A Grand Day Out!

[wyeknot]

 

Here's the promised picture of the blueys. There are 2 to a pack (approx. 12 inches/5 to 6ozs) for £4. So using half baits that's £1 a throw.

 

Shop-bought deadbaits are expensive but convenient. Normally though you can still catch enough mackerel in one summer evening at Seabrook for a whole winter's pike fishing. However I like to have alternatives as well because the pike's preference seems to change from day to day.

 

Haven't a clue what the blueys are. Bet you can't catch them at Seabrook though!

Steve,

 

My understanding is that blueys are a recent introduction to the sea bait world from the Far East. You may find this url helpful. - http://www.worldseafishing.com/baits/bluey_baits.shtml

 

Regards,

 

Steve C.

[Steve Burke]

Cheers, Steve.

 

I'm intending to persevere with blueys, together with mackeral and lamphrey. It's much too early to come to any firm conclusions, but so far blueys have outfished mackeral but not lamphrey.

 

P.S. So far Peter's had no success whatsoever on the Carp Lake with sardines or herrings.

Edited January 7, 2008 by Steve Burke

[Tony U]

Vagabond will correct me but aren't Blueys Pacific Saury otherwise known as Knife fish or Mackerel Pike?

I have been putting off trying them for Pike, preferrring to stick with my favourites of Sardine, Smelt or Mackerel, but given Steve's success I am tempted to give them a go next time out.

 

Tony

Edited January 8, 2008 by Tony U

[Neil G]

Great pics and weel written story. Beautiful pike too Steve.

 

With regards to the no coarse baits rule, it wouldn't upset me at all as I have always had more success on sea deads for pike than coarse anyway.

 

If you banned mackerel and sardine then there would be a panic!

 

Agree with that...I'd be in trouble if I couldn't use mackerel, such a great bait.

 

A lot of commercials holding pike round my way have started banning the use of coarse baits as well, possibly following the trend of many trout waters. Personally I've no problem with it, you just have to adapt.

[mark barrett]

Agree with that...I'd be in trouble if I couldn't use mackerel, such a great bait.

 

A lot of commercials holding pike round my way have started banning the use of coarse baits as well, possibly following the trend of many trout waters. Personally I've no problem with it, you just have to adapt.

 

 

in all honesty i think that we should have an issue with coarse deads being banned.

 

there is absolutely no chance of a blast frozen bait transferring disease, even a normally frozen one.

 

Personally i dont believe in bait bans in any form of angling, because usually they are for pretty spurious reasons, as is the case here.

[Kappa]

there is absolutely no chance of a blast frozen bait transferring disease, even a normally frozen one.

 

I'd have to argue with you there! Assuming blast freezing is very sudden freezing I'd imagine it would actually preserve any potential pathogens even better. I have a whole freezer full of bacterial pathogens including E. coli, salmonella, meningitis B, gonorrhoeae, B. subtilis, MRSA and if they all died my boss would be extremely upset and I'd be out of a job!

 

Rich

[Neil G]

in all honesty i think that we should have an issue with coarse deads being banned.

 

there is absolutely no chance of a blast frozen bait transferring disease, even a normally frozen one.

 

Personally i dont believe in bait bans in any form of angling, because usually they are for pretty spurious reasons, as is the case here.

 

TBH I don't know enough about biology etc to comment but I really can't be bothered with the hassle to contest it and get the rules changed.

 

Some rules are silly though like banning braid.....surely allowing it for pike fishing would be a good idea, I'd rather people were fishing lures with decent, strong braid than lobbing around spinners on 10/12lb mono which has probably been left on the same reel for 5 years!

[Andrew Boyd]

great story and thanks for the photo's. Loved the Rail.

 

I fish a bird reserve in Sevenoaks, many time I have asked the twichers in their bright garb crashing about as to what they have seen, more often that not . . not much. The silent angler tends to see far more.

[Steve Burke]

It wasn't meant to, but this topic is fast turning into a blog!

