I thought I would pop up a couple of articles written for magazines in the recent past. This is the first one - a light hearted piece published in Pike And Preditors Magazine. It's all changed now, of course.
One Hundred and Five
I have photographs of most of them. Every one of them between 13.02 and 13.14. I changed my weighing scales three times in three years because I thought that maybe they had jammed, and then I thought maybe they were unlucky. Then I changed everything from my rods to my underpants because I thought they were unlucky too. I’ve had more lucky hats than tackle, golf and sundry other manufacturers could produce including formula one, Nike, Adidas and Guinness. I’ve refused to wear hats on days when naked heads almost caused frostbitten ears because I thought that might be lucky too.
Still only thirteen pounds!
I’ve had thirteen pounders from 37 different waters. I’ve caught them as far North as Aviemore and as far south as Sandwich in Kent. To the East I’ve caught thirteen pounders in Norway, Cambridge, Norfolk and Suffolk. To the West thirteen pound pike have graced my net in Kerry and Cork, Wales and Cornwall, Devon and Dorset. I’ve caught them from deep loughs and lochs, shallow rivers and ponds where the water I swear came no higher than my ankles. I’ve caught them in 6 inches of water and I’ve caught them with 35 feet of crystal clear water above their heads. Drains, dykes, fast rivers, slow rivers and streams have produced thirteen pound fish, as have pits, ponds, estate lakes and reservoirs.
Is it me?
I mean how can one person, never catch anything above thirteen pounds, no matter where he fishes? You can’t tell me some of the Cumbrian Lakes only have thirteen pounders in them. Or the well known Scottish Lochs or indeed the Secret Irish Waters I have fished.
I know they all hold bigger fish and I know other anglers catch them.
But not me.
May I perhaps give you an example?
My wife and I were on a working holiday last year, in Scotland, and I was allowed a day to go fishing near where she was teaching. I did some research, found a local day ticket water and planned my day. The tickets were bought, the deadbaits safely frozen in our host’s freezer and everything was ready to go. Then I caught a cold and it got worse and worse until it turned into ‘proper’ man flu.
I got up the following morning anyway, deciding to fish for the morning only. I crawled out of bed, staggered out to the Jeep and eventually sorted myself out to fish the north east bank of the Loch where I had seen masses of fry the day before. The water was shallow, maybe sloping down to 7 feet or so and I popped out the first rod onto the alarm with float legered mackerel on the slope, keeping an eye on the float in the gloom whilst I set up the second rod. I didn’t get chance to even get it out of the quiver when I heard the alarm bleep, saw the float dip once, then again, before disappearing below the surface of the flat calm loch. I struck straight away as I always do and after an awful lot of tailwalking and head shaking, the pike was in the net. With the hooks across the front part of the mouth she was easy to deal with and after wetting the safety sling I hoisted her on the scales.
13.06, and what a great start to the morning. The Fox safety sling is a great piece of kit as it really does protect the fish. So much so, that there was far more slime emanating from my poor, red, dripping nose than ever came off the fish. Anyway, to cut a great story relatively short, I had 12 fish in the morning, to deadbaits on the bottom, popped up and drifted and one on a Kuusamo Professor, just for a bit of a change.
The first one was the biggest!
Now I’m not complaining at all, because I had a great morning’s sport and for a while I even forgot about my aching bones, dripping nose and barking cough. Most of the fish were in the 5 to 7 pound category with a scraper double and the 13 pounder topping the 12. A good morning in anybody’s books.
My first pike bigger than 13 pounds...
A week later my wife Franc and I had travelled down to Cumbria where we were staying with friends and I decided to give one of the bigger lakes a go.
I put out the deadbaits and waited. I waited from 7am until 12.15 when a float legered mackerel was taken by, what I can only assume was a big fish. I can only assume, because I’ve never actually bloody caught one!
I still haven’t! After a 2 or three minute scrap, the fish was on the surface. If I had to guess, and I guess I do have to, I would say that the fish was between 18 and 22 pounds, but the hook pulled! The fish lay on the surface looking at me for a few seconds and then it slowly sank back onto the drop off exuding a mass of bubbles and sardine oil as it did so. It was an hour and a half before I retrieved that particular rod. Climbing a Scott’s pine when you’re 48 years old and (ever so slightly) overweight is not easy, actually!
I lost the next one too, but I estimated that at 7 pounds. I suppose that if you strike relatively quickly you do stand the chance of dropping a few, but I’d rather that than risk deep hooking a fish. However, I landed the next two fish which both came to paternostered joey mackerel and they weighed 9.08 and, yes you’ve guessed it - 13.09! All the runs came between 12.15 and 15.15 on a nice mild, sunny October day and that thirteen pound fish was my 22nd at 13.09. I keep very comprehensive records, mainly because I’m sad, but also because I do like to know what produces the fish.
