Reservoir and Gravel Pit Pike Fishing

While I can always wax lyrical about catching pike on the small waters near my home, I've also been lured by the bigger waters lately. Longer journeys mean bigger risks but also bigger rewards. The very nature of writing means that I have to be nomadic and cover as many stories and experiences as possible. But hit and hope doesn't always pay off. You need a bit of local knowledge, or at least some luck.



Or you need a local nutter, like Polish angler Seb Nowosiad. We were once thick as thieves fishing on the gravel pits. We fished many of these waters and the trips would take up whole weekends. It was survival at times, besides hunting down pike. We camped out, fished and sometimes damned nearly froze together.

My article in the current Fallon's Angler brought it all back. His wild enthusiasm for pike fishing. His daft superstitions. Seb thinks shaving is terrible luck on the day you fish. He also thinks bananas will lead to disaster if you are fishing on any kind of boat.

Our original aim was to go pike fishing on Llangorse Lake, but trying to get any information, let alone a boat for the day was like trying to contact the dead. So instead we headed north to Farmoor Reservoirs, an imposing concrete bowl of immense size where the likes of Paul Garner and Andy Black slay big pike for fun, while the rest of us slowly freeze and stare.



With the sun on your face it was nice just to be out searching the lake though. The structure looked good, I have to say. Classic features here for big perch and trout, and perhaps I should have brought the fly rod. But instead we were hurling big, bold jerk baits and soft lures for the pike. We fished aggressively and covered a lot of water, but the only brief excitement came from the trout. This one hit a lure of 4.5 inches and for all of five seconds fooled us that it was a pike.



With the gales heavy by three o'clock, however, we thought it would be best to find a more sheltered spot for the next day, and so it was off to try pike fishing on the gravel pits. We had to stop on route just to stock up on supplies, get all the usual bloke stuff- beer, bacon, backy. And because Seb had forgotten to bring any kind of sleeping bag.
"Nah mate, I'll be okay," he says. I virtually have to insist on him buying a blanket. He is a tough but silly bastard sometimes.

Our spot on the pit is only reached in cover of darkness, thanks to the traffic. But it's here the adventure starts. Putting up a bivvy under the headtorch. Feeling the first bite of the wind as you bundle your gear in for the night. I'm convinced our best chance of action will be first light, but once we're set up we also put a rod out each.

I have mixed feelings about night fishing for pike. You do have to be attentive and quick off the mark. You have to stay close to your rods. Big baits also help at night, because even a large pike won't swallow them instantly. So it was a whole sardine for me, and a half lamprey for Seb. And for us, a pan of curry and some IPA.

Seb Nowosiad is hilarious. He's the sort of bloke who will open a can of beans with a machete, start singing or even drop a conspiracy theory on you, after he's had a third shot of Jagermesiter.

Even though this was our first long trip in quite a while, the camp was fairly well organised. Just as well, because the wind lashed out all night, while not very much happened. At one point we had to hold down the corners to stop the bivvy being levered up from the ground by the wind. Rough stuff, but we laughed at the madness of it and at perhaps two or three in the morning things finally calmed.

It was a little after first light that my first run arrived. The bait had been positioned on the near shoulder of a bay on the pit. It had been half an hour or so after I'd just recast a fresh bait, chopping up and ground baiting with the old one. The clip fell and the line pinged free. It kicked steady but only really felt big as it came towards the net. I'm always eager to hook them cleanly and net them quickly. But you can rush them too, especially when it looks like the biggest pike you've seen in some time.



Just a shade over seventeen pounds and beautifully proportioned. And then, for pretty much the whole morning, it was Seb's turn. The next two were good doubles- and at one point I had to help with one fish while the other rod also went off! We had brought plenty of bait too, and built up the area by repeatedly throwing in old baits and chopped pieces. It's also good practise to keep recasting baits. With a lot of weed present, it also seemed sensible to pop the baits up.



We had also tried lures at intervals and hopping swims, but in the end it was the same area that kept producing. It's not my preferred fishing style, but by sticking to one area you will certainly intercept moving fish at intervals. You'll pick up different pike at different times of the day too, as they become active and roam the pit.

