Another 9am, Another Monday morning

I was a little late to the lake this morning. The workmen who had begun exploring whether the hole in lake was fixable on my last visit were already on site with a pump churning up the water. I asked how they were getting on and a guy in waders told me that the hole was a little larger than they had first thought and it would probably call for an excavator to continue. As to whether they could fix it that may depend on when the money runs out.

I moved a little further down the bank and set up my spinning rod with a new prototype lure I had come to test.  As yet I hadn’t given it a paint job; I was looking to see how it swam and what it was like to cast before investing in finishes. It did what it was supposed to do, but it lacked that certain something so I unhitched it from the trace and clipped on my devil minnow.  Half a dozen casts later and I was into a pike that felt a little larger than the jacks I had caught here previously, maybe it was the ten pounder I had let slip out of the landing net a week or so earlier.

It rumbled to the surface and gave a few kicks before I had it to the bank, a fellow angler had is landing net at the ready to help out and came in without much of a struggle. Unhooking was a bit of an operation even with a pair of long nosed pliers and forceps as the hooks had embroiled its jaw in the net and it took a moment to figure out which was the best way to free it.  A little audience had gathered, dog walkers and workmen so I finally got a picture of me holding a fish. Despite forgetting the old trick of pushing the fish towards the lens to make it look bigger the consensus formed that it was about six pounds (fishermen’s estimate) not a monster but nice to start to a day’s work with. After a bit of a tail pulling in the shallows it recovered and sped off into the murk.

A little stunned by my early success I ambled around the rest of lake for an hour before heading home with big plans to turn my minnow prototype into a sellable lure. Two trips and two successes have to count for something.

Over the weekend my sister came up for a visit and agreed to feature in one of my adverts as long I made her unrecognisable.

A Leak In The Lake

Image Above: Some new hybrid spoon lure colours

I left the lake shortly after the workmen arrived. They had come to fix a hole; a hole that had opened up twenty years earlier and dropped the water level by four feet. Only last week I spoke to a fellow angler about the leak in the lake and he said, “They (the council) would never get round to fixing it, especially in a recession.”  

It hadn’t been a great a morning. Only yesterday on a day tip to Wales I had been stood on an almost perfect beach staring out over the breakers and thinking about bass. This morning it was back to the puddle at least I had hooked a pike although I lost it. By way of compensation I snagged a lure I had lost a few weeks back. Pedro (see prev. posts) a small spoon lure was returned to me all be it missing and eye and the varnish I had hastily applied. 

 I trudged home wondering whether the lake would miraculously refill before my next visit and if the island would return to being a true island instead a patch of raised ground surrounded by mud.  

At home it was back to coating lures and more photography for my website which seems to have been under construction for far too long.

Image Below: Nefyn Beach, North Wales

An Early Start

An Early Morning Pike

6.30AM at the lake

The sun was up but it had failed to reach the water’s edge. The surface of the lake was perfectly still even the ducks seemed to have hushed themselves into corners. Despite the hour I was not alone, a carp angler had two rods out and further down on the opposite bank another fisherman was waiting on a float.

I began casting my minnow enjoying the light fwap as it touched down. After months of neglect I had finally cleaned and greased my fishing reel which was behaving almost as well as it had done straight out the box.  With no wind to fight, a free running reel and a new lure I was looking for fish to complete the picture.

The lure behaved beautifully, the extra weight from the pine rather than balsa construction gave it a little more direction and purpose on the cast. Having opted for a less than stable cylinder shape in the design the lure had a much more pronounced wobble. I covered the short section of bank available to me quite quickly with little if any response apart from snagging a range of old carp rigs.

As the sun began to dapple the lakes margins I headed over to the island to cast around the overhanging branches and shrubs. With the glare in my eyes and hemmed by the greenery I lost it for a bit and began firing off casts in random directions. When I finally settled down I managed to send the lure out parallel to the shore and in a few short turns of the handle I was into a small pike. It sailed in to the shallows breaking the surface monetarily before ploughing on  towards my feet.

My unhooking mat was already open thanks to its amazing ability to fall from my rucksack at any opportunity. With a little minor encouragement the pike unhooked itself and I quickly took some photographs before returning it to the water.

So this was to be the start of another day's work, I spent the rest of the day airbrushing lures and putting together the opening page of my new website.

Image Below: New photo for opening page of website