On The Pole with Tom Kent

Sunday 3rd July, I decided to go to Frisby and have another go on Sanctuary. Fished this lake a few times now and am getting to know it a bit. Decided on the pole to get some practice in. After many years of fishing whips, I've started teaching myself pole fishing and this would be about the 6th or 7th outing, using a 9.5m pole I bought from John Caunt.   

  Decided that about 6-7m would be sufficient though after I had a plumb around and started off by feeding some ground bait, maggots, casters, hemp and sweet corn. I was hoping to find some tench and bream but really just happy to be out and learning.  

Started catching from the off on maggots, roach mainly with the odd perch and a couple of small stockie carp. A switch to caster slowed the bites down a bit, but, started catching a few better roach. After a while, I decided to try small pieces of worm, hoping I might get a bream or a Tench. The switch paid off and had a Tench of 1lb 10oz straight away. .  

This was shortly followed by a bream of 3lb 2oz. That was me happy for the day

  I continued catching steadily for the morning, but around lunchtime, everything went quiet. Wasn't sure if it was the change in weather (it started raining a bit,) the usual lull that so many waters seem to suffer in the middle of the day or an unseen, menacing presence in my swim.... 

  My suspicion was confirmed a while later when my float absolutely buried and my strike caused a huge eruption of bubbles from the lake bed and fish to scarper in all directions. At first, I thought I'd hooked another good bream, as the fish felt heavy, but was slow and ponderous. Then it woke up. As the fish began running me all over the place, stretching my elastic all the way out, I was concerned about losing it. At this point, I thought it must be a carp, but then I saw it just below the surface. A pike. Concern turned to panic as I envisaged it biting me off or the hook pulling, but careful playing and my tiny size 18 hook being in the scissors of its jaw helped me win the battle. Netting it was a bit of a mess, me only using a smallish pan net, that had earlier been filled by a 3lb bream. It went in though, just, and then it went ballistic, nearly breaking the net, popping the hook out and soaking me whilst it was at it.

An unexpected result for my day, this pike being at least 7lbs or so, making it the biggest fish I've caught on the pole.