| TROUT WATER PIKING |
| A couple of years ago I wrote a series of articles for FISHINGmagic entitled ‘Lured into Lure Fishing’. Although principally concerned with my sortie into the world of artificials it also coincided with my love affair with trout water piking. An affair that has gotten stronger with each passing season. These are my diaries of this season’s trout water piking. |
| Saturday 18th October RUTLAND WATER – NORTHAMPTON Over 3000 acres of water to go at and just one day in which to do it…just where do I start? Well in my case by picking up the phone. Being a member of the Staffordshire Predator Group I know a few people who have fished Rutland before so I spoke to a couple of them before even setting off. The result was to head for a part of the reservoir where these lads had previously experienced a bit of success.
Once again, despite the fact that this time it was a mere 280 miles round trip, my mate Steve and I were the first to arrive. This would give us the chance to get all our gear unloaded and down to the jetty and get at the front of the queue for boat allocation. With over 3000 acres to go at it wasn’t a case of getting to the area first it was simply a case of not wanting to lose any precious fishing time. Like Chew Valley the powers that be were restricting the time we could begin to fish and we were only allowed out at 8.00am but even worse in this case were we had to be back in the boatyard for 5.00pm. Again, this is a ridiculous state of affairs when there is a good two hours of daylight left and we were handing over £ 41.00 per boat. As it happened the trout anglers also had a match booked and the majority of boats seemed to be taken by fluff chuckers. Amazing really, given that this was the opening weekend for pike fishing on Rutland. We had been fishing for maybe an hour when Steve jumped backward shouting “did you see that?”, actually he said something slightly different but I doubt Graham would print it!…..I hadn’t spotted the culprit but I could see a large flat spot in the waves where a large displacement of water had occurred. Steve told me a large fish had followed his spinnerbait right to the boat before twisting sideways and disappearing from view. Steve doesn’t generally exaggerate fish sizes so when he put it at somewhere between 18-22lbs I reckoned on it being nearer 25 as he has little experience of trout water pike and their increased girth. Although this left him a little shell shocked it was nothing to the state he was in after a fish he described as “half as big again” followed his lure to the end of the retrieve before continuing directly under the boat and away. A couple of mates in a nearby boat commented later, as did a pike angler I spoke to in the boatyard, that big fish had been raised all day without taking a bait. They were there all right, of that there was little doubt, but for some reason they didn’t seem to want to take a bait. Between spotting the two big fish we took a rainbow trout each and I had a low double shy away from the lure again just a foot or two from the boat. Once more we had had another tough day with no reward except for the adrenaline rush and pure anticipation you get from fishing a water like Rutland. Unfortunately time constraints dictate that I won’t be returning this year. This trout water piking lark isn’t getting any easier. (Footnote one of the lads who fished with us today returned the following day to the same area and took a tremendous personal best pike of 25lb 1oz on the very first cast of the day. Well Done Rik !) Total number days fishing4 Total day ticket money spent£ 129.50 |
