Thirty from the Fens sends Ash speechless

Is that you..? Is that you fishing further down..? Might be... Why..? I'm standing here looking at the biggest pike I've ever seen, that's why. It's a thirty. Can you get up here and get some pictures..?

After driving around looking at rivers and drains, I head off somewhere else and drop some baits in.

Spying a familiar car in the distance, I wonder what Ashley's doing on here and text him to announce my arrival on the scene, expecting the usual banter by way of reply.

I thought you said it was crap here, I said. So what you doing on here :) ...?

Five minutes later, my mobile goes. Ashley's voice is an octave higher than normal as he gives me a garbled sit-rep. I reel the rods in, throw the lot in the car and floor it.

Ash looks like he's seen a ghost when I eventually find him what seems like ages later.

"I, um, it's huge, it's awesome, it's bust my net," he says, hauling his prize out of the water. I throw my £250 tweed coat on the ground without a second thought to lay it on as he tees it up for a picture.

That's just, that's just - that's just enormous, that is. That's all I can think to say, as I stand there nearly dumbstruck, looking at what might well be the biggest fish that's come off this part of the system all season through the camera.

"Go on then," Ash says as it swims away with a flick of its tail. "Take the piss out of my little lure rod."

Even I'm lost for words as I show him the pictures on the camera. "It's still sinking in, to be honest," he says. "They way it took, I thought it was a jack to start with."

I disappear to leave him to his thoughts, worried I'm intruding on the magic of the moment. I get the rods back out of the car and make a half-hearted go at it. But I can't stop myself looking at the pictures, wondering how I'd feel now if I'd been on the other end of the rod.

It's nearly an hour before Ash reappears. "I just sat there mate," he says. "I just sat there blown away by it."

Ash is going to report the fish because it's a lifetime's best at 31:08. In recent seasons, he's kept himself to himself and done his own thing, fishing far-flung spots with just a net and a lure rod.

The big fish took a tiny rubber lure, flicked out on what most people would regard as a light set-up when it comes to finding yourself attached to a fish like this. But it beat her all the same, after a scrap he'll probably never forget.

We shoot the breeze for a while, as snow flurries drift in on the Lazy Wind. Ash still looks blown away as we say our goodbyes. Well done mate, I say, in the absence of anything more profound to crown the moment. What a fish.

+++Talking of which, was it this pike Ash ironically photographed for me 18 months earlier..? Click here to see that one...

An old school twenty

For the first time in ages I drop the rod, stretch my aching arms and look down at something worth catching in the folds of the landing net, as I unclip the trace to unhook it.

I knew it was a good fish as soon as I banged the hooks into it. I'd almost forgotten the thrill of that first glimpse, after you've pumped it back towards you. First the stop knot, then the float, then the trace, then you see it and start worrying you're going to lose it.

I bungled the first attempt as it surged away from the net in a v-wave, but the hooks stayed in as its tailwalk turned into a half-hearted belly flop, for reasons which soon became clear. On an old school day, I'd caught an old school twenty. Just for once, I'd got it right.

Old school, weather-wise. As in temperatures on their way up and holding in a stiff south-westerly. Old school pike-wise, as in get on after a thaw and they'll be feeding if you can only find them.



I did eventually find some around lunchtime on the third water I tried. Two jacks in two chucks, as I poked the baits out towards a feature.  Then I had a jouble - long and thin, I weighed it out of curiousity and it went 9lbs dead.

Three pike to 9lbs in an hour's not to be sneezed at, the way my season's been going. While I'm patching up the raker rash the nine did to my knuckles, another float goes and it's a low double with a flying hook. I chin it, still bleeding, and decide to turn the hooks out and get my cuts sorted.

Once I've finished being a total girl, a highly unusual thing happens. The float goes and I smack into something which fights back. It takes what seems like ages to pump it back towards me from 50 yards or so, to the point where it's plodding around under the rod top, before it throws a tailwalk which ends up in a belly flop and I steer it into the net.

It's a twenty at last - as in at long last, as in nearly a year since one graced my net. One hook in its scissors, snicked out in a trice. As I slip it into the sling, I notice a slightly obvious feature of this otherwise healthy-looking fish that's clearly not gone short of a decent meal judging by her ample girth.

