My season on the river so far has been fairly uneventful. I have caught plenty of average size barbel and chub but so far any monsters have eluded me.

I was starting to feel like I was just going through the motions with my river fishing and not really working at it so a change was in order.
   
With the winter turning increasingly colder I decided on a return to pike fishing.
It has been at least fifteen years since I have done any serious pike fishing so it would be a learning curve again. To my surprise methods and rigs have not really moved on much in the last fifteen years. Efforts have been made to tidy up rigs etc but basically most things remain the same.

My first session proved to be quite an uneventful one .A bitterly cold northerly wind was blowing at me all day which made the session a very uncomfortable one and after trying everything I could for eight cold hours a run never came.

For my second trip the weather was really cold. A hard frost over night had sent temperatures down to –3 degrees with freezing fog. Although it was cold there was no wind so it was quite pleasant sat on the bank.

I tackled up one rod on a paternostered smelt which was fished eighteen inches off the bottom and the other on a static ledgered deadbait, cast both rods and sat back to enjoy a hot brew. Within five minutes the paternostered smelt was away, I wound down and hit into what felt like a really heavy fish. After five minutes of thrashing and tail walking the pike was in the net and what a pike. It was huge!

It weighed 33lb and my first pike for fifteen years was my new P.B. A quick couple of photos were taken and back she went.

What a result!