Meanwhile....

Whilst i compile my thoughts / photo's etc for the forthcoming gear reviews i'll leave you with some photo's of a wee water i stumbled upon at the very end of the summer, it is one of the prettiest waters in my local area, and pretty much the only one which goes completely unfished.

Unfortunately it is very shallow and my (limited) experience tells me that shallow waters simply dont fish in the colder months, what a pity i found it in september! I cant stop thinking about how awesome it's gonna be!

Anyways, here are a few photo's, chances are you'll want to cast a popper alongside the reeds as much as i do!

Gear reviews!

I have decided to jump on the bandwagon and do a review of the gear i use for chasing pike on the fly, however mine is gonna have a different purpose, most tackle reviews are done with top-end gear that would require a fair bit of saving to afford whereas I am going to share my thoughts on some of the better budget gear available and prove that fly fishing for big, nasty predators needn't be particularly expensive yet you can expect some good quality equiptment that will see you through any piking situation.

I have used my current set-up for almost a year and have tamed a few pike with it, although i feel i know the rod and reel inside out im going to fish over the next few days and pay lots of attention to my gear's good and bad points. My fishing gear takes LOTS of abuse and it becomes clear pretty quickly whether something is up to the job or not, whilst i cannot lay claim to be the best or most efficient caster, im confident that i can give a good, relevant review of a piece of kit and how it handles a variety of fishing instances.

Over the next few days i will report back on the following;

Ron Thompson mpx pike fly rod

Okuma SLV 8/9 fly reel

And other assorted bits and bobs that i need to complete the task in hand.

Scott.

Should have known better!

Last tuesday I got a text from a mate asking whether or not there was a window to go pike fishing this week. "Of course" was my reply.
As usual i had a good feeling about the day, conditions had been pretty constant for a week or so which is usually exactly what you are hoping for when planning a pike trip.
So the night before i did all the necessary prep, i cleaned my line, i even loaded a sinker onto my old reel so that i was covering all bases! I made up a handful of fresh traces in full expectation that the pike were gonna mangle every last one of them.

As it happens i need'nt have bothered!
We started on a fairly big reservoir right on the edge of my town, it is sandwiched between three housing estates, an industrial estate and a football stadium. As you would imagine its quite a scenic place......

However it holds BIG specimens of pretty much every species that inhabit its depths so we decided to grit out teeth and get on with it.
It became clear pretty quickly that this was'nt going to happen for us, the water was the colour of chocolate milk and visibility underwater was about two inches. Best left for the deadbaits we agreed.

Next stop was a small feature-packed stretch of my local canal that had fished well for me the week before, on arrival the east wind which normally kills the fishing here was blowing fairly strongly and soon killed our confidence. Still it was a cool stretch to fish with loads of areas of interest and it wont be long before im back.

We moved on to the biggest natural loch in the area, a water crammed with fairly small pike, the average being a couple of pounds but with a good sprinkling of bigger fish thrown in.
If ever a place looked pikey..this is it. The loch is almost completely fringed with reeds, making me think that summer surface fishing here is gonna be explosive!
The water is crystal clear and there is a also a head of bonus monster perch.
But again it wasnt to be our day, the problem being that the loch shelves off very gradually and at this time of year the pike will be sitting deeper in the water, somewhere we just couldnt reach with fly rods.

One major sore point here was the litter left on the bank by other "anglers". All sorts of booze bottles, bait packets, miles and miles of waste line, and the food wrappers they have taken.. it really was a disgrace. It makes me fear for any poor fish that is caught by these idiots.
In future i'll only be fishing the far bank of the loch as access is a little harder and this puts off the lazy, drunken tools that trash the rest of the loch.

SO.. we moved again, passing the mysterious "dead" loch i mentioned in the blog before and commenting on how undead it looked. This time we fished an old flooded quarry that has become one of my most frequent haunts. It holds lots and lots of pike although worryingly ive been catching a lot lately that have been damaged by others poor handling.
The water had cleared up considerably since last time i was there and is now close to the crystal clear tinge (or lack of) that it always used to have.
To cut a long story short we still caught nothing.

So in total we fished four completely different waters, with a tally of 0 fish. Not bad for winter flyfishing in scotland i think!
It was a great day nonetheless and the ever-changing surroundings made the lack of fish all the more bearable.

Hopefully i have more success to report this week.