived in the evening the sky had greyed and the wind made rowing difficult, it certainly felt like good autumn Pikey weather.  When I got to the top of the stretch I dropped a weight and made a cuppa, while this was brewing I flicked a few lures about.  A spinnerbait received the right response but the small Pike shook free.

Now I had the wind on my side I let the boat drift, steering every now and then to correct the drift and occasionally dropping a weight and fishing static.  Forty five minutes had passed since I made my first cast, I’d gone through a few lures and eventually settled on a pale coloured shad.  It did look good in the water and I remembered catching a few fish on this lure before in similar gloomy conditions.  But I was at that stage when I was considering another change and wondering what I’d have to do to actually catch something when the lure finally went solid with a thump.  The Pike had taken close to the boat on a short line and I pulled it to the surface quickly where a long fish surfaced then pulled back down.  It circled in front of me then popped up again and I was able to scoop it up with the net before it really knew what had happened.  Then came the inevitable net thrash where it unhooked itself, result!  The fish was a lean mid double, a quick photo then I lowered the net and allowed it to swim away.  It didn’t even come out of the water.  I fished on until darkness, disturbed a Bittern which croaked at me as it flapped slowly away and also saw two Sparrowhawks playing chase.  And I had two more takes, one jack unhooked in the water and another better fish that came adrift, all on the same pale shad.

Earlier today I had another go at organising the shed and sorting my winter (i.e. Pike) tackle.  The rods are set up now, the freezer stocked and I’ve a couple of bins full of new traces.  It’s been an enjoyable fishing summer; fighting on the beaches brought me six ‘new’ species and about eight PB’s were nudged up.  I didn’t catch a PB Bass but I did get a few small Smoothounds.  I was so side tracked by the beach fishing I forgot to even try for a Gipping Barbel but that is still on my ‘to do’ list for next year.  But now it’s Pike time.