My recent pike trip to the Wye with Chris Ponsford whetted my appetite for a bit more piking

The wet weather meant the Wye was up and coloured so for the first time in about 10 years I opted to go dead baiting for pike on a stillwater.

I arrived at the water at 7.30am and decided to start close to my car with the intention of keeping moving until I found the fish. I put two rods out with paternostered deadbaits popped up the length of the trace to keep them out of the prolific weed and a third rod was set up with a simple float rig suspending a deadbait above the weed.

After about 45 minutes I had what turned out to be the smallest pike of the trip – a fish of about 7lb. At 9am I was just thinking I’d move at 10am if I didn’t have any more action when I had another run and banked a fish of 14lb. For the next 3 hours the drop-offs kept dropping off and I landed a succession of doubles topped by fish of 18lb 11oz and 19lb oz. When I texted my mate Simon he replied saying “not to worry yerl get a big un soon!”  He wasn’t wrong and just after dark I had a 26lb 2oz pike that was very short and fat. In the morning Simon joined me and immediately had a go with one rod and lost one before landing one of about 13lb that had a half-digested rat in its gullet. Perhaps Ian at Sonubaits could consider adding rat deadbaits to the ever-increasing Sonu range!

As the breeze got up in the morning I had to recast the float rod as it was drifting into one of the pasternostered rods. Not long after the float shot under – luckily Simon had nipped back to his car so I struck into what was clearly a good fish. After a good battle my second 25lb+ pike of the trip came to the net – this time a 25lb 6oz lump.

In all I had fish of  7, 8, 13, 14, 14, 14, 14, 14, 16 ,16, 18 and 19lb plus the two 20’s – definitely a trip to remember and I suspect it will be a lot less than 10 years before my next stillwater pike trip!