Barely 40 inches* she still goes 22lbs 4oz. But she's missing the top lobe of her tail, which is clearly going to make her an easily-identified individual if she shows up again. She looked a young, well-proportioned fish otherwise. Young, but still old school for me.

**Barely 40 inches, I stuck a tape measure alongside her but it curled up as I did a couple of quick pictures on the mat, so I made her around 38ins. You can clearly see the missing tail lobe.

Look at the gut on her too. Slight swelling towards her back end, as her spawn ripens. But the bulge behind her pectoral fins shows she's not been going short of a good trough or two.

Great fish, thrilled to catch her.

How old is a 20lbs pike from the Fens

How old do you reckon this fish is..? I forgot to ask it, so I don't know. Brian, the guy who does the Pike Blog, has tried his hand at a weight-for-age scale. But as Brian admits, there isn't that much info out there when it comes for age vs weight.

I sent the old boy some links and info that might provide a starting point in terms of people to ask, ranging from the guy that runs the gill-netting on Windermere, to Uncle Nev.

Weights of individual fish vary at different times of year, for obvious reasons. Growth rates also vary from water to water. Another no-brainer.

But Brian's scale got me thinking all the same, mainly because I've got no idea how long it takes a pike to reach 40-inches - the Mona's scale bench mark for a twenty - let alone the much-hallowed specimen weight.

In the back of my mind, I'm half surprised I don't know this after 15 years of fishing for pike in the Fens. I suspect I still wouldn't know the answer if I'd caught twice as many twenties.

I wonder whether knowing it would change the way I fish or the waters I choose to target if I did. If you'd asked me a few seasons back, when I was on a roll, I'd probably have come up with some glib response like keep at it on the right waters long enough and you'll catch a few.

But looking at the waters in the Fens which currently appear to be peaking in terms of big pike but seem to hold a dearth of smaller ones, knowing how long it might take another generation of big pike to come through might save  a lot of wasted trips.

It might, in other words, make the difference between keep going long enough and you'll catch a few, to this water's going to have several in next winter, because it was a good doubles water two years - or however long it takes - ago.

Interesting stuff.

+++I also should have remembered this scale from Fred Buller.

++++And this piece on the PAC website shows how few pike actually make it through to adulthood.

Did you ever catch this pike from the Fens

There's another fish I've been meaning to write about for ages. So nearly my first thirty, but not quite both times I caught her. I'm trying to piece together some of the stories behind the captures of this pike, which hovered between low thirties and high twenties for two or three seasons, when a rag-tag band pursued her on one of the sprawl of gravel pits east of King's Lynn.

She even had a name at one point. We called her Nelson, because she was blind in one eye. I know of at least five other captures, the best looking every ounce of 32:04. The first time I caught her, she went 28lbs. The second time I caught her, she was 43.5" long, although she was shy of 27lbs by a few ounces because she was spawned out as you can see from the picture.

What struck me about this fish was how many people were chasing her. Few of them were successful. Yet the water seemed to take on a life of its own on the local grapevine.

There are at least three thirties in here, one of the regulars once told me. I enjoyed the time I spent chasing her, partly because it was incredible how a fish this size could do a disappearing act for months on end.

I found her MO out by accident. I was thrilled to catch her all the same - the waders probably give a clue regarding how you had to fish the water - I caught her both times I managed to get a bait right on her nose.

If you caught her, or one of your mates did, leave a comment.  No names or pack drill needed. I've still got the jaw bone I recovered from the pit after a carp angler told me he'd seen an otter feeding on the carcase of a big pike.

What I noticed, the last time I caught her, was how she'd lost all the teeth on one side of her lower jaw. The lower jaw I've still got somewhere in my study is missing the teeth on one half - I'm guessing where countless traces cut her, assuming the jaw bone was hers.

Open mind the key to pike fishing in the Fens

I've just realised the coming season will be my fifteenth in the Fens. I've seen some great fishing here and there in that time, several mediocre seasons and a couple it was hardly worth getting out of bed for.

If I hadn't enjoyed the bad ones nearly as much as the good ones, you probably wouldn't be reading this.

There's something strangely addictive about pike fishing, even when it isn't going your way and everything seems to conspire against you. When it does go well, I've been around long enough to know it never lasts.

Perhaps the transient, ever-changing nature of it all's the thing I find so fascinating. I know where I'm going to start off in a few weeks' time, because we caught a few good fish on that part of the system last time around.

