Pike don't like Mondays - or do they..?

This one hit the lure and threw it in a tailwalk, before it chased it half way across the drain and nailed it under my feet. Not the biggest pike I've ever caught, but it has to be one of the maddest. It came on a day when I not only caught several, but learned loads.

I kicked off on the Big Drain, after reading a snippet in the local paper which said lure anglers had been enjoying multiple catches. I guessed where, as bitter experience has taught me there's only one part of this drain where the fish seem to congregate in numbers.

Head down there, three or four chucks and bingo. I'm struggling with westerly tearing down the cut. It's hard to keep the line tight, let alone feel what the lure's doing in 20 knots of wind. Two or three fish hit and come off, maybe because I've filed the barb down on the jig head and there's so much bow in the line when one hits that the fish throw the lure as I bend into them.

Go somewhere else, a little voice in the back of my head says. I have a feeling they'd be really up for it today, if I could only fish the lure right.

The Chipper Bailiff appears as I'm walking back to the wheels. Hella, Chris. Hella, me ole podna. Chips says no-one much has been on the next stretch I fancy, where a drain flows through deep, tree-lined banks. So I head off there.

It not only looks nice, I can see where the weed is as the sun comes out. Jink a yellow shad over the top and I can see it waddling its way across. I caught a few on there too. Exciting stuff, as I saw most of them come flying after the lure before they whacked it.

The biggest one might have gone 4lbs on a good day, but every swim I tried seemed to have one or two lean and nicely-marked pike. All came on the same yellow Kopyto, that got ripped and shredded as I hopped from swim to swim.

I didn't keep count, other than the best one looked around 8lbs and I took a break to watch a marsh harrier hunting over the far bank. I was bored by 11am - I could have caught more, but I'd had enough by then.

My arms were still killing me from yesterday, when the woman who keeps horses behind the King's Lynn AA lake at Snetty brought me a Transit tipper-full of muck for my veg plots.

I dropped in the garden on my way home and the garlic and onions are up in the mild weather that's kissed the coast.

And just how mild is it right now? I can't remember an Autumn like it, I said to my neighbour Canary John, as we spread muck on our gardens yesty.

It's just nice to get out fishing and catch a few, on a day when they were well up for it.

Nothing any size, but I enjoyed it all the same. I'm starting to love it, like I used to. Roll on next weekend.


 

Indian Summer

So here I am once more. In the playground of the broken hearts. One more experience, one more entry, in a diary self-penned. Ten yards up the bank and I turned off Marillion before I threw myself in the drain.

What am I doing back here, I ask myself, looking at the gin-clear drain. It seemed like a good idea when I set off, loading up the car as a skein of pinks howled overhead.

On goes a yellow rubber fish thing. I have rubber fish things in almost every colour of the rainbow, but I like the yellow ones. You can see them on the retrieve for one thing, speeding up to lift them over the marginal weed growth.

After more than 10 months off, it's nice to be fishing again - throwing a yellow rubber thing two-thirds across the Big Drain.

I even see some pike. Jacks stalk the lure as it comes into view, fins all flared. Little males chasing a gaudy invader off their territory, with no intention off eating it.

I mess around for an hour or so. Just once, a bigger fish lunges and misses leaving a cloud of silt behind it.

When the temperature hits 18C, I hit the road for home. Perhaps, just perhaps, I might get back into this.