Crossing The Border

Its not very often I go fishing further out of Yorkshire unless its on holiday. Its the biggest county and im just about slap bang in the middle so driving out of it is always going to be a trek. Yesterday myself and Paul crossed the pennines border to go and visit another fellow LAS angler Paul, yes i was stuck between a couple of Paul's. Paul had been catching some fantastic perch and had invited us over to have a go for them.

I'll just give a brief account of the day mainly from my perspective, you can read a full run down of the day on Paul's blog here

My day was pretty frustrating to start with, Ive been drop shotting canals allot recently and haven't got myself a dedicated rod yet but the light tipped ultralight rod i have been using has done the job fine. With going to fish a big river and the prospects of more snags and bigger fish i decided to step up my gear. I just couldn't fish effectively with the rod i used and i wanted to step up lure size too so stepped up the line and hook size too which all lead to the outfit feeling clumsy, i hadn't even noticed until mid day that the thicker gauge hook i was using was pulling my lures over to one side totally spoiling the presentation. The biggest annoyance of the day was the wind putting a bow in my line which meant i could not keep in contact and the thicker tipped rod meant any input to the lure would move the weight, again adding slack and a bow into the line.

I had to watch both Paul's hook and land some really nice fish with Yorkshire Paul getting a new PB, fantastic stuff for them but again it added to my frustrations.

 

I went through a few lure choices and Paul even gave me one of the fish arrow lures he had been catching on and still i could not buy a take. I looked again through what i had brought and found a few lures i had made the other day, combined with scaling my leader and hook size down.

 Just an experiment of making drop shot lures, i wanted to try and add a piece of foil inside the lure like some of the more expensive drop shot lures, you can not see it in the photo but it flashes quite well in the water. these were just simple top pour lures and the fact i was melting other soft plastics to pour into the mould it wasn't really producing a neat finish.

 

I thought with them being quite dark they might show up better in the slightly cloudy water. I also started fishing them a bit more erratically in order to keep in contact and prevent slack line. This seemed to do the trick and not long after i hooked a big perch, finally i was going to get on the scoreboard! well no not yet as the fish rolled on the surface the hook pulled!

I fished on and again i hooked another big perch, sadly again it rolled and the hooks pulled, for me this was turning into a disaster. I was getting interest though so the changes i had made worked which was pleasing.

 

 

I carried on hoping for a chance at another fish when that moment came, it was evident I'd hooked a pike as it tore off at speed. After a battle the fish was in the net and i could let out a big sigh of relief at not driving all this way to blank!

A mid double angry pike on 6lb flouro and a size 6 hook! Although not recommended the fluorocarbon held out even after being tangled and rubbing all over the pikes teeth. Lets not forget i was not targeting pike here, and I don't see it being irresponsible using a size 6 hook and 3 inch lure with no wire, theres no difference to that and fishing a lively lob worm on similar end tackle and we know pike take lob worms. The thing is its very unlikely a size 6 is going to even hook the pike with a huge mouth as proven in another half hour I had what felt like another bigger pike but this time it wasn't on for long.

 

 

A great day out and some nice fish caught by all, couldn't get much better than that, thanks to Paul for inviting us over.