Yorkshire Fly Fishing

Not a lot to write about here but it’s still going in the blog. Back in November myself and Stu drove down to Wales for a pike fishing mission on a water I’ve fished once before (catching my pb pike) and Stu has fished numerous times and “never blanked”. I rarely get out for any pike fishing these days so it was good to get out on a proper overnighter mission with beers involved. However, the pub we stayed at was a touch odd and felt even odder when Stu accidentally ventured into a secret broom cupboard room next to ours which contained a man sitting in the dark, presumably watching us through the eye holes cut out of the Laughing Cavalier painting on the adjoining wall in our room.

We were up and away at a pretty good hour in the morning and out on the lake early, After motoring out to a likely spot for our first drift I began fishing with my trusty Guideline LPXe RS Series 9 foot #9 weight pike rod which I’ve had for nearly 20 years.

First cast didn’t feel right and I figured the line had done that weird thing where it kinda goes through itself. I brought all my line in, brushed off a twig caught on the end and went to fettle the mess. Oh, hold on, my tip section has pinged out..oh well it will be trapped by the tip ring and the pike fly on the end. Oh wait no the fucking thing has snapped clean off a few inches from the end, and that was the ‘twig’. Still can’t quite fathom what happened but the end result was my only pike fly rod was goosed. In days gone by this would have ruined my day but I couldn’t be bothered getting annoyed. Stu had a spare fly rod and I also had my spinning rod so no interruption to proceedings.

We proceeded to fish all the places that had been fishing well that week, we then fished all Stu’s hotspots, my hotspot from last time, we tried flies, spoons, plugs, jerkbaits, everything but had zero action all day. To add insult, towards the very end of our session we fished the top end of the reservoir, moved about 50 yards then someone drifted where we’d been fishing and promptly yanked out a pike. “Haha nice one” we called over through gritted teeth. What an absolute ball breaker pike fishing can be. Also, my pike fly rod is so old Guideline don’t have replacement tip sections so it’s written off my lovely rod. Thankfully Santa has brought me an Airflo Bluetooth Nano 10/11 weight fly rod to replace it so I need to get back out and Christen it pronto. Hopefully 2023 will bring better Esox related luck.