Catch Fish with
Mike Ladle

Information Page

09 January 2004.

Mike's Pike.

Once again the weather has been mixed. Whenever I felt like going fishing it seemd to rain heavily the day before. Now my local river reaches peak flood conditions in about 24 hours so piking is usually out of the question for a couple of days. Time after time the depressions, with their accompanying rain, seemed to swing across at just the wrong intervals.

Anyway, last weekend there was a brief window in the bad weather so when Nigel rang and offered to help me with a bit of bank clearance I was dead keen to get out. Of course in addition to the axe and the loppers we both took rods and it was not long (as soon as we had trimmed a few thornbushes) before we were into some decent dace on float fished maggots. .

We trudged upstream with the pike gear and I was interested to try out my new float consisting of a post-Christmas, synthetic cork (slit with a razor blade) from a wine bottle. My cork seemed to grip the line very well but Nigel said that he had tried cutting some and the slits opened out. Presumably there must be different types of 'cork' in use? Further investigation is needed. Anyway, I dropped my bait in by the bank and the float shot away before Nigel had managed to bait up. I must have plonked it right on the pike's nose. After a fair old struggle I landed a lovely sixteen pounder. We did a bit more fishing and some more bank trimming but the only other fishy action was a pike of ten or twelve pounds that managed to evade both our hooks in succession.

If you have any comments or questions about fish, methods, tactics or 'what have you.'get in touch with me by sending an E-MAIL to - docladle@hotmail.com

INFORMATION SPOT

COARSE FISHING

January 09 2004

Nigel's first dace.

A closer look.

Mike's pike.