Top water fun.

With the summer just about here and the plethora of lure matches drying up I can feel the weed festooned lakes calling me. Soon I will able to think of nothing but tench and crucian carp but before it gets too hot I really want to do some surface fishing for pike. Since diving head first into the world of lure fishing I have become somewhat obsessed by that exhilarating moment of the hit. Unlike the slow motion moments of excitement when a float comes to life, the shear savageness and raw anger of a hard hit as a predator falls for your rouse is truly exciting. Take that moment when an unseen fish hits your lure and add to it a fleeting moment of chase with the visual stimulation of a wake appearing behind your bait as something follows to attack and you realise this is even more exciting that the hit. Surface lure fishing is, if you will, hit plus or hit turbo, whatever you chose to call thrill served with a side of excitement.

I am lucky enough to be able to fish a lake festooned as much with Jack pike as it is with lilies. The water is shallow and clear. The pike love to linger amongst those pads locked and coiled to attack and prey that drops it guard. And for my part I have a box full of tricks I hope to use to trigger attack from pike that think my fakery is a panicked duckling seeking its mother, a struggling frog desperate to climb atop a pad, wet rat heading for its burrow, or an injured fish struggling on the surface.

Theory and practice as always are two very different things. After arriving early amongst the pines flanking the country estate I worked several fruitless areas where I was sure pike would be hanging out and all I had to show for it was a few puffs of silt where some bog eyed jack had gone off half cocked, missing the lure by metres rather than feet. Things weren't looking good until I followed the wind to a long line of pads emanating from an island, where all hell broke loose. My first cast sailed right over and the rubber frog attached splashed into the ripple beyond. A few turns of the handle and two Jacks burst from their layers charging in for attack. The first one missed but the second smashed so hard into my lure that it literally tore through the rubber skin. A head shake and it was gone... but this was just the start. It took several casts and multiple hits before the hook bit home in one of the teeth filled mouths. From what I could tell they actually seemed to be targeting the lures legs, shaking the lure from side to side and my strikes were pulling the lure from their grasp. All it took was a slower strike and they were soon getting hooked.

Weirdly of all this massive old lake they could be in, most of the resident pike seemed to be focused on this one quiet corner. Of all the possible explanations for this I think the most likely is that combination of prey following the wind and the thick cover had combined to switch the resident pike into feeding mode. The area probably held no more predators that any other tennis court size section of water, it's just that these were in feeding mode and others probably weren't. Whatever the reason the for their aggression they repeatedly attacked in various different ways from bursting out of the shadows to oddly almost sucking the lure of the surface.

None of the fish on this occasion were particularly large as ninety percent of the pike in this lake are sub six pounds but what they lack in size they make up for in eagerness. The savage gear 3D reaction frog turned out to be the lure dujour and even full of holes and sinking at the end it still got the interest of these sharp eyed little predators.

I had so much fun flinging these surface lures around that I can't wait to try this out on a host of other waters including the rivers once they are open and when the weather conditions are favourable and the pike are ready to strike!

Stuttering spring sessions.

I am not big on making excuses for not catching, but even I have to admit that the lure fishing round these parts is total rubbish at the moment. The pike I am sure have spawned by now, but both the perch and zander seem too have ended up in some kind of limbo due to the temperature first increasing and then dropping again. Literally, I have caught perch that haven't spawned and seen ribbons of eggs clinging to snags. Some zander to are being caught off nests whilst others are still bulging with spawn. I had hoped that after a week away at tropical Burnham-on-Sea I might return to post spawn predators going on the munch but that turned out to be wishful thinking as the low temps and frosty mornings have meant the limbo has persisted even further into April.

The day after returning from the seaside I was on the bank with my old mate Mick, off of Picatorial Quagswagging to check out the zander potential of a semi urban stretch we had both pondered but never fished. It was a great looking bit of canal which I am sure holds its fair share of zander but sadly we were never going to see anywhere near its potential...

For my part in this adventure I caught very little apart from several substantial branches, a few poo bags and a little zander of 45cm, which I assume was a little male as it showed no signs of spawn or having spawned. Mind Mick caught only two other smaller ones which gave both us very limited information on whether this area was worth a return visit.

I had to wait ages for my next session and when my chance came I nearly wasted it after going out for a curry with some mates and not crawling into bed until two in the morning. Lucky for me the family were receptive to me re-jigging our plans for the day and chipping off for a short evening session on a shallow water I know is rife with pike.

Two ideas came to mind re this trip; firstly I wanted to fish some surface/subsurface lures for the pike, secondly I wanted to have my first go fishing the reverse dropshot rig for the huge perch in this water. As this water is painfully shallow I was convinced both the perch and pike should have done with spawning by now and that after a few weeks with little rain the water would be gin clear and those pike couldn't fail to detect the noisy top water lures.

Sadly the wind was freezing and even after seeing the lake was gin clear I concluded to just fish a subsurface 3D Rad lure which attached by the lower split ring position runs a maximum of a foot under the surface

Casting the Rad about in the perfectly clear water turned out to be some of the most exciting fishing I've done for years. The little pike although out-sized by the lure would repeatedly charge after it as if they were about to attack, before turning off at the last minute once there realized exactly how much of a mouthful the lure was. It wasn't too long before I cracked out the drop shot rod to fish some highly buoyant worm style lures a foot and half off the weedy bottom. In doing so I quickly found a shoal of small greedy perch were hell bent on eating lures the same length as themselves and bigger.

Unfortunately the fuss caused by the writhing perch all too quickly got the attention of the hungry jack pike and after stealing a couple of captures I hooked one of the vicious attackers and on my light dropshot outfit in that shallow water, it sent my reel into meltdown. Lucky for me the hook was right in the corner of the cheeky jacks mouth and smashing up the shallows into a muddy soup I netted the hungry little fellow and grabbed myself one last hazy selfie due to my cracked phone screen.

I do hope the canals and all the other stuttering venues come back into form with the approaching warm temperatures, as I have plenty of practising to do for a couple of up and coming matches and I wouldn't mind actually catching a few of those hungry jacks off the top once their blood boils up and they grow even more savage.