River Thames, everywhere, Sunday 24th October 2010.

Well it seemed like everywhere, fishing from a boat gives you so much freedom that it’s easy to spend a whole day just trundling up and down a river looking for likely spots. That’s how I spent the 24th, I’d snapped up an invitation from Steve to provide Portabote pointy end ballast before he could finish saying ‘Pangbourne’.

We were going to be trolling lures. I’ve never used a lure, I have one in my tackle box but it’s not been in the water. Thankfully most of the skill is in piloting the boat through spots where predators are likely to be and of course being in boat means you can do a lot of piloting. Then there’s the lure choice but that was up to Steve too so all I had to do was sit back and make sure the rod was firmly gripped…..easy peasy fishing this, especially on a lovely sunny day with the Autumn colours out in all their glory.

But first we tried trotting the weirpool, unsuccessfully as it turned out. Had we caught suitable livebait material we may have stayed in the pool but in half an hour we hadn’t had a sniff so we upped anchor and headed off downstream trolling as we went. By its very nature I think this method can involve lengthy periods of inactivity interspersed (if you’re lucky) with several fish in a short space of time. You’re constantly on the move so regular success would mean that the fish are evenly spread throughout the river, and they’re not. Much more likely that you’ll troll through a group of fish and then back into empty water the other side, if you’ve chosen the correct lure then anything could happen.

I was yet to be convinced although it was quite entertaining feeling the action of the lure through the rod, less so when it stopped working due to hooking weed (I thought it was a fish at first). But then I did get a proper take, it was sharper pull than weed and the subsequent tugs confirmed that I’d actually caught something. It felt pretty good and wasn’t giving up easily, I secretly hoped it wasn’t a pike, anything else and it would have been a very good example but a flash of long white belly confirmed that Mr Esox was about to board. I thought it looked quite a reasonable fish and estimated 5lb but Steve downgraded my estimate to a “3lb jack”. Still, my first ever deliberately caught pike (Steve unhooked and released it though).

100 yards further downstream and the same thing happened. Another pike, slightly longer but still firmly relegated to ‘jack’ status. I was convinced it was bigger than the first but not sufficiently so it seemed, I’ve yet to catch a proper one.

Progress was interrupted briefly by a couple out skulling. No sooner had they passed us in the opposite direction than we heard a loud clatter and turned to see them firmly embedded in a large overhanging tree. There was no cox and they were rowing with their backs to the direction of travel so can’t have noticed when they started to veer towards the bank. They were very embarrassed but looked unhurt as they extracted themselves from their predicament. My initial reaction was one of amusement but thinking back it could’ve been quite a nasty incident, they were going at a fair old pace.

Back to the fishing, turning around and continuing the trolling upstream prompted another bite for me. This one felt different to the pike, less powerful, and it turned out to be a decent sized chub. How decent we’ll never know because it spat the lure before we could land it. Steve got a good look as it swam away and verified chubness.

That was it for me for the day but Steve took a chub of a couple of pounds on a trotted bunch of lobs during a static mini session and a small perch as we trolled back to the launch ramp.

The end of another enjoyable day came too soon.