A Pike Breaks The Stillness

Another 5.30 am and another lake and this time the mist was up early softening the lines of fence posts and hedgerow trees. I drove with the sun pushing long tinted rays through it all on the road above the lake which had disappeared under a weight of haze. I felt that overriding sense of anticipation I sometimes enjoy before arriving at the waterside as if the moment of that first cast is akin to the feeling of hooking a monster.

The view from the water’s edge was limited a little by the softness and bolts of sunlight, only the crested grebes cutting ripples in the distance gave any movement to the glass that lay before me. I was a little uneasy about throwing a lure into a lake that looked like it was expecting a sword. Out of respect I clipped on one of my balsa weight shifting minnows to give me some distance without beating at the surface.

I could have stood there all morning watching the light change and mist creep up over the fields but a flash struck at the lure and I was into a pike. It ran a little and then took to the air tail walking its way through the shallows until it calmed a little and I slipped the hook out while it was still in the water.

I worked my way along the bank as the display out on the lake gave way to the force of the day and a bright sun. The magic had gone. I missed another couple of tugs and watched the bow wave of a powerful fish chase down my lure and lunge only to miss it and roll at the surface.   When I left the day had hardly begun………..

A Mouth Full Of Crankbait

Image Above: A Pike Breakfasting On My Homemade Crankbait

I arrived at the lake a little after 5:30am and found the carp crew who had been camped out for a couple of days were in the process of landing a lump of a fish. It turned out to be a rather large tench but not a carp and the crew were not happy. I stopped to inquire where their web of lines stretched to so as to avoid setting off another bite alarm and creating some more disappointment for them.

Two days earlier I had been out for an evening’s float fishing session when the crew had turned up carrying all their equipment in a supermarket trolley. Knowing I would be required home they set up around my swim with banks of rods laid out like cannons on the deck of a destroyer. With guns to the left of me and guns to the right, I hung on for an hour and then left them to it.

This morning I had two small patches of water to myself to hunt for pike and fling some new lures and prototypes about. I clipped on a fat head wiggler knowing that this really wasn’t the best location for hurling big bits of wood about. The plug flew but landed with the poise and grace of a scud missile scaring the moorhens and their chicks. I let it swim for a bit and then put it away saving it for a trip to a bigger water and then clipped on a Balsa Crankbait.

Despite the smaller size and lightness the lure flew to almost three quarters of the distance covered by its bigger cousin but also landed with less of a thud. It wasn't long before something was kicking up swirls in pursuit but after a couple of lunges whatever was out there gave up. I moved to my other free stretch of water just as a pike broke the surface in the shallows. Three casts later it had taken my crankbait and when it surfaced the lure was firmly wedged in its jaws. I switched on the mini video camera and then not thinking stupidly landed it in the net instead of picking it out the water from under its chin, instantly the belly hook snagged up and I had two hooks to untangle.

With some minor surgery the hook came out of the fish ok and I slipped him back while I dealt with the bigger problem of the net. When I finally got back off my knees I realized that my little lure had caught its first fish and had the rash to prove it. Unfortunately the video was unusable but I managed to salvage a still from the junk.

After deciding previously to limit myself to one pike per visit to my local water I set about testing some other little creations.  Despite some design successes the lake is the place to come and find flaws and test ideas some of which should of never have left the drawing board but it is often only when I have added water that my failings become apparent. One particular prototype swam off in a direction that almost made me believe it was autonomous. I still have a lot to learn about lures and filming especially in the great outdoors

Turning An Old School Fishing Lure On The Lathe

Image Above: The Fat Head Wiggler

I went a bit mad with the power tools and finally dusted off the lathe to make my own take on that old school classic ‘the wiggler’. I suppose my next project should be an earlier lure maybe something made from bone with its origins in the Stone Age. What interests me about these types of lures is their birth within that period when mass production was making products affordable or at least within reach of  ordinary working people.  These are lures born out a machine both in terms of design and production; they don’t look like anything I have ever seen swimming in a lake but then not a lot of lures do.

  

  The decal on the side was something from my school days when hip-hop was just emerging and I spent all my free periods at school drawing graffiti in the back pages of my school books while wishing I lived in New York and had a posse. At the time one of my school friends owned the biggest Ghetto Blaster in Liverpool which used about the same amount of battery power as electric outboard and required its own seating on the buses, despite its size it did nothing to help us to become cool. I was truly un-gifted as a break dancer but it didn't stop me putting on displays at family weddings which I am still try to live down. Thankfully I have now reached an age were rap music has become noise and I no longer dance at weddings. 

  Fat Head Wiggler Fishing Lure Template by Paul Adams

  Fat Head Wiggler fishing lure Materials List by Paul Adams