Warwickshire Avon – Smelt and Snot Rockets Pt.3

The pike is a teleost fish, and therefore, in evolutionary terms less advanced than amphibians, reptiles, birds and mammals. Despite this, having evolved over 200 million years ago it is without doubt a highly successful species. It has survived longer than the dinosaurs. That success has been based on instinct and a limited ability to learn.

We as anglers do not fully understand the extent of that ability to learn, but a pike certainly knows where it is, knows by instinct and its physiology when to breed and the endocrine and nervous system dictates whether or not a pike is hungry or not.

If a pike is hungry its instinctive behaviour and form enables it to satiate that hunger. A complex biological machine, yes, but one we as anglers should have little difficulty in understanding. Unfortunately we live in air while a pike lives in water.

But the more you fish, the more you get to know the likely fish holding areas, and this location was one of them.

All I needed to do was to lay the table, warm the plate and put a Sunday dinner out !!!!

You see away from the main river, a quiet area of relative repose, an area for contemplation, where a big stationary predator could lie in wait, an area to gather their thoughts in these waters of rapprochement.

Dusk is the time to try and engage with the apex hunter with teeth, this is when they go on the prowl, the time that they feed.

I didn’t have long for this quick after work session, but with the rod made-up the trap could be set and in-position well before the sun diminished and the light faded.

Then it’s merely a waiting game, an hour at most, for the float to bob and the line to go tight.

Now ones bait fridge in the garage was working overtime in this cold weather and the freezer compartment wasn’t coping very well, so a little purging and rearranging was required. Wedged at the back under a container of garlic spam, a 4 pack of lamprey, soft as you like. Yeap one of those would do for this session, the bait bisected the, head section selected.

But then I remembered the stepped up Zed gear I’d I recently sorted out for a trip down the private stretch, so a two rod attack was hatched and to mix it up a bit, the ledger rod would be rigged with a winterised oil injected smelt.

Double Bubble, certainly the large swim justified it.

So anyway, a quick post because it was a quick session after all, so how did I get on !!!!

Well it's amazing what a bit of colour in the water does isn't it, I lost a pike and a zander only half an hour in to the session thinking it was one of those days, but a 5 or 6 pound Pike was banked an hour in and then a 4lb Zander soon after. The Lamprey seemed to receive the most attention with a few dropped runs and another fish that dropped off well in to a decent fight.

My offset Sakuma Manta's were ditched recently for a hook a little stouter but I might switch back, it's a hook I've confidence it. Oddly all the simply lipped / light nipped baits resulted in banked fish rather than the fancy threaded baits with hooks in a different configuration.

The clubs rules called time but I'm sure I'd have banked more fish, it was bites galore.