It was Seb who predicted the best fish would come later, in the afternoon, and he was correct when I got a really brutal run. It almost seemed that the fish had hooked itself, such was that first rush. It seemed to take a tense age to get within range. I then saw the length of it and things became serious. Big fish!



A lovely pike, it was exceptionally long and went 22lbs 2oz. She was well behaved for a quick snap too. I do like to get into with wellies or waders these days, and hold the fish over the water for that final shot or two. You won't harm your catch at all, even if you were to drop it, and the water itself makes a nice light background.

It must have taken me a good couple of days just to properly thaw out and feel normal. I quite often sleep little- or sleep irregularly- on overnight fishing trips. But the fire is burning again, and I'll be back out soon.

Don't forget, if you enjoy my blog do look out for my angling books. Tangles with Pike has further pike fishing articles and adventures, and you can also buy it together with Crooked Lines for just £20 right now.

Postcard from a wandering drunk

One of the equally wonderful and irritating things about fishing is that, rather like football, everyone is allowed their own "expert" say in the matter. Certainly the case on urban bits of canal, where I met Seb Nowosiad for some fly fishing. If the above picture is a bit wobbly, it's probably because the bloke who took it was already on his third tin of super strength lager for the day. We humoured the chap anyway, before Seb left him a roll up cigarette and we went in the total opposite direction to where he was pointing and giving his expert fishing analysis. Nice.

The canal itself was about as clear as an alcoholic's brain too. Not as clear as we'd hoped, which suggested it could be a challenge to catch on the fly. The numbers of rudd and roach at the surface were a pleasant surprise though and given a good walk I was confident we might find some good ones. It might sound blinking obvious, but given murky water and flies it's sensible to use slightly bigger or more visible patterns than usual. A little beaded Tan Shrimp was commandeered by Seb and took several roach plus a skimmer, while I dug out a size 12 Black and Peacock spider, intrigued by local rumours of monster fish.
That's the trouble with rumours though; you almost willingly daydream and ignore the fact that
a) The general public often don't have a clue what they're looking at with fish.
b) Anglers, and especially the casual ones, will spectacularly overestimate what they've witnessed (notice how tactful I was there. I could have simply said "lie" or "deal in more fiction than Penguin Classics").
Anyhow, perhaps one or two rumours had a grain of truth, because you always have a chance of nice rudd on the Taunton to Bridgwater. If you can get to the buggers. It was especially educational for Seb, who is a relative fly novice. For a lure angler, it is all too tempting to retrieve the flies all the time- when for many coarse fish you want to just let them be to settle naturally, with virtually no interference. Too much drag or a clumsy cast and you can blow it. I still make a mess of it sometimes myself, but as well as the odd bush I had several decent fish from the pokiest swims imaginable, including this fish of 1lb 9oz:

After sweating it for months on the new "Canal Fishing" book, you might have thought I'd have had enough of them, but I've been doing more on the local cuts than the rivers so far. With it being light well into the evening I also had a blast on the Grand Western, where a whole troop of schoolboys were roaming. High on enthusiasm but low on knowhow, I felt duty bound to help one or two. After all, you don't catch many roach on 15lb line and three very dead maggots on a size 4 hook. They also kept wanting to borrow my polarising glasses to look at passing tench like this beauty:

A little later I then caught up with Russ Hilton for a spot of tench fishing, which proved ultimately frustrating. Well, for me at least. Russ did ok, while I managed to miss them, including one where my worm had skilfully obscured the hook point to render my strike totally duff. In typical style though, Hilton came good with a couple of nice fish. It's a good job I never make bets with him:

Other than that, I'm just getting over the inevitable demise of England at the world cup. At least as a half Swiss, I can follow a team that are the opposite to In-ger-land: underrated, under hyped and organised with that special efficiency that comes with having a German manager. In truth, I've still enjoyed the footy and even managed to combine it with some fishing, most notably at Stafford Moor, where Chris Lambert and me tried frantically via phone and radio to keep up with England's score. We may as well have stuck to the fishing in hindsight.

We had a plan to tempt a catfish on offal, to give you the backstory, but to no avail. Several carp fancied a chunk of liver, but perhaps a much larger or more disgusting morsel is required for catfish? Back to the drawing board I think. For the record, both Beatties and Joseph's Lake are both outstanding "runs" waters should you fancy a crack at summer carp in Devon- and there's no better or friendlier fishery boss than Andy Seery for putting you onto a big catch.