But if the fish I'm after don't show when the conditions are right, I know I won't hang around because there's so much water to go at in the Fens there's always somewhere else to try, always another half-baked hunch or a whisper on the grapevine to chase.

You change your approach a little every passing season. This time around, my main ambition's my first-ever twenty on a lure. One of the reasons why I've never managed thisis that I gave up lure fishing before I really got to grips with it.

The day I caught this fish a few seasons back had a lot to do with it. Two or three times, it flirted with a Shad Rap trolled slowly behind the boat as I twitched it along a shallow run of snaking streamer weed which drops off into deeper water.

When I dropped an *undead* over the side, I felt the bait become agitated as I adjusted the stop-knot, before the braid was snatched from my fingers in a violent tug. I  snapped the bail arm shut, held the rod at arm's length over the side as the float went down a hole in the river and bent into a brute of a fish that tore off for the tree roots as I held it hard on a tight line.

I savoured every second, every head shake, before I slipped the net under it and paused to catch my breath. It might not have been the biggest pike I've ever caught, but in many ways it's still one of my favourite captures because it fired me up so much for what turned out to be my best-ever season.

The lure rods were sidelined after that day. I realise now the fish was up for it, but I wasn't good enough to translate its interest in my lure into my first twenty on one. Drop a you know what over the side and it was bang - job sorted.

Anyone could have caught that fish if they'd been the one on the end of the rod. Sometimes catching a big pike is as easy as finding it when it's feeding. Locating them in the first place is the hard part in the Fens.

I thought I'd cracked it for a while that season. Cracking it means I found a few bigger fish and worked out something that now seems very simple in hind-sight.

It's easy to be wise after the event.  It's easy to embellish past successes with rose-tinted theories about why we did so well, looking back. But what counts in pike fishing is what the bad days teach you, as well as the good.

If you stick to one method or one water because it's served you well in the past, your results soon start to suffer for it. I've been as guilty of this as anyone over the last 14 seasons. But if I've learned anything from the lean years, it's that you need to keep an open mind.

Big pike, small amount of watercraft

I was like the proverbial dog with two dicks when I caught this pike. This was partly because it came down to a snippet of watercraft, a throwaway remark that's put me onto the odd decent pike in the Fens ever since I noted it down for future reference.

We all know location's half the battle. If you can't find 'em, you can't catch 'em. But a few years ago, I heard an interesting take on that one that departs from the usual find the prey fish and you find the pike advice.

It's all down to the plants that grow along some of the rivers and drains. Where different varieties grow along the margins, the one to look for is Phragmites australis - aka the common, or Norfolk reed.

While different varieties of plants grow along our waterways - like reedmace, sweet grass, clubrush and branched bur reed, Norfolk reed has a unique characteristic that helps hold pike in a roundabout way.

It's hollow, for starters. That means air can pass down its stem, providing oxygen for bacteria living around its roots - which in turn digest rotting plant matter, which would otherwise silt up the margins.

A veteran Fen angler once told me he looked for swims where Norfolk reed grew and fished tight to it for zander at night. His theory was it attracted them - or rather the small fish they fed on - because the water tended to be that little bit deeper where it grew.

That helps pike too - well, this one seemed to like it. In fact the spot where I caught it has a spit with reedmace growing on one side which has silted up, and Norfolk reed on the other where there used to be three or four feet of water off the stems.

I fished the reedy side, as opposed to the reedmace-y side.

Click here for more twenties from the Fens, NB work in progress.

Last 20lbs pike from the Fens caught on film

Talking about the Ouse and my miserable failure to catch a twenty downstream of Queen Adelaide had me rooting through my old pictures to find one of a 20lbs pike from anywhere on that part of the system. I knew I'd had a few back in the dim and distant, when the river was throwing up a lot more of them than it has in recent seasons.

Here's one from - struggling to remember exactly when - the back-end of the season some years ago. After poncing about here and there all day, my partner in crime and I adjourned to an obvious feature where a degree of stealth was required.

I can't recall much else about the capture, other than it was probably the last fish of any size I caught which was photographed on film. Nowadays, thanks to digital cameras and phones that take pictures, we happily snap away all day.

A few years back a film would often last me half the season. Despite the fact I was once a photographer, this did not guarantee a clear, sharp shot of your latest twenty.

