The re-arrival of freezing temperatures after a week of stormy winds and rain led to my morning customer cancelling my gardening services giving me a bonus couple of hours fishing. I grabbed my spinning rod and a box of traces and lures then headed for the canal. Lure fishing ain't my favourite style - possibly because I've never really done well with it. To be fair, I've only really tried it on short, deep winter sessions like today when I wouldn't blame any fish for not wanting to chase a piece of plastic and metalwork. Perhaps drop-shotting is the way on days like this, but I've not got around to trying this. Anyway, I snapped on a rubbery shad and off I went. Not a touch on the canal, Bulls Lock or Knotts lake and my hands were feeling cold. I swapped lures and at Dobsons on a slow retrieve I thought I might have had a nudge, but not being very experienced, perhaps I just dragged through some weed. I made a few more casts in the same area and this time when I contacted the patch it pulled back, but only for a few seconds. I couldn't connect again, so moved round a few more swims but to no effect. With time running out, I moved back to that swim and three casts in, I had an unmistakable take and a tail-walking pike. OK, at 5lb 10 it wasn't the biggest in the lake, but on a horrible cold day, and with my limited faith in lures waning further, it was an inspiring fish.