| 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 11th October BLITHFIELD RESERVOIR – STAFFORDSHIRE Day one of a two day session and conditions are far from ideal. The reservoir has been affected badly though the long hot summer and is around 12ft down on normal levels and has suffered a bad algae bloom. Coupled with the fact that the forecast is for flat calm conditions and blazing sunshine no-one is too confident of fish today. At 6.30am all the old acquaintances are being renewed in the boatyard. As ever the organisation is second to none and all the boats are fuelled up, engines serviced and ready to go. Looking around I can see a lot of familiar faces, a lot of which I know personally and a few I recognise but have yet to have the pleasure of sharing a drink with. As the boats set off bang on 7.00am it looks like a who’s who of pike fishing. Neville Fickling, Nige Williams, Eddie Turner, Mick Brown, Dave Kelbrick, Derek McDonald and of course my boat partner Eric Edwards to name but a few have all bought a lottery ticket and motor out into the 800-plus acres full of hope at what lies ahead. Eric and I choose to troll slowly down the west bank until we see where everyone has gone to before we decide our plan of attack. As usual a fair few boats set off for the now famous ‘Watery Lane’ and we pass by these and head towards the causeway as we plan to go through into the North end of the lake and look at the Western arm. After just 10 minutes of trolling Eric’s rod slams over and an obviously big fish thumps the rod twice before shedding the hooks. An encouraging if disappointing start. The North lake is seriously affected by algae and the low water levels have exposed a lot of tree stumps that threaten the outboard motor. We head back through to the South lake, and start the first in a series of slow drifts, casting a selection of lures ahead of the boat. Eric and I begin to run out of ideas, we’ve cast practically every lure in our boxes, we have trolled shallow, medium and deep water and it’s not looking good. The sun is still burning down and all over the lake people have stripped off down to their T-shirts. As we pass other boats the glum faces and solemn headshakes tell that it’s not just us struggling. Lake afternoon and at last news of a fish finally reaches us, Mick Scutter from Essex has taken a cracking 27.08 and for the last hour we all redouble our efforts but to no avail. We head back to the boatyard at the end of the day with the landing net bone dry. Apart from a double taken by Mark Ackerly, Mick’s twenty is the only fish of note we are aware of. Still, there is always the pub tonight to look forward to. Total number days fishing: 1 Total day ticket money spent £ 43.00 Sunday 12th October BLITHFIELD RESERVOIR – STAFFORDSHIRE Day 2 of a two day session and things are looking no better. Just the one decent fish caught yesterday and after a hearty and late session in the local pub last night quite a few of us are feeling the worse for wear, myself included. Eric and I tried everything we knew yesterday to try and take a fish and apart from one brief encounter to Eric’s rod we had nothing to show for our efforts. Today we decided to play the percentage. We would spend most of the day using just a couple of proven lures and would spend the vast majority of the day trolling in the Southern, clearer half of the reservoir. Lunchtime came and went and still the word was that nothing had been caught. It was about this time that we passed the boatyard and I was amazed to see at least half of the boats were tied to their moorings. This meant a hell of a lot of anglers had given up and gone home, amazing really when you think what this reservoir has produced in the past.
Eric is now sneezing, coughing and sniffling and is coming down with something; he lies down in the bottom of the boat trying to catch a bit of sleep. I make a troll down the dam wall and am encouraged when the sounder picks up large volumes of prey fish shoaled tightly in 35ft of water for its full length. Strange that, 30ft is devoid of fish as is 40ft but at 35ft they are shoulder to shoulder. Changing my shad rap to a deep diving ‘Thunderstick’ I work up and down the huge concrete structure hoping the pike are not too far away. On the seventh or eighth run down I get a gentle take and a decent fish is on. I immediately cut the engine and begin to pump the fish towards the boat. It doesn’t feel massive but it’s certainly a decent fish and I’m just in the process of waking Eric so he can set the net up when the hooks pull free. I’m devastated but have to accept that my chance has gone. As we unload our gear in the failing light the word is that just one decent fish has been caught today at a little over 20lb. That’s two twenty pound fish to 54 anglers fishing for two full days. If this trout water pike fishing is easy I wouldn’t want to try fishing a hard water…. Total number days fishing: 2 Total day ticket money spent: £ 86.00 NEXT: Chew Valley Lake – Bristol |