There would also be a nervous wait to see whether the pictures had come out, or whether they'd be fogged, wrongly-exposed or fall victim to some other catastrophe, like your mate cutting your head or half the fish off.

Worse still, if you used slide film, you had the added possibility of the pictures getting lost in the post to and from the lab - or, as once happened to me, getting someone else's slides instead. I can remember pictures of a low-twenty, that morphed into someone's office Christmas party by the time they landed on my doormat.

The girl photocopying her, um, charms brightened up my day. But I'm guessing the person who took them wasn't too impressed when he opened the envelope and found pictures of me with a fish. When I wrote and complained, I got a free roll of slide film.

Markings show there are less pike than you think

Going back through last season's pictures reveals that these two pike are one and the same.

The giveaway clue is just behind its pelvic fin - the mark like a reversed letter C, with a dot just to the left of it. If you look, you can see it in both pictures.

Pikes' markings are unique, just like our fingerprints. Go back through your pictures carefully - looking at pike you've caught at different ends of the season, or over longer periods of time - and you'll sometimes find a repeat capture or two.

This fish grew from scraping 20lbs in early October, to 23lbs by late February. When I first caught her, she was long and lean with a big head and not much behind it.

She packed some weight on in the meantime, when I think at least one other person I know had her out. Those five months weren't without the odd mishap.


The second time I caught her, she had some obvious damage to her scissors and someone else's trace in her. Neither proved to be fatal.

And if she mades it through the last few weeks of the season and spawned successfully, she might even re-appear this time around - hopefully a little larger.

Here's a close-up of the mark that gives the game away - the reversed letter C and dot.

Look carefully and you can see that they're quite clearly one and the same fish.

 

One thing we can learn from repeat captures is they sometimes show there are fewer specimen pike in a water than you might think if you just take catches on face value.

At least three of the twenties caught from this bit of water were actually the same fish.

What this illustrates is just how important it is to conserve them. Because there are a lot less of them out there than a lot of people would sometimes have you believe.

If you care about tomorrow's fishing in the Fens, look after the pike you catch today.

When Phil nailed the Secret Pike

"Listen, I know where it came from," I can still hear myself telling Phil as we compared notes on a water we used to fish over the phone.

As in the thirty that came out from the least likely swim on the whole river. The bit everyone passed by without a second look. As in the Secret Pike - the big fish nearly everyone thought came from somewhere else.

It was late autumn, back in the days when this particular bit of a certain river had fallen well and truly off the radar. It was past its prime, a runs water which did doubles and the occasional low-twenty according to the grapevine. One or two of us knew different. We knew about the Secret Pike.

"It was definitely from there," I said. "It's been out two or three times, from the same spot every time. Same spot, as in spot the size of your kitchen table."

"That right..?" says Phil. "Interesting." Fast forward a few days and the phone goes at work. "Chris..? That's Phil. I'm down the river. Got your cameras on you..?" Might have. Why mate..?

"Had a day off mate. Nice day, so I went down the river with the dog. Chucked the baits in where you said. Then I caught it. It's in a sack. Any chance of getting down to take some pictures..?"

An hour later and I'm looking at the huge tail waving in the carp sack in the margins. Phil heaves it out, sticks it on the scales and it goes 27:08. I'm looking at it through the viewfinder of my old Nikon, thinking it's probably the most gorgeous pike I've ever seen.

The Secret Pike's fin-perfect. Assuming it is the Secret Pike and not its stunt double. I do the well done mate bit as I watch it go back. I kick myself as I walk back to the car, because I could have had the day off. Not to mention why did I bubble it. As in d'oh - why, oh why did I tell Phil..?

But the jealousy passes as I drive back to work, because I've shared a secret and Phil's shared the Secret Pike with me - even if it's just through the lens of the camera.

If the picture looks familiar, it's the one that's appeared on PAC membership leaflets and adverts for the club for several years. Phil caught it in 2004, before life and fishing took him to pastures new.

When I found the pictures on an old laptop, they took me back to the Secret Pike and some of the days I spent trying to catch it, before it melted away into the mist. Happy days.

Fifty-fifty it's the first twenty of 2012

Fifty-fifty it's a twenty mate, says Rob as the rod goes round and I feel the first angry kick on the other end.

