There was only one to go for today. Blown off the sea all week and with today looking unlikely as well I went to bed for an hour instead. Waking up I remembered that I was still short of the dead-cert pike point for the competition. I figured that I may as well fix that quickly with nothing better to do.
Half an hour later I pulled up at Beccles Lido and unloaded. The river looked reasonably clear, very little in the way of floating weed this week, and I figured it wouldn’t take long; down to the bridge and back, a mile and a half at most on the town stretch. Two rods, the usual Xtraflexx and LP Magnet setups, with a 13cm Jointed Minnow in Firetiger for the centre of the river and the current banker Eco Narrow to work sub-surface towards the margins.
Good, the flow was against me; so a nice slow troll with loads of action in the lure. I kept to the west bank, avoiding the weedbeds I know of and headed towards the otter holt where I’d seen a decent fish caught by Nick a couple of weeks back, one I think I’ve had myself, and had dropped one myself a couple of hundred yards shy last week. Nice and easy…easy does it! The rod started to buck and I reached around to take it out of the flush mount.
Here it came, Perch? Pike? Not a great deal of fight out of it…keep coming and give me a good view…yes! Pike. Not exactly a monster, I suspect it may have been attempting to mate with the lure…but a species is a species and a point is a point.
Well that took all of ten minutes. I didn’t feel exactly enthused to continue, I should have got some maggots, brought a float rod and had a dabble for ruffe and bream but I hadn’t so I couldn’t. In that case I may as well enjoy the paddle and hope for a PB, but somehow I didn’t think I’d lure-up a 24 pounder today! So I’d give it to the bypass and back then go home and find something else to do.
All the way down, all the way up and nothing else on either rod bar weed. Then, spotting a tiny, straight, blue something poking out of the water I figured I’d found a lure that was stuck in weed…over I went and pulled it out. Yep, a Rapala that had seen better days – one partly rusted hook still remained and it looked like it’d been lost when the weed was still growing up to the surface. I could tell by the trace that it wasn’t one that I’d ever lost though and I bet it won’t produce as well as my Eco Narrow so I’m sticking with that.
I pulled up, got out, drove off and had a walk around a bit of woodland I used to spend some time in on free periods during my A-Levels for the first time in twenty years and for no other reason than the fact it was there. The memories made me smile and I decided to hit the sea tomorrow, no matter what. There are thornback, dab, pouting and common smoothound to add…
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