Piking in an old school timewarp

Normally associated with Thursdays, but "what the heck, let's live dangerously", here's a Throwback Tuesday photograph. Firstly, I realise that apologies are due for the orange T-shirt, ridiculous sunglasses and gold ear-ring that looks as if it was purloined from Long John Silver, but this is me displaying an unremarkable looking pike (although I'd have loved to have tangled with the much bigger pike responsible for the massive wound on its flank!) caught from a North London lake almost 20 years ago.

Now, you may very well be wondering why I'm bothering to post a picture from a past era in my lure fishing history, and the answer is twofold: firstly, because I've little to report as it's a fortnight since I last fished, and my next planned trip is still a week away (a family break over half term and a nightmare workload having temporarily curtailed my angling exploits) and secondly, because I've been musing during this period of piscatorial inactivity on how little my lure fishing has changed over the last two decades, as my lure collection demonstrates.

 

 



20 years ago I was, if not "ahead of the curve" certainly pretty much at the sharp end of where the majority of UK pike anglers were when it came to lure choice. I religiously read (and prodigiously ordered from) the then-magnificent Harris Angling catalogue and had a great collection of hard baits by Heddon, Storm, Halco, Lucky Strike, Shakespear, Luhr-Jensen, Rapala et al, but since then most anglers have moved on, and the market is now dominated by soft-plastics but I tend still to opt for the "old standards" as my first choices. The reason may partly be that for the most part of the last 18 years I've been pursuing species other than pike and perch (a decade spent almost exclusively chasing carp in Devon, followed by a brief flirtation with crucians and quite a bit of general float fishing for "whatever comes along"), before my angling started to move back to being predominantly predator and lure driven.

 

 

It's not that I don't own any shads, jigs or grubs (I do), nor that I never use them, but the issue is one of confidence. In theory I know that they'd many times be the most effective choice, but as I've caught far more fish on hardbaits, spinners and spoons I use the latter far more than the soft baits. I guess it's going to rely on self-discipline if I'm to change, and perhaps I'll need to have a few trips when I only take soft baits with me to "force the issue". Among my plans for next year is to get into drop-shotting for perch, so perhaps that will prove to be the catalyst to my gaining confidence with rubbers and soft plastics.
 I guess I'm the victim of my own (incredibly limited and unspectacular) "success." While I never "empty the canal" I also rarely blank, and the fact that I'm regularly catching perhaps introduces an element of risk aversion.

Maybe next week I'll start off on a rubber shad and see what happens ............ but then again, perhaps not. So many options, so little time....

"A quiet week on the canal ..."

 

The American author Garrison Keillor begins all of his Lake Woebegone stories with the same sentence: "It's been a quiet week in Lake Woebegone." I could say similar of my week on the canal. This week saw me fish two short sessions, both of which brought me blanks. The first was a snatched after-school session with both of my kids, the second was a before work session with Pete, in which he chastened me by catching perch and pike when all I could muster was one solitary follow from a semi-interested perch. I did, however, in the session with my kids take my first ever "selfie" (is it still a "selfie" if there are two other people in the shot?), so was able to offset the disappointment at blanking by taking another hesitant step into the 21st Century!

 

 

 

The after-school blank wasn't too perturbing. We'd only had an hour, the canal was extremely coloured and we'd had some fun fishing rather casually. Friday was a different affair altogether, and has left my post-session analytic brain reeling in overdrive and full of "why?" and "what if?" and "what next?" questions.

Pete and I arrived at first light at a new stretch of canal that had just about everything you'd want thrown into a small, compressed space: a lock, a confluence with a stream, a bridge and then a stretch where the canal merged with a section of river which itself contained a weir; happy days!

 

 It wasn't long before Pete had the first fish, a small perch that grabbed his spinner, the first of half a dozen he caught. However, the fish all came individually rather than the rapid bunches of fish that we're used to, suggesting that we weren't faced with a plentiful and ravenous shoal, but were picking off odd solo travellers or that they weren't that bothered about feeding. I started off with pike as my target, so concentrated on larger lures, before changing to spinners, but despite throwing a wide variety of lures at the canal, I only managed to induce one abortive follow from a modestly sized perch.

With about 10 minutes left  before the agreed time for packing up we agreed to spend the last few casts on the river, which was wide (in relative terms), slow flowing and full of dense beds of "cabbages". "It looks good for pike" I said, prophetically. I clipped on a Big S, hoping that its seductive wiggle in the shallow water over the weedbeds would evoke a response, but it was Pete's Ondex that was grabbed by an aggressive pike. After a brief fight and a lot of water being thrown into the air, the fish, which was probably pushing close to double figures, was netted, unhooked, admired and photographed.
"Well done, Pete" I said, and although the words were uttered through gritted teeth, I did mean it.

 



Piking Pilgrims Progress

Although angling can be a solitary pastime, and at particularly melancholy or reflective points I enjoy a solo foray, most of the time I like a social aspect; to have a bunch of friends with whom I share my angling adventures. These days my two most frequent angling companions are my son and Pete,my regular fishing partner,  with a supporting cast of friends and anglers that includes Roger, Craig, Mark and a few others, along with an annual "cameo" bankside appearance from my daughter.

 

 

 At the moment, as "indian summer" gives way to Autumn,  the main preoccupation for Pete and I are the pike and perch of the Grand Union Canal, and the last four weeks have seen me fish twice -once with Pete and once with my son (above) along with aforementioned annual cameo from my daughter- while in the same timespan the prolific Pete has managed four trips. In addition to the one with me he's been three times with his son, on one occasion also accompanied by Mark, another of our church's anglers. He's been getting among the pike, too, as well as the ubiquitous perch.

 

 

 



However, it may well be that of greater significance than the actual fishing sessions (three pike for Pete,  a first ever pike for his son and the usual plethora of landed perch, perch that "followed without taking" and pike that threw the hooks for the rest of us) will prove to be the brief recce's he's been indulging in of new stretches of the canal that "look" to be ideal spots for predators to be hanging out in search of a fish supper.

 

 

He's been discovering weirs, locks, bridges and a host of other features, stretches and swims that scream "pike" or "perch". The photo's that he's been sending me speak for themselves, in consequence of which an early morning session is planned for Friday- a first light upon the water start, and a couple of snatched hours lure fishing before work. We're going to be pioneering on one of Pete's new stretches, with all the expectation that comes with a first trip to a new section of the canal. We may hit pike and perch "gold", or we might just as easily blank, and it's that element of the unknown and unknowable that gives fishing its permanent frisson of anticipation.  Only three sleeps to go .....