First of all I must apologise for the lack of posts recently, but it has been a bit of a hectic summer. Also I have had very limited internet access for the last few weeks so physically completing any updates has been next to impossible.
Over the next couple of weeks I will try to catch up with what has been going on with my fishing of late. I wont try to put everything here in one big post as it would be too much.
but to start with i will go back about four or five weeks.....
I had arranged to meet up with a fishing buddy (Marc - "Scruffy Piker in the blog list") for a few days of "mixed fishing" we had about six days of fishing and wanted to hit a few different species. Over a few beers we decided that we would have a day lure fishing for pike to start with, this was quite slow to be fair but we both managed a couple of fish each upto about 14lb, these were not weighed but we are not usually too far off with estimations. All of the fish fell to top water lures and one of the hits from the best fish was one that will stay in the memory for a long time. The fish went completely airborne at close range with the lure clamped between her jaws. she almost seemed to freeze in mid air,pose for a second then crash down into the water with a resounding sploosh, after a strong fight the pike was landed quickly,unhooked and returned....unfortunately we didnt get any pictures of the pike we caught that day.
Now one of the good things about fishing is the social side of it, and when I meet up with Marc this can sometimes have an adverse effect on the fishing as we can sometimes "overdo" the alcohol side of things. This results in very late nights, lots of belly laughs and fuzzy heads the following day with a somewhat lethargic approach to the fishing.....to be fair the fishing isnt very serious, its more of a chilled out break.
However, the next day we had set out with a plan to catch some eels. Marc had suffered a few blanks on his local venues chasing the eels so he was keen to try for them at a new venue when we met up.
After some heavy prebaiting we set up for an evening session, we each fished with two rods and set up in adjacent pegs. The action was almost immediate (showing the value of prebaiting on big waters) with decent sized eels coming one after another... I cant remember how many we had, Marc caught the lions share but we must have had around a dozen eels between us upto about 3.5lb. So although nothing huge showed up it was good to see that the plan with the prebait had paid off, and we had safely ticked off the second of the species we wanted to catch.
Sorry Marc had to pinch one of your pics!
After another heavy session and ridiculously late night, a non too energetic start was on the cards. Marc had never caught a Grayling and with this in mind we set off with the fly rods. The fishing was far from easy as the weather was very hot at the end of July, and the rivers very low and clear. But despite the odds being against us we both managed a few small wild brown trout and a handful of small grayling, again catch results are a little sketchy as there was not enough blood flowing around my alcohol stream. Even though no monsters graced the bank it was nice to go and fish new waters for new species and come away with a degree of success.
That pretty much brought an end to the first part of our trip, the coarse fishing was done ( along with a substantial amount of beer, bacon and burgers ) and the coast beckoned. I would have loved to included some pictures with this post but to be honest, the blog had sort of slipped to the back of my mind and the social / fishing had taken over a bit, so much so i didn't even bother taking a camera along...don't worry though I do have some shots of the fish caught later in the trip.
A lot of anglers these days seem to hanker after being a famous angler, getting sponsorship from one of the angling companies and making a living from the sport, usually people who have been fishing one method for a couple of years and think that they are experts. Well I think after this trip both myself and Marc deserve some sponsorship.....but perhaps not from an angling company :)
Cheers for now, coast fishing report to follow in the next couple of days.