Surviving Llangorse

A long leap from recent drain hopping days, Llangorse Lake in south Wales is a beast of a water. A test of not only tackle and tactics, but resolve and wet weather gear. When the bites arrive here, you sense that anything might happen; during other long, fruitless hours spent bobbing around in the drizzle it can suck the very marrow out of you. Like the lakes of Ireland, the only consistent feature here seems to be rain.

Still weed choked around the edges, myself and Seb Nowosiad made our way around the drop offs, daydreaming about monsters. After a little jack that took a spoon on perhaps only my fifth cast of the day, things were decidedly slow. In the course of two days we seemingly tried every trick in the book to earn takes: lures and flies, static and trolled baits, herrings and roach. In the green tinged water I even tried some brightly dyed baits to eke out a response.


Even the purist would be well advised to take a fish finder on a Llangorse adventure. The place feels like an endless chasm of nothing-much-in-particular when the action is slow, but gradually we found that the pockets of fish seemed to favour those banks quickly dropping away to three or four metres. Predictably enough, one of Seb's Kopyto shads was eventually mauled by a gold dashed seven pounder.

The sky had been threatening a bit of a punch up for a while, and once we'd set up camp for the night the rain came- and the drizzle never stopped from then until we left. Planning our counter attack we kept our hopes up with cups of brandy spiked "pirate tea" and dodgy jokes. In the morning light you could hardly make out the hills, and by lunch we were sodden, grudgingly accepting that damp feeling like you're sitting on a pile of used tea bags.
Eventually we also found something of a hot spot, with several takes to float fished roach and something big which shook its head and parted company with my lure. Still, when you've been wiping rain off your face all day any fish feels like a gift and we added another four pike, all in the five to six pound bracket.
The other great spectacle was a swarm of several thousand starlings wheeling overhead. This was absolutely fantastic, until they flew right over the boat and discharged an almighty volley of bird shit all over the water. By pure fluke, neither of us was hit. Great sight all the same, to cap off a testing trip. Sadly my top notch camera was kept out of the drizzle in the safety of the car for this spectacle, but I did get a nice shot of one of the lake's rocket powered pike giving Seb the runaround:

Murder on the Levels

A long slog over the last two days have left me with creaking legs and aching shoulders, but plenty of enjoyable fishing. The Somerset Levels have been especially beautiful, in their own muddy kind of way. I might make loose plans with fishing and writing, but so often it's the little detours that entertain most. As is the case on the fish filled, "flat as piss on a plate" Levels, the more you look, the more you find. Supplying sketchy directions and even sketchier banter was Bridgwater's own piking Pole, Seb Nowosiad (who is also popular with cows).

I've often teased him in the past about his dogmatic loyalty to fishing his special jigs to the exclusion of other lures, but on this occasion I also learned the danger of letting him dip into my own box. Armed with a Kuusamo spoon, the bugger proceeded to hook and land three pike in the first forty minutes of the day! Not bad going.

We began by drain hopping then, but things only got really exciting as we approached a little, unnamed channel however. It was certainly pretty; one of those many, cute and weedy little culverts, just like somebody dug a boggy channel, chucked a load of fish in it and then time forgot it even existed. What started as a cheeky cast quickly became an adventure in it's own right. The first encouraging signs were clouds of fry, amongst sporadic weed growth and no more than three feet of water. I decided to get revenge and poach one of Seb's lures and on the very first cast, a little jack pike walloped it from under the far bank.

The next hour or so was utter havoc- pike bulging everywhere in the shallow water, slashing at the lures, missing the lures, sucking in the lures, cartwheeling clear of the water. The biggest of the lot from this Lilliput sized drain was probably not much more than four pounds, but I can't remember the last day I had so much fun.

