Random stuff

I'd shown the picture below on the Pike and Predators forum as an illustration of how summer pike should be fighting fit when returned. I thought I'd post it here so I can find it if I need it again.

Pete Hesketh returns a summer pike - back in nineteen eighty-something!

The rings arrived from the USA enabling me to complete my 'bream rods' a couple of weeks ago. I haven't had a chance to use them, and now I have my barbel head on they aren't required until April. So I shall be taking them along to Piking 2008 as an example of my superb craftsmanship, and to see if anyone wants to buy them. If they don't sell there they'll be advertised on here and at dlst.co.uk. I had a waggle of the 2.5lb Torrix yesterday, so when I get shut of the Ballistas there could be three of those getting built at Lumb Towers...

With trying to get rods finished for collection at Piking 2008, and to send out this week, I have been working hard since my last fishing trip. Even after 10 at night! Plans for this week's fishing have also managed to go awry (I'm sat here waiting for a parcel to turn up when I should be on the riverbank), and with the funeral of a friend to attend on Friday it could be weekend before I can wet a line again. Then again it might be tonight...

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Underwater Ireland

I stumbled across a link to www.underwater-ireland.com today and found some cracking underwater photos of fish. There are also some good videos of fish in the clear waters of Irish loughs and canals which are most easily viewed on YouTube. Here's one.



By the way if you have Lumbland bookmarked, or have a link to it on your site, please change the address to www.lumbland.co.uk. It's taken me ages (and much tearing out of my remaining hair) to work out how to get the new domain name to function with all the pages displaying correctly, but I think it does now!

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All good things...

As the sun sinks slowly in the west I'm amazed that I've managed to keep this blog going as long as I have on a fairly regular basis. In my early twenties I kept a diary where I wrote each trip up in detail when I got home. That lasted a couple of years before dying the death, and it looks like this blog might be going the same way. I have an inherent loathing of routine and 'having' to do things. That's why I stopped pike fishing and writing articles - neither are compulsory activities, and neither is writing this blog.

There may be a few rig thoughts to come, probably some tackle reviews, and possibly a tale or two if anything really interesting happens. But but for now, that's about it.

They call it stormy Monday

Sunday was a day of work - not much work, mind - ready for the all out attack this week. Then the weather intervened. Monday was supposed to be stormy (as in the old blues song title) causing a change of plans. But it wasn't stormy up here. In fact it was a glorious day. So I went to the supermarket...

Tuesday dawned not too windy and amazingly dry. So I made a late start to Laxative armed with some maggots and a plan. Having watched a bloke bagging livebait sized silver fish on the Friday I was sure that my livebait snatching rig would soon have a couple lined up to use as bait. With this plan in mind I had packed a rod set up with a drifter.

Although I arrived after daybreak I was confident, and a lamprey head went out on a leger and a smelt on the sunk float paternoster, then the feeder was flung. On the second cast the feeder produced a fish. The smallest Tommy ruffe I have ever seen. Aren't they slimy? Yack.

I was sheltered from the full force of the wind, but it was creating quite a tow on the lake, pulling the line out of the clip on the leger rod. Around ten o'clock the line pulled out again, and as I tried to put it back in the clip it was snatched from my fingers! I was soon landing another fat pike watched by a pleasure angler who had turned up and urged me to 'Knock it on the head!' He was only jesting and told me the fish was a regular visitor to the bank. The weight he put on it was a little optimistic - but not by much.

Eventually I managed to catch a bait sized roach which promptly replaced the smelt. Not quite so promptly it was taken by a fat little jack. The rain arrived next, encouraging an early finish to the session at noon. The intention being to get the barbel gear sorted for today. As you might guess, that plan changed when I was kept awake last night be the howling of the wind. It's been a stormy Wednesday all right.

Two days left of the river season and my plans are all up in the air. Bah...

That was a week that was

Not much of a week though. Sunday saw an unexpected barbel blank on a river that was warm and coloured. At least I got away for home before the rain set in, the roving approach having proved as unsuccessful as the pick-a-swim-and-sit-it-out approach of last week.