 

Peter and I went again on Saturday and had an early start. I couldn't face getting up really early so elected to kip in the clubhouse. The wind and rain meant my sleep was as disturbed as the weather!

 

Nevertheless I was on the bank in the half-light as the sky cleared to promise a lovely sunny day. The barometer was rising and the WSW wind had fallen light. As I tackled up my third rod in "Skeltons", Peter walked past and couldn't resist fishing next door in "Mid-River", where you may remember I had 9 pike on our first trip.

 

Skeltons is similar to Mid-River in that there's a series of bars running parallel to the bank. This makes a sunken float paternoster the perfect rig to fish here. A long cast to the left there's a small island, before which the bars have some gaps in them and then peter out just short of the island. It was this area I fancied and had intended to fish with a drifter float. Unfortunately the wind wasn't quite strong enough and not quite in the right direction, but I could just reach the area with a ledgered joey mackerel, that I later changed to half a bluey.

 

At ten to nine Peter called to report he'd had a 10¼lber on float-ledgered sardine, the first here on this bait.

 

Fifteen minutes later I had the right hand rod back in preparing to recast when the middle one on a bluey was away. This fish put up a very good scrap, even tailwalking on one occasion, and turned out to weigh 11-02.

 

At half past nine, having finally got all the baits back in the water and poured myself a cuppa I had time to phone Peter. As I did so the right hand alarm gave a single bleep, the drop-off dropped a couple of inches and I threw the phone on my chair. That one was just a 4lber that had taken a fancy to lamphrey, and as you can see had been badly slashed recently.

 

 

An hour later the wind had increased to moderate, but more importantly had veered to a south-westerly as forecast. This is exactly what I'd been waiting for, and so I quickly wound the ledgered rod in, unclipped the snap tackle that was baited up with half a bluey and clipped it onto the already made-up drifter rod.

 

Fifteen minutes later with the float set at 5ft the drifter finally reached the marginal shelf of the island. Just as I was debating whether to draw it back part way the float slowly sank out of sight! As always I struck immediately and the fish was on. At first I thought it was pretty small as it ran quickly towards me, but once I caught up with it and applied some pressure the fish refused to come up. When it eventually briefly did so I could see it was a very fat fish that looked a good twenty pounds. If so Peter would owe me a tenner for the first one!

 

It certainly felt heavy when after a good battle I finally lifted the net. So I shouted out to Peter “Bring your camera – and your wallet!”

 

However in getting it onto the unhooking mat I had some doubts as, despite being almost as fat as a trout reservoir fish, it wasn’t that long. I changed my mind again though as I lifted it up to weigh it, and both Peter and I simultaneously guessed at 21lbs. In fact it was just short at 20-09, and I punched the air whilst letting out a long “Yes!”

 

 

The rest of the day was somewhat of an anticlimax. Despite working the area with the drifter, tightening and slackening the paternostered baits so that they changed depth, as well as recasting them to different areas, I had no further action for hours. Nor did Peter.

 

At about 1.30 the wind slackened, meaning that I couldn’t effectively fish the drifter, and certainly couldn’t reach the spot where I’d had the twenty. So it was back to a ledgered bait again.

 

Finally at 3.20 Peter rang to say he’d just had a 6lber on float-ledgered lamphrey close in. Just after I put the phone down I too had a run on the middle rod, and this one turned out to be a 5lber on bluey.

 

And although we fished on until dark, that was that. I couldn’t care less though, I’d caught my first twenty for several years!

 

Interestingly, almost exactly half of the fish have been doubles, and all four trips have thrown up fish of 17lbs+. What’s more, the vast majority of the pike (but not my fat 20lber) were covered with leeches, suggesting that they hadn’t been feeding. Of course this is traditionally one of the quietest times of the year for pike.

 

So we can’t wait until they do begin to feed up!

Edited January 27, 2008 by Steve Burke

[Jigotai]

Well done Steve, that's a lovely looking fish.