October Pike

Well its that time of the year again, the winter is well on the way and the weather is deteriorating as the days go on. This makes it very difficult to get onto the salt as much as i enjoy it, its just not playing ball.
So resorting to fresh water is the only option, but as i haven't fished fresh in over a year iv no idea were to start or what to target.

It all started with a phone call from a friend David Smith who lives quite a bit further south than myself, he was looking for a part for his car to be delivered to him (A MINI ) he says its the partners car but ill say nothing more. Anyways he was going into the midlands to target pike and as it wasn't that far of a drive for me i decided to throw a rod into the car to have a quick go at them while i was delivering the part, i was pushed for time as i finished work at 1 pm and had to be home early so as soon as i arrived the bait was on and into the water.
The weather was not in our favor, it was blowing a hurricane and raining on and off, we had a couple of rods out with bait on them and David was also giving a few lures ago but the wind was making lure fishing extremely difficult.
Then all of a sudden the line starts whizzing of my reel, i lifted the rod and struck...........fish on.......
Brilliant Davids part just got cheaper lol he did not drag me all the way down here for a blank.
After a great fight i landed the fish measured it and released it.......... It was a personal best for me too at 100cms.

Well that was me Hooked on pike.......

It wasn't very long after we arranged another trip to the same location, two weeks later it happened as usual i slept in and on arriving at the location to find two parked cars i realized that the lads prob had landed fish and all.................so as quick as i could i got the yak into the water and paddled to the other side to find David Smith and Anthony Byrne. As i thought David had a couple landed and released and all. Things were slow at first and nothing seamed to be taking dead bait so change of tactics and on went the lures again things were slow and as usual as i was starting to loose hope Anto landed a fine fish. Not long after that i had my first hook up..................then it hooked of again......... not good for me, At this point i thought i might actually have a blank there was nothing else to do but to push on, i paddled back and forth, up and down the length of the lake for awhile trawling lures and even trying bait on the float without any luck.

Then BOOM pike hits the lure hard and i landed it for a quick photo before releasing it.

I all kicked off after that David had one shortly after followed by myself  with another.

     At this point the weather started to pick up wind was starting to cause problems and there was the odd down poor. It was nearly time to call it a day as i started making my way back down the lake i gave one final cast with the lure ( a green jelly shad) and hooked a small jack as i got him along side the yak i reached round for my long nose pliers to unhook him, just as i reached into the water to lift him out there was an explosion!!!!!!!!!!! Splashing and slapping i couldn't at first see what was going on then it all settled down to realize a substantially larger pike had nailed the little jack.

I had no idea what to do so i grabbed the camera and started taking pics of the commotion, o and in the process shouting and David to come over to see what was happening.

As quick as it all happened the big lady made of with the jack and that was that, i never seen anything like it before just seen pics and videos from it happening to others, so it was pretty cool to see it in person.

It was a great days crack and an unreal days fishing, it was also nice to see the lads again as we don't bump into each other that often.

Until next time tight lines.........