Thursday saw me snatch an hour and a half ostensibly lure fishing for perch on my local canal. The upside was that the canal seems to be recovering from the removal of weed beds and bankside trees a few years ago when it was tidied up by the British Waterways Board. The bushes on the towpath side that provided cover for pike have all gone but there is some marginal growth in evidence. It didn't take long for me to remember how much I have grown to hate lure fishing. After a quarter of an hour of nothing other than removing dead leaves, twigs and weed from my lures I was fed up with the process. Using a small 'coffee grinder' didn't help matters either.

It took about as long before I gave up on the perch and started twitching a small minnow bait, a guaranteed jack catcher. Sure enough a small one hit the lure in mid retrieve and briefly imitated a perch. I'd bought myself a small rubberised pan net for this venture (one I had intended to repeat during the close season) as my previous attempts at hand landing perch have always seen them drop off. I thought that the rubberised mesh would be fairly hook-proof so rather than grab the little scamp I netted it. Mistake! It went berserk in the net and the hooks tangled so badly I had to resort to the knife.

I'm not too sure what caused the gash on the jack's flank, there didn't appear to be matching marks on the other side to suggest a pike attack. But you never know. I fished on and an even smaller pike grabbed the lure but fell off. That was it. I'd had more than enough. Lure fishing's okay - so long as you are getting instant action. If it's slow I prefer to sit behind the rods these days, waiting for an alarm to wake me up!

I was stuck for ideas on what to do on Friday, so I returned to Laxative Lake for a pike session. The weather was windy, but not gale force and the rain held off making it pleasant so long as I stayed behind the brolly. Four runs; one dropped, two jacks, and a pinched bait. I'm pretty sure the first jack had been responsible for the dropped run, but how a bait that was tied to the trace got pinched I haven't a clue.

On Saturday I returned for a morning session in another area of the lake. The wind had swung from the west to the south, and there were showers. Again the brolly made life bearable. A bobbin dropped off twice, neither time being the result of pike activity but wind and undertow.

So that was a week. I hope next week is the week.

Like riding a bike

Three blanks in a row and it's time to do something different. So, having a couple of new rods I was itching to try out (Chimera Avon Specialists if you must know) I dragged out a couple of pike rods that I hadn't used for three years, threw two packs of deadbaits in a carrier bag and headed for a water I hadn't fished for ten or twelve years.

Quite why I headed there I'm not sure. It must have been the thought of trying out the rods and the feeder rigs I intend using for roach at some point soon. I wanted to see how they coped with various size feeders. There was also the chance of a jack if I threw a deadbait out. I'd either fish two deads and a feeder or vice versa, depending how I felt. Whatever was most likely to prevent another fishless session!

I knew where I wanted to fish but there was howling gale blowing straight into the swim. I looked around the sheltered bank but didn't fancy it at all and, with the rain easing off as dawn broke, I set up in my initial choice of swim.

Around ten o'clock my first fish of the year was landed. A small roach to the maggot feeder. I almost put it out as bait, but it had broken my duck. So I released it. There were bound to be more along in a minute.

Shortly after, as I wound in the feeder for a recast something grabbed hold and I briefly did battle with a jack - until it bit me off. I think a tiny perch must have hooked itself without registering a bite because I wound one in later in the day. At least there was one pike in my swim. And half an hour later I think I landed it on a pollan that had dropped short of where I intended to cast it owing to the strength of the wind. When I recast a fresh bait, however, the wind had dropped enough to get the extra distance.

This session was a last minute job and my planning was rather hit and miss. My real interest was the roach fishing trial and I had just popped three spare pike traces in my 'stillwater' tackle box, six deadbaits in the carrier bag and the two pike rods that hadn't been retackled for three years in my quiver! I'd managed to find one drop-back indicator but had to cobble a 'dangler' bobbin to the back rest to make a second. I had also planned to pack up in mid-afternoon as I wasn't taking the session too seriously.

Just before two, while setting the bobbin on the feeder rod. I saw the line peeling off the reel on the pollan rod. With my sounder box under the brolly I had set up to keep the chill north-westerly off me the wind was carrying the sound away from me as the line ran through the Delkim. I grabbed the landing net, closed the bale arm and after a couple of turns of the reel handle everything locked up. This was no four pounder. It actually pulled back and had me backwinding! After a brief tussle it was wallowing ready for the net and in it went. Hmmm! Lying in the net it looked real pig. On the scales it tipped past 16lb. The photo doesn't do it's belly justice.


