October is traditionally the start of the pike season, but to me the start of the month was still a bit too mild to be pike fishing and heck there is still a whole winter ahead of us yet, so it was with perch in mind that I set forth, however with very little success. A whole bunch of smaller fish came to my rods but the bigger fish were noticeable only by their absence; to make matters worse other friends were reporting really good catches both in terms of numbers and sizes! Sometimes you just have to love fishing!
So with the start of the month a bit of a wash out I had a few back up plans to put into place. The first of those was jig fishing on my local river.
We had had some good results on this method over the last few years and these days I really feel that I have got to grips with a method that had me scratching my head for a long time. However the first trip was somewhat of a bust in that the river was just a bit too clear and a little too still to fish very well. Added to these factors was the increase in house boats illegally mooring in the town. This really pisses me off as they take up bank space – which is at a premium this time of year. Best of all was the moron who had actually tied a bunch of floating pennywort, a plant that classed as a destructive alien invader that should be destroyed on sight, to the back of his boat as, I quote: “A garden”!
Despite being told exactly what it was and what it could do, he still kept his ‘garden’ in place. Another good example to me of why boats like this should be kept off the rivers. So the first trip ended with just one follow from a very nice perch for me…but we would return.
That return took a week due to various other commitments, but at last we got back and after a week of quite steady rain, something we desperately needed, the river looked in much better fettle. This time out there was a nice bit of colour with, perhaps, two to three feet visibility, but best of all the river was moving at a good pace.
Things looked good but the start was a bit slow and it was only after our first move that we started to get amongst the fish. I was first in with a baby zander of probably only a pound. There seems to be an increasing number of these in the river, probably as a direct relation to the increase in prey fish that the river has seen over the last four or five years. I soon added another one before the Mike the ‘Swamp Monster’ took over – managing to lose three fish on the bounce; worst of all though was the fact that we got a really good look at the first fish he lost and being a perch in the 2lb 8oz to 3lb range it was certainly a new personal best. Mike was, as you can imagine, far from impressed and that only got worse when we moved to our next spot and got take after take.
You see there is definitely a feel for jig fishing and once you have got the touch you tend to convert far more takes into fish on the bank. That said a fair few of these fish were very small zeds and these are notoriously hard to hook up as they tend to nip at the tails of jigs or are just incapable of taking a jig of that size. This did nothing to assuage Mike’s temper though and in the end I got him to sit in my swim and helped him to finally get his first zander on a jig, something that he was very happy with.
Sadly then the rain that had helped us in the first place turned against us and heavy rain turned the river into a boiling, muddy mess which, contrary to popular belief, is rarely any good for zander fishing particularly when, as was the case now, the water was also carrying a mass of blanket weed that had been ripped up and carried off by the current. My personal opinion is that these conditions are akin to us standing facing a snow or hail storm, in other words very uncomfortable, and I believe the fish seek out quieter climes.
So with the rivers and drains in rather a poor state it was time for me to turn my attentions to quieter climes too and, in particular, to the stillwaters. I had just the place in mind as during the summer I had gained access to a private water that looked to have some pretty good potential as a pike fishery. I say ‘looked to have’ because I was not actually certain if there were any pike in there because nobody I had spoken to who had any knowledge of the place knew for certain whether there were!
There was only one way to find out and so it was that I set forth on a chilly October morning to settle the debate. I cast out three deadbaits: a bluey, a mackerel and a smelt at varying distances and sat back to await events. As it turned out it took a while before anything happened but at around 11am off went the mackerel rod and on winding down the rod took on a healthy curve – but just as I went for the net the hooks pulled and a fish of around mid-doubles slipped away…
Cursing my luck I sorted the rod out and put it back in the general area that the run had come from. Having just about got myself sorted the left hand rod, with the smelt on, was away and this time no mistakes were made and a fish of about mid-doubles was in the net, possibly the one that had just got away? After a few snaps I put the fish back and re-cast but I only had one more run that day and unfortunately that was dropped before I could make contact – but an encouraging start nonetheless.
I made one more trip to the lake before the end of the month with almost a carbon copy repeat of the first visit with two fish landed this time, the biggest being about 14 – 15lb yet again. I am a bit concerned about just how large the pike population actually is; though I can definitively say that it’s at least two!
Hopefully over the course of this winter I will find that there are more – and hopefully bigger – fish present. There’s one thing for certain and that’s that you will read it here first on FishingMagic.