Spring erupts in a glorious chorus of bird song, as we sit on the floodbank savouring the sunshine. Just over a  week ago, just about everywhere was still frozen. It's 15C today, as we plot up around the stove and get the kettle on.

I haven't seen Rob for weeks, so we shoot the breeze as the floats bob in a brisk westerly and the sun beats down from an almost cloudless sky.

We've both caught so few fish this season that our ratio of twenties to smaller fish is about the only thing we can draw any comfort from. Less fish than last time around, but more of them have been bigger ones, if that makes sense.

As talk turns to the water we're on, Rob comes out with an interesting statistic. If we catch one today, there's a fifty-fifty chance it's going to be a twenty. If being the operative word, I say, bearing in mind I've hardly caught anything since Christmas and my best of 2012 so far is 17lbs.

Then again, I did tell a mate I thought we'd probably end up sitting it out for the chance of one big fish today, while we were deciding where to go. Can't be assed with that, he said, leaving me and Rob to see if my hunch was right.

I twitch the baits around 10.30am and a few minutes later I'm off, as a blob sets off against the wind, pulling line off the Baitrunner.

Fifty-fifty it's a twenty mate, says Rob as I pick the rod up and bend into what's obviously a big fish. It stays deep, shaking its head violently, after I put the brakes on its first lunge.

I bend in harder, wondering if the hooks will stay in. I remember the lump I lost last week, when the net snagged on a trace caught on a branch as I went to net it. I'm using a smaller, shallower net today, to avoid a repeat performance.

I feel slightly less worried as Rob sinks it deep in the margins without snagging anyone else's lost ironmongery. For a second or two, the fish wallows on the top, gills flared as she winds herself up for a tail walk. But Rob lifts the net as she glides over the draw-cord, pulling the rug out from under her feet.

She's unhooked by the time I get back down the bank with the scales, sling and camera. Do the hooks we currently both use - micro-barbed Owner ST36s - come out a little too easily at times..? I've had a couple of good fish which have shed them in the net, plus one that shed them on the way in.

Nah mate, says Rob. Hooked right in the scissors, two points right in to the bend - even I couldn't have lost this one, in other words. One of the hooks has straightened as Rob removed it from the pike's laughing gear. Maybe I'll step up a pattern next season, I decide.

We lift her on the mat and there's no doubt she's a twenty, broad-shouldered and deep-bellied, as she slips into the sling. Not a ripe old hen yet, though - as in room to weigh a bit more when she swells out with spawn.

I give her a bounce on the Avons and she goes bang on 23lbs. The first twenty of 2012.

When we're doing the pictures, we notice something else - a length of trace wire ending in a swivel and a bit of mono coming out of her scissors.

Back on the mat, the wire disappears ominously down her throat. Rob pulls up the first hook and I turn it out. As I do so, the bait pops clean out with the second treble.

She looks fine as we put her back, disappearing back into the depths with a lazy flick of her tail. The bait on the second trace is a fresh-looking bluey, the rig looks well-made. I wonder if the other angler broke off on the strike, or even on the cast in the same swim or somewhere nearby yesterday.

Either way, it's this girl's lucky day, as we rid her of someone else's handiwork. After she's gone, we find a large half herring in the net. That's one of mine, says Rob, examining the slashes he carved in its flanks. I was down here Sunday, I threw it in when I was packing up.

I say we ought to weigh the herring, to add a few more ounces. I stick it on a rod and lob it out instead. But add two ounces for my dodgy Avons and it's 23lbs 2oz, I remind myself.

Buzzards wheel overhead after I re-cast and wonder if we'll get another. It's 18C by what would have been lunchtime, if I'd remembered to bring the food.

Rob disappears off to work just after 3pm. The joys of being self-employed. The afternoon blurs by without another run, apart from a few bobs of the float when a crab shreds the bait, neatly peeling the skin off one side of the mackerel.

Strange how a single fish can re-kindle your enthusiasm and leave you itching to get out there again.

Click here for more twenties from the Fens, NB work in progress...

Twenty..? That's twenty and some...

Ash looks down at the landing net. Then he looks at me. Big fish mate. Definitely a twenty, I say. Twenty..? That's twenty and some, he says... 

A float slides away with a tick-tick-tick as the line trickles off the reel. I wind down, the rod goes round and I knock the anti-reverse off as it powers away.

