A Lack of Gainful Employment...03/07/2012

A Lack of Gainful Employment...03/07/2012 I nearly went paddling on Monday night. Had the drizzle not begun just before I left the house I'd have maybe had a pleasant time of it but in the end I just drank coffee, mooched around and chilled out of the house for a few hours. No matter, Si was up for a paddle in the morning. I picked him up around nine and with his Scupper added to my roof-fleet we set off for Beccles. It was spitting a bit and overcast so I was interested to see if the fish might be feeding a bit better today. We parked up by the slip at the quay and headed upstream for the Locks with various lures and some beer money. I got all the way through the town stretch without being disturbed by the pike and as we slowly made our way upstream the weather improved slightly. The wind, forecast to be strong, never really got up all that much and the missed possibility of a smut session started to rankle...Magic Seaweed fail again! We passed Barsham and I'd still not had a fish...and then, finally, the baitcaster rod swung backwards and started to buck. I picked the rod up and felt a good fish on the end, powering away and down and pulling the nose around. Then it was up on the surface and thrashing around powerfully; yeah, a decent pike. With Si grabbing my spare rod and pulling it out of the way I brought it in and waited it to turn the right way for me to gill it on the other side from the lure's hooks. It had taken a 14cm orange and yellow Jointed Shad Rap and was hooked firmly and neatly on the jaw. This made unhooking nice and easy and, supporting it upright for a minute in the water it finally gave a couple of firm flicks of the tail and dived back down for the bottom. Nice! 6-8lb or so with a nasty gash on its flank. I don't often see dead fish on this stretch but in total we spotted three pike, one around 6lb and two smaller and a bream of a couple of pounds. Sad to see and no idea as to what had caused it. Shortly before midday we pulled up at the Locks and decided it was beer and chips time. Two pints of Gone Fishing were served and with a delay on the chips while the oil heated up we tucked into an overpriced bag of crisps each as we sat outside in the fresh air. Fresh when I wasn't smoking that is. Nice and leisurely. Half an hour passed before some more paddlers arrived, including Paula and her mum and with them on an adjacent table Si and I continued to while away the time as we sank a second pint before deciding to head back to the launch point. We seemed to inspire the others to leave too and, busy with changing lures they arrived at the bank before we set off so I went over and helped with getting launched, one of whom was paddling the first kayak I ever took (the blue one on the left) , briefly, onto the sea back in the early nineties. We came back a bit quick for effective trolling and once the others had caught up we chatted a bit before they overtook us. Nothing was feeding though and from time to time we caught them up before leaving them once back at the quay. So that was it then, one pike for my trouble but a couple of pints and a lazy day...maybe I’ll get the float rod out next week and have a session for the numerous silvers I spotted swimming around.