There's just something special about shallow, clear water that makes everything a little more thrilling, more direct. The fish can't plunge deep when hooked, and so simply fly off along the bank, shaking and jumping like maniacs. You also notice the difference when fish are seldom bothered by anglers- unlike the "one hit wonders" of pressured waters, these critters will attack repeatedly. In the course of just one cast and retrieve I watched one jack grab at Seb's lure just after it landed, then nip it again, before following another few metres for an epic final grab, destroying the thing in a blur of gills and teeth!
We finished the day exhausted from about six miles of mud, hundreds of casts and a stack of trigger happy pike. The stand out lure of the day by a Somerset mile was a Kuusamo Fat Professor spoon, which has a beautifully lazy wobble, finishing the day rather more toothmarked than at the start of play.

If only other types of fishing were as guaranteed to quicken the pulse- but alas, it was not to be with my other trip, in search of a late season salmon, on the Lynher. My brother Ben is well and truly addicted, but I can't make my mind up yet: is life too short to fish for salmon, or too short not to fish for salmon? A bit of rain should have helped us, but only one fish was spotted, a grilse of around 5lbs which was unimpressed when we turned up, both flies and spinners drawing a big fat blank.
In spite of their idiosyncrasies, pike really are comfortingly predictable by comparison and I'm looking forward to the winter, with night fishing a current area of interest- if only to squeeze the odd session in around other commitments. Organisation is a must in the dark though, and bite indication can be tricky- hence I've been testing some of Greys LED Nite Floats- I'm no tackle tart, but these are great fun to watch.
I've been enjoying playing with the camera for dusk photos as much as the actual fishing of late- and a "Pike Fishing by Lamp Light" style Angling Times feature is on the way soon.

Piking by Convention

A great place for the pike angler, a bad place to bring a full wallet- such is the annual PAC Convention. This was my first ever trip to the event, a real Alladin's cave of lures, books, artwork, flies, but most of all a meeting place for that singular breed, the pike angler. When not on sales duty I had a grand time looking around and meeting so many great people. Indeed, beyond new things to cram into tackle boxes and bookshelves, it seems an event all about the fun and friendship the sport brings. As well as the wares of established companies like ET Tackle and Fox, it's always great to meet those smaller but highly individual companies that make fishing what it is. Such is the case with Alex Prouse at Zoota Lures, who makes hand poured soft jerkbaits with alluring titles such as Gangsters and Wobbly Bobs. I can't wait to try out a couple of his Wagtails (like the jack version below) in the coming weeks.

Definitely a place to grab those hard to find items then, as well as those hard to grab anglers and the event was like a who's who of pike fishing. I couldn't resist dipping into the kitty for signed copies of work from John Watson and Graham Booth- and also grabbed a brilliantly moody pike print by Karen Sakar to ponder whilst I tie more flies this winter, one of a gallery of great works:

There are too many great things to list here- I had to virtually tie my hands behind my back around all the lures, and some of the more unusual detours such as the sub zero fishing equipment on display from "Esox on Ice" also caught the eye. Keep an eye on my links page at the usual site (www.dgfishing.co.uk) where I hope to add a range of highlights shortly. As for my own stall, it was a case of unexpected success, with the Finnish soft pike quickly selling out! For those who missed them, I hope to get more stock later in the year.

In the midst of a hectic week before I was also pleased to make a successful return to the Somerset Levels. Accompanied by Seb Nowosiad, it was a fun day hopping between the canal, the rivers and the drains. It started with some nice roach and rudd. The fish were quite spooky in the bright conditions, but still catchable on a small buzzer or spider.
Perhaps the best sport of the day however came on a weed choked stretch of water little bigger than a ditch. Seb was first into the action, catching a really classic looking perch just shy of 2lbs. Predictably enough, it fell for his usual choice of lure: a Kopyto Relax shad. I still tease him about staying glued to just one lure type, but when it works this well why switch?

It felt stupidly hot for summer, and after another detour we stopped for a cold pint, the barman taking pity on our tired faces and combined total of £5.33 to provide two pints of ice cold beer. Better refreshed, I quickly ditched the four weight and spent the last part of the day slinging small pike flies about on a heavier outfit, losing a a good fish but managing to get amongst the jacks. For all they lacked in size, each one was happy enough to give the fly a smash and go like the proverbial shit off a shovel.

What will the new season bring? I have no idea, but if each day out is as much fun as this we're in for a ball- as well as many, many soggy miles walked.