As I write this piece I can hear the generic drone of a must spend all the money you own on shit for Christmas commercial.Now I'm not a Scrooge or grump but I will admit this is my least favourable time of year,mainly due to the harsh weather and lack of sunlight.This time last year I was sat on a sports fishing boat sipping rum,smoking high quality cigars and partying my time away with the beautiful people of Cuba.....
A far cry from recent day to day life.I mean the weather has been proper rough here in the south west as late.so rough that it has scared off the majority of anglers from even looking at there rods,once again mother nature had scuppered my plans for the weekend and I woke up Saturday morning with not much of an agenda,The wind was howling through the streets of Topsham like the apocalypse was on its way,old ladys were being blown about like the lottery balls as I waded my way through it all to fetch a wake up call from the local cafe.
with my stomach now happy I now needed to scratch another itch,that being the disease that is angling.Stepping out in such conditions is not exactly inviting,more like essential! either way I spoke to Moxy who is just as dumb and desperate as me when it comes to catching Pike and so it was,a quick load up of the pike tools into the van and off to get blown inside out on the canal with Mox and Pepe.With a bait rod plus a lure setup each, we planned to cover the water spending 20 minutes or so in each swim.Thankfully the first swim produced 2 fish almost straight away,one on each method too!had the winds whipped em up into a feed? the lack of action over the forth coming few hours answered that notion,just another small jack and a greedy perch of a pound or so was our reward for hanging on.
The next day was even dirtier than the last,I even spent the morning trawling consumer zombie lands for a new freezer,I mean how boring is that,Comet was numbing the shit out of me when again old Mox was on the blower,He talked me into going back down to the wind tunnel,I didn't need much convincing mind.
We started as we began the previous day but the wind was to much so we opted to find somewhere a bit more sheltered where we could settle for the afternoon to soak a few baits.After casting out the traps I kept my self busy fanning a lure around the swim when out of the blue my float rod was away,I was really excited as I wound down.For some reason I was expecting a big fish but a sprat sized jack was no big fish,still we were off the mark.
I continued to work the Replicant twist using a number of different retrieves when Bingo, a speed up of the lure provoked a savage take! the tip of my rod hammered down as a few yards of braid crunched off the heavily set clutch.This aint no jack I enthused to Mox.She went berserk for a while but our charms persuaded her otherwise,a lean double was my prize.
Minutes after slipping her safely back Mox's dropback indicator clanked against the metal bank stick,the line was pissing off the spool at a rate of knots.Mox was now into something intent on snapping his rod,the fish held stubbornly deep and although perfectly in control of the fish, Mox had that slightly worried look on his face.The nerves were settled minutes later as he scooped the net round a huge framed canal Crocodile.....Buzzing!
Well done mate, fully deserved.
For more canal pike fishing check out this weeks Angling Times,where I explain my methods in more detail.
Til next time
Good luck