For example, I can tell you that 33% of my catches have fallen to livebaits, 44% to deads and the rest to lures. I can tell you that my most successful deadbaits are smelt and mackerel (whole joeys) whilst my least successful are sardines! Don’t know why! Sardines are cheap and easy to obtain, but they’re just not as good at producing fish as smelt according to my diaries. I can also tell you that about 60% of my fish have come in the morning and 39% between dawn and 10 0’clock.
I can also tell you that I have caught 319 double figure pike of which 105 are thirteen pound fish. Of the actual thirteen pounders, for a while the most successful bait was eel section, but I have also caught 5 pound pike on whole herrings of 10’’ plus and whole mackerel, usually fished in a desperate attempt to locate big fish only. I have lost a couple of what I ‘guestimated’ to be larger fish, but not many, maybe three or four, but I suppose it’s difficult to tell how big a fish really is until you actually weigh it. I don’t lose many fish, you understand, last season I think only four or five actually dropped off, and so far this year only one, but that was a three pound jack on a six inch spoon, so I wasn’t overly surprised. But I do like to strike as immediately as I can, I use size 6 and 4 trebles and usually fish with floats, because, for me, immediate indication is imperative. I also put the rods on alarms, even if they have floats on, my mind wanders just as often as the next person and if I’m watching the wildlife or even brewing tea, I want to make sure that no indication of a bite is missed.
A lot of my fish that have been caught on lives or deads have been caught on floats. (61%) I just love see that moment when the float cocks, or lays flat and then slides off into the deeps. Yet apart from the aesthetic appeal, I also think that a better form of bite indication has yet to be invented. A float can tell you so much more than a drop off: the direction of the take, the savagery and speed of the run, and, although I seldom wait that long, it can also tell you whether the fish has turned the bait. Of course some pike still munch their food on the spot, kind of like those people who open a packet of crisps in the supermarket and wander around the store eating them, before finally paying for the empty packet at the checkout. I just believe that with a belt and braces approach, the risk of deep hooking is minimised. I’m amazed at the amount of times my Delk bleeps well before there’s any movement on the float. Justification in my eyes for using both when you can.
I have taken a couple of friends fishing who have managed bigger fish than thirteen pounds. That can necessitate a trip to the Doctors surgery in search of a prescription for sleeping tablets, let me tell you, but I’m pretty laid back about it all now. Not! On one trip, a friend and I were wandering along the banks of a drain on a bright February afternoon. My daughter was along with us for the fresh air and the walk, being about 6 or 7 then, and she was as good as gold, having been fishing with me on several occasions in the past, often with other friends. Anyway to reduce another great story due to the constraints of what, you the reader may consider to be the bounds of boredom, we had three fish between us. I caught a jack of around 6 pounds on a Professor, (one of my all time favourite lures – oooh, that flash!!) together with a lovely 13.03 on an Abu Hi-Low. Up until this stage Ray had caught nothing. My daughter was very impressed with the double, peering into its mouth as I showed her all the teeth, with an awed expression. I was just gently returning her to the drain (the fish not my daughter, you understand) when we heard a yell from around the corner of the drain. We both trotted across the field to see Ray just netting a lovely fish of what proved to be 15.12, which in itself was bad enough, but as I was taking the photograph Laura-Anne piped up with a comment I have often screamed as I sit bolt upright from my sleep at three in the morning, sweat matting my hair to my forehead and tears running down my face:
‘’Gosh, Uncle Ray, yours is much bigger than my Daddy’s, everybody’s is bigger than Daddy’s!’’
It’s not that I feel pressured to catch big fish, it really isn’t, honest; it just seems unfair that one person should be unable to exceed the figure thirteen by even one ounce. That’s just one more small Gudgeon or two more minnows, even an inadvertent pebble would do it. I even tried to think of a way that I could get the fish to swallow my bait but not the hooks in order to beat the 13 pound barrier; experimenting with hair rigs for a while. However, I wouldn’t put the fish in any danger if I could help it and find that leaving a run for any amount of time at all is anathema to me.
This year on February the fifteenth at 8 o’clock in the morning, on the same drain that I discussed above, I hooked and landed a lovely fish of 16.04, caught on float legered joey mackerel. As I looked lovingly down at her, the clouds parted and a brilliant beam of sunshine poured down upon the glistening golden flanks of the fish. I heard my first skylark and then another and another. Suddenly all the birds were singing, surrounding me with their song. Sheep walked across the field to gaze adoringly on the golden green flanked beauty. Somewhere nearby a choir started to sing!
By the way, guess what my biggest carp weighed?
Yep thirteen pounds, fifteen ounces!
