It's that time again

Once back from the wild west the month of September was gone almost before I could notice… 

I had an evening on a beach I’d never fished before, soaking squid with some old friends, which I should point out is not a metaphor, we were fishing.  The lads had caught fish here previous years  but I didn’t feel confident at any stage, there was just something about the place that didn’t ring my bells.  I think I had one pull on a rod tip that might have been a bite and that was my lot but there were a couple of Whiting caught and we all had a proper good catch up which was the main point of the evening after all.

A week later the tides were all wrong so on a cool Saturday afternoon Giles and I stuck up two fingers to the Pike police and set off in a boat throwing lures around.  The afternoon was a mixture of sunshine and cloud with a light westerly breeze and it all felt right for an autumn Pike.  On the way out Giles trolled while I steered but nothing intercepted a lure and we soon reached our destination where we commenced casting from a static boat.

Our starting point was an area that has produced a few fish in the past but I realised hadn’t been particularly productive in recent times.  Every ten minutes or so we lifted the weights and moved back up the stretch in the direction of the car park.  Probably an hour had past before we reached the spot we probably should have started at and Giles soon hooked the first fish of the night, as he usually does! After that we had four more Pike between us, it didn’t seem to matter what lures we used but tonight they wanted them a bit deeper than I would have expected.  We were able to unhook all of these in the water with a quick flick of the pliers which was done for convenience rather than any Pike welfare paranoia.

Now autumn proper is here and I’ll be doing the same old things in the same old places, loving every minute and mostly saying fuck all about it.  It’s a shame it has to be this way and there must be many great stories that may never be told but that’s another curse of the social media age.

The summer sea fishing was a different experience this year, whereas 2022 had been all about the Bass in 2023 we done really well for Rays. Unlike previous years I may well have the odd sea trip through the autumn but for a few weeks at least I'll have a one track mind.