You might think it would have been foolish to pack up after that. But it would actually have been a wise move, for apart from a tiny perch and a small roach on the feeder that was my lot.

Not to worry. I'd tried the new rods out, well one of them. The head wind didn't really let me see how far the rod would cast a feeder, but it handled a 40g blackcap well enough. The roach rig worked to a degree. A tweak is required. And I hadn't blanked. In fact I'd beaten my previous biggest pike from the water by over five pounds. Seeing as the rain had held off too it had been a good day all round.

Temperature's falling

For once the weathermen got it right, and I snatched a couple of days before the temperature dropped. Saturday afternoon saw me, pursued by frisky bullocks, heading for the bend I'd looked at last week. It was late on by the time I had done some depth finding with my Smartcast fish finder and scouted out the glide downstream of the bend. Certainly an area worth more attention, and it did look as pikey as I thought in my last blog post. In fact as I retrieved my 3oz gripper lead from my first exploratory cast to check the depth and feel the bottom make up a pike of four five pounds grabbed it! I'd thrown a few small curly shads and a wire trace in the rucksack in case I fancied trying for perch, but not wishing to miss an opportunity for what was obviously an easy pike I cut off the barbel rig and tied on the trace. After a dozen or so casts the lure got nailed, and after a surprisingly lively fight in the fast flow the fish was in the net.

Small but in good nick, apart from a chunk of its upper tail lobe being missing, it was my first pike by design for almost twelve months!


After returning the pike I put the barbel rods out. The air and water temps were encouraging, but the wind was strong and with more than a hint of the north in it, and a little rain. Definitely brolly weather. Not long before dark the upstream rod started tapping out it's chub message and a three pounder was landed. For whatever reason my heart wasn't in it and I packed up at seven to head for a more sheltered spot. The rain showers got heavier after I settled in to the new swim, but apart from an odd chubby rattle that was my lot. It was still a mild 11 degrees when I got in the sleeping bag at eleven.

The river was up a good few inches on last week and carrying more colour so I was confident of a fish or two early doors on the Sunday. But again they failed to materialise. The cloud cover had broken up and although the clearing sky brought sunshine it was still fairly cool. I jacked it in at eleven and decided to head for home. A few miles down the road I changed my mind and called in for a look somewhere else. It was sheltered from the wind, which was easing off anyway, and quite pleasant. More importantly the river looked to be quite well coloured. A quick bacon sandwich in the car park, to the envy of a couple of dog walkers, and I was off down the bank.

The swim I picked to start off in was a sure fire chub swim, a lovely crease with a good depth under the rod top, but I had caught a barbel from above the bush on the opposite side of the river a few months back so I knew they liked the area. Things looked good. I tried to fish a bait to the bush but there was a lot of weed coming downstream, some big clumps too, so both baits had to come in close. Pretty soon a chub came a knocking, but didn't hook itself. However I knew it wouldn't be long before it made the fatal error. Which it did in good style, really banging the rod tip. It was small. About a pound! But it saved a blank!

I made one more move before dark, but as the light faded and the air temperature started to fall I lost what little confidence I had left. I'd tried to make the best of the conditions before they took a turn for the worse as far as barbel are concerned, but failed. Accepting defeat I headed home watching the air temperature plummet from 4.5 to almost zero by the time I pulled off the motorway.

I can't see me fishing again for over a week now for various reasons. What I'll be fishing for next will be decided by the weather.

Trouble comes in threes

This impromptu session was spurred on by getting 'that feeling', but it started off badly before I got two hundred yards from home. I'd rounded the corner out of the estate when I heard something scrape along the car's roof. Looking in the rear-view mirror I saw my bait tub smashed open and frozen boilies bouncing down the road. D'oh! That was number one.