This is more like it, I think to myself, as we slug it out. I up the pressure, glad I re-tied the braid to the trace clip and checked everything was sound before I found myself attached to this old gal.

As I pump her back towards the margins, she rears up with a furious head shake, scattering a mouthful of rudd, along with the remains of a larger meal.

When she wallows on the top, I drop to my knees and ease her over the draw-cord. In she goes, good as gold, the first time of asking. I unclip the trace and find the bait in the net, along with my hooks.

I plop her back for a rest in the onion bag while I sort my shit out. Ash appears as I'm zeroing the Avons. "Big fish mate,"  he says. Definitely a twenty, I say. "Twenty..? That's twenty and some mate."

She flops into the sling and the dial goes round and round to twenty and some as predicted. Twenty and quite a bit, in fact. I hand her over for a second opinion and the weight's the same - 26lbs 8oz.

Knock 14oz off for the sling. So that's still twenty and some. As in 25lbs 10oz. Plus a couple of ounces, to allow for the fact my ancient scales are weighing two or three ounces light. So I reckon that comes to 25:12 in old money.

After a quick snap or two,  I lower her back. "I think the picture thing on your phone worked," shrugs Ash, as she slides from my grasp and disappears. "Well, I hope it did."

I fish on wondering if I'll get another. When the float goes again, it's a low double, which also coughs up a mouthful of rudd. The rest of the day passes without another run, apart from a jack to Ash.

Maybe things are starting to look up a bit. We can only hope. But when one part of the system's going through a lean spell, you sometimes find people were quietly catching somewhere else.

That's the Fens for you. Sometimes it can all come good in the time it takes a float to slip beneath the surface. And them's the moments we pike anglers live for.

+I probably should have updated this, but never got round to it. Rob had a fish of more or less exactly the same weight from the same swim a week or so later. Looking at the pictures, it was clearly a different pike. What are the odds of that happening - as in two different 25lbs-plus fish in more or less the same spot..?

++I didn't quite reveal how I ended up fishing the swim in the first place. I was standing on the bank with Ash when we got there, and he had his back to the water, as we were debating who was going in what swim. I saw a swirl on the top and a big tail break surface. I reckon I'll plonk in here, I said. OK, said Ash. I thought I was so clever when I bashed it out at nearly 26lbs right under his nose.

+++Ash obviously had the last laugh, 18 months later, when he caught a thirty on the same water *linky*. If it was the same fish I had, that's the third pike I've caught at big-twenties someone else has gone on to catch over 30lbs. This probably explains why I believe I'm jinxed when it comes to catching a thirty.

++++Fifty/fifty it's the first twenty of 2012... linky

In actual fact, it was a twenty...

'So nearly a twenty, this prizefighter' went the original post. When I got home and checked my ancient Avons against a 1lbs brass weight I double-checked on the kitchen scales, I found they were 3oz light. So the fish I settled on a weight of 19:14 for wasn't nearly a twenty after all...

As the sun began to drop towards the floodbank this afternoon, a movement caught the corner of my eye. Fry had started topping in the next swim. I shinned up the bank for a better look and saw dimples along the edge of some blanket weed, along with my mate's van bouncing down the track.

Time for a move, I think. Not only is there activity in the next swim, I can press gang matey into helping me move the gear and be there double-quick.

As I cast the baits and stick a brew on the stove, the fry skitter away from some unseen predator. Things are looking up.

They look up even more five minutes later, as one of the floats bobs and jinks away across the surface. I pull into it as the line tightens and there's a big swirl as it bow waves off across the top.

Good fish, decent double, we think to start with, as I pump it back and it surges away again with the reel handles spinning. Then I glimpse its head and wonder if it's the first twenty I've managed from this part of the system.

It takes a few minutes to beat it, every time I gain line on it, it tears off again. My mate reckons he hasn't seen one fight like that in ages.

Netting it's a nightmare thanks to blanket weed and a flying treble, but my mate does a great job. As I cut the trace and lift it onto the mat to unhook it, I find the other treble's just nicked in behind its bottom lip.

It's a mint fish, with olive flanks and vivid markings. In the sling and the dial can't make its mind up between twenty and ounces and two ounces under. So I thought I still hadn't had a twenty from this part of the system - until I checked my scales and found they were weighing 3oz light.

Time for a new set of scales...