The long walk was worth it....

The alarm clock went off at 5:45am and I was up and out of bed in a flash.

I was soon in the shower, cleaned the teeth and was heading downstairs to feed the cats and get the days bait and food ready.

6:30am came and I head out of the door to the car and made my way in the dark to meet Blankman at the gates of the fishery. I was the first to arrived and the gates were already open, so I continued to drive down the driveway to the car park to wait for Blankmans arrival.

We had decided during the week that we would start Saturdays session at the top of the fishery with a view of working our way down a number of swims until we found the pike.

Blankman arrived at 7:00 sharp and we exchanged pleasantries before we took the long walk to the first swim in darkness.

The walk to this swim always goes quickly in the dark and we were soon on the bank unpacking the rods etc. The water level was down by about 4-5ft from a couple of weeks ago. It was soon evident that some of the features that we would have normally put a bait on were now exposed.
But this drop in water levels, did mean that it was now a comfortable cast to a number of other feature.

Blankman took up prime position with his two rods so I fished two rods to the left of his and sneaked one in along side the feature.

We had a number of different bait outs between us including a mixed bag of sea and coarse baits on differnt setups.

The first hour came and went and the sun begun to rise. Conditions looked favourable with an air temperature at a comfortable 10 deg C in the morning, but we were expecting it to rise to about 14 deg C during the day. Wind was generally moderate to strong coming from the south west, shifting to a southerly during the day. Water temperature hovered around 10 deg C for most of the day.

Blankman was first into action with a lively jack on a ledgered smelt. This was soon unhooked and returned.

20 mins later he was in again on the same rod, another jack but slightly bigger came to the bank again on the ledgered smelt.

9:00 came and it was my turn to get into the fish, still a jack but it avoided the dreaded blank and made for fish number 17 for the season. Again it fell to a ledgered smelt, but its attraction was enhanced with a Baitbox Pike bomb .

This fish was again soon unhooked and returned.

9:30am The same rod again went for me and another very small jack had mangled the smelt. Fish number 18 for the season



10.00 Blankman was then in on his third fish again the on smelt. A livery fight was had a nice low double was on the bank posing for a quick shot.



12:30 Another run for Blankman saw his tally rise to 4 to my 2, but with the way things were going, there was all to play for.

14:00 One of my Billy's Backbiters sounded into live. My ledgered mackerel tail was picked up and dropped, it was left in situ and 15 minutes later the alarm went off again and it was picked up by a running fish. This time the fish didn't give up without a fight. Fish number 19 for the season.



We fish on until 16:45, but with a night of ghost's and goolies ahead, neither of us thought is was fair to leave the ladies at home on their own, so we packed up and strolled back to the cars.

The long work was worth it back to the cars as the sun started to set. It had been a day were we could have possibly had more fish, but with 7 between us it was not a bad day. So we said our good byes and arranged to meet up during the week after Mondays trip with John Boy.

TL....