The second attempt at the journey went swimmingly, I made good time until I was about five miles from the venue, and a mile or so from the usual turning I take from the dual carriageway, when traffic came to a standstill. I sneaked off at the junction before mine to find that where that road came to the usual exit roundabout traffic was being diverted off the dual carriageway and onto the A road to my chosen venue. The flow was slightly faster here until I came to the traffic lights leading through the village to the river where it was again snarled up. So I headed straight on, planning to double back over the next bridge and get to the stretch I intended fishing from that direction. All went well until I came within a hundred yards or so of the car park when the traffic was again crawling along. The journey had taken me almost an hour longer than it looked like it would when I was 'ten minutes' from the river. That was number two.

There's a definite change in the weather now, and even with the sun out the cool breeze demanded a fleece be worn once I was in my chosen swim. With the river really clear and low I wasn't surprised to have the stretch to myself. I settled down for a sandwich and a cup of tea while re-tackling and making up some small bags of pellets. I also threw a handful of pellets in the swim before wandering off for a look around. The plan was to fish three or four spots once it went dark. But in the meantime I cast two rods out, just in case.

Once night fell I moved to the furthest swim, baited with a few pellets, put a walnut sized bag of pellets on the hook and cast out. After an hour I moved to the swim I'd already baited, and repeated the process. To my surprise the rod wrapped round after twenty minutes, but after a few seconds the hook came free. And this was using mono - just one of those things. That was number three.

I rested the swim and went to throw some bait in the next one. On my return I put a second rod out to the far bank, this one fishing two 6mm plastic pellets. Having hooked one fish I thought I'd give the swim a bit longer, but two hours later nothing had happened apart from a couple of sharp taps. I picked up the far bank rod, turned the reel handle and felt a fish on. It wasn't pulling like a barbel and I suspected a chub, but it felt odd. To say I was surprised to see a skinny pike of about five pounds break surface is an understatement!

The final swim had produced nothing after an hour and a half, so I called it a night. But the session had proved what I already knew, even when the river is low and clear and the majority of anglers are leaving it alone fish can be caught - if the bloody hook stays in!

Bump - back down to earth

Armed with my successful new tactics, brimming with confidence and encouraged by the weather I was back again for three, maybe four nights of tench packed fishing. The wind direction suggested that the tench should still be in the same place as last week, and although I actually hoped to get a different swim the one I fancied was already occupied and I settled into the one I had fished last week. Baits out by five o'clock and it was only a matter of time before the tench would start crawling up the rods.

Despite an almost perfect sunset it was dark by the time a five pound male tried to eat my fake corn at 10.25. As it was bound to be the first of many more tench I didn't bother with a photo, and I didn't bother taking a picture of the small roach/bream hybrid that picked the same bait up at four am, nor the tufty that had expressed a liking for a fake pellet half an hour earlier. Something was bound to happen during the morning, and it did. A pike snaffled the corn on the way in, and nearly made it to the net before it bit through the hooklink. Nothing else showed any interest in my baits until I decided on a move at eight the following morning when a pike of four or five pounds nailed a 10mm boilie as I began to wind it in. This one was hooked in the scissors and was safely landed and returned.

I had two areas in mind for the move, and despite expecting a late arrival to have nabbed my first choice swim it was still free. The angler was fishing twenty or thirty yards from it and had just returned a tench as I approached. My mind made up I set up in swim choice one. After a few hours someone in the area I had marked down as choice number two landed a fish. Not to worry, things were still looking good. The afternoon was pleasant and it felt like a take could be imminent at any time. In area choice two it was, as I saw another fish landed... Dusk arrived, a tench rolled, and the wind swung round into the brolly, bringing a little drizzle with it, so I turned it round. Cosy again, I settled in for the night staring at the motionless isotopes.

Then the wind swung back where it had started from and brought more drizzle of a heavier nature. I moved the brolly back just before the drizzle became rain. Just after midnight, during a dry spell, I got a drop back that was the result of a liner. On recasting there was a tentative take on the corn and I lifted into an obvious bream.

For once it wasn't a skimmer, and although it wasn't a monster it was the biggest I had ever hooked so it got it's photo taken in the dark - in more rain. Shortly after recasting I had another line bite which I ignored. Every so often until dawn I would be woken by yet another liner on the same rod. Somehow I rather suspected that a smallish bream had hung itself - so it proved when I decided to rebait and recast the rods in daylight when the rain had cleared.

