Every time I bash out a new blog post I have accumulated a new development of middle aged responsibility/drama/illness. At the moment it’s the reality of being blessed with additional caring responsibilities so it’s even harder than normal to get away for some fishing. Nevertheless I was able to arrange a day with Stu to go grab some angling time somewhere. Our original choice, a large freshwater lake in East Yorkshire, was a no go as it had been emptied of most of its water by a 3rd party. We racked our brains. Yorkshire is not actually that good for stillwater pike angling believe it or not and neither of us could muster enthusiasm for river piking at this point in time so despite a desire to be not too far from Leeds, we settled on Pitsford. We know there’s a decent head of pike in it and it ticked the ‘slightly epic’ box as it’s a big day out – long drive, early start, big water. But yeah, that 2 hour drive…
We left my house around 5:30 am which is outstanding for 2 old bastards like us that need our sleep and flew down to Pitsford in no time, arriving before 8am. By the time Stu had checked in, I’d been for a pony and trap and we’d both got our rods tackled up it was around 08:40 before we motored away from the pontoon.
The reservoir was low and the water had that familiar green algae in it which I believe is what they call pea algae but I could be wrong.
Anyway, we fished the North side of the road to begin with and just had no optimism so eventually went through the tunnel to the South side and began setting up drifts off the mouth of North Farm bay. The water seemed clearer this side which boosted confidence, especially as we were fly fishing and on the first drift we had some interest as something followed my fly in. Of note, this trip was the first outing for 2 Airflo Bluetooth Nano pike rods I’d acquired – one a purchase from a friend the other a present from my girlfriend…about 3 years ago!
On the second drift my fly stopped dead. I’m rusty on pike takes, it’s been a while, I’m far too used to the ‘jagjag jag’ off a feisty wild brown trout whereas this was a solid slam. It was a phenomenal feeling when the line started kiting and I realised it was definitely a pike! And oh my was it a fantastic fight – my 10/11 weight rod was hooped over on numerous occasions with me unable to really control it until I really put some pasty into it – good job I had 15lb leader. In the net my fish turned out to be only around 6 or so pounds, I was astonished at the scrap it gave.
Interestingly, I have just dug out the picture of my last pike from Pitsford, 11 years ago! Same hat, bigger fish, greyer hair!
A few pics and the fish was returned and amazingly, something else blatted my fly but this time didn’t stay on. Ay aye, this could be my red letter day. Reader, it was not. However, pretty much every drift on this bit of the reservoir was producing something be it a take or a follow (sometimes from trout) until eventually Stu’s fly got slammed. When it surfaced we realised it was a bigger fish and I had it pinned as a double pretty much straight away. It fought hard initially but ran out of steam and was on the boat pretty quick. “It’s a pug” I informed Stu. This fish had had a hard life, I dread to think what caused this, unless it’s a natural birth defect? Stu’s scales read 9lb which we knew was total bollocks so we checked it on some other scales which gave it 13 pound once weight of net was deducted which tallied nicely with my guess of 13 to 14 pound 🙂
We kept on getting the odd follow or offer but nothing connected so we decided to change location and motored over to the bay near the sailing club but that proved pretty fruitless so we finished off fishing off the causeway dam. Here there were some very tiny pike which made us pikerasts or something so we called it a day and motored back to the pontoon.
All in all a long and fairly expensive day but a couple of pike to the boat and plenty of offers and follows is, to me, a successful day when you are chasing pike! If I’d been trout fishing all day on Pitsford I would have been bored out om my gourd but chasing pike gives me the fizz. To round the day off we got a spectacular sunset on the way home.