A nice ripple on the water as the sun rose and the day warmed up should surely have heralded tench activity. But no. Not a sniff. Deciding to call it quits I was on the road home by half past twelve. A few days of work will ensue to reappraise the situation and plan the next part of the campaign after this minor setback.

Happy Old Year!

As a new year starts it's customary to look back at the one just passed.

I must say that as far as return on investment of effort or time goes I can't complain about my fishing results for 2006 - apart from the gruelling tench campaign! All in all my decision to pick my times and restrict my fishing to venues that are capable of producing the size of fish I want to catch, and to fish them only when conditions are at least half favourable, paid off.

From being a pike-only angler a couple of years ago in 2006 I fished for pike on just three days, catching eight pike. Six of them were jacks and the other two weighed 25lb 8oz (caught in February before starting this blog) and 29lb!


The year had started off well with an eleven pound barbel from the Trent on a sunny January day with clear water conditions.


Apart from missing out on some springtime perch fishing the rest of my plans went okay as the list below shows and the blog archives relate.

Biggest fish of the year:

• Eel - 3-10
• Tench - 8-12
• Barbel - 12-10
• Pike - 29-00
• Roach/Rudd Hybrid - 3-10
• Chub - 5-07
• Carp - 23-04

Maybe not earth shattering, but it will do for me. The best thing of all is that I've enjoyed it all .

Happy New Year!

Less is more

I've taken the decision to approach my piking like I do the fishing I do for other species. To concentrate on fishing waters that are capable of producing big fish, rather than just going fishing for the sake of it. In the past I have been quite happy to go piking anywhere, and to enjoy learning about new waters and trying methods. I'm not saying that I have all the answers, but I have come to understand that it is better to do a few things well than do a lot of things okay.

I've not been piking since February, and last winter I only went a handful of times. Last winter I decided that I would only pike fish on Blithfield. It fished poorly, but I managed to catch a few jacks and two doubles, well two twenties actually... That seemed like a decent result for a season, and I went back to chasing barbel!

This winter I had a day booked on Rutland, but had to cancel, and got lucky in the PAC draw for Menteith, getting a boat for the lure day. Despite a bad forecast that proved fairly accurate, with strong winds and very strong gusts in the rain squalls, it fished well. There were plenty of pike to be caught although a lot were small fish. My mate Nige Grassby and I were catching jacks from the off. Nige had a well built fish of about 13lb, really solid, and another scraper double among his jacks.

The takes, all on the troll, were all the same. A few initial thumps from the fish followed by it going dead giving no indication of their size until it popped into view and then wagged its tail as it neared the boat. You couldn't tell if the fish was three pounds or a double. The take I got around two o'clock was just the same. But it carried on being a dead weight as it cruised past the boat. "I don't think it's all that big" I said, as I turned it very easily. Then it came up in the water and looked like a low twenty as it dived under the boat stripping line off the reel. Next time it came up it grew a bit as it headed towards the net. Obviously a 25 plusser it pulled the scales down to 29lb!

On the next trolling pass Nige got a take that did the usual trick of a few early head sakes then going solid. Where there's one big fish there's usually another. "I don't know what I've got on here" he said, as he pumped it back to the boat. "It could be a big branch." I have an idea we were both really expecting another lump to hove into sight. What actually broke surface was a pike about four pounds!

After unhooking the twenty-nine I found the tail had come out of the Burt and put it carefully to one side (below). No worries, I had some superglue in my spares box.

Only one problem - the glue had gone solid. I shoved the tail in the Burt and tried wrapping some insulation tape around it to hold it in place. It worked for a while, but the tape came unstuck and was affecting the lure's action. Despite trying a couple of other Burts I didn't manage to get another take. Mind you, Nige only got one more jack before it got rough again and we ran for home - quarter of an hour before the scheduled finishing time instead of our usual quarter of an hour after.

I guess that session might see me through the winter as far as pike go. But I do have a couple of other pikey tricks up my sleeve for later in the season...