Monday October 22nd was the pike anglers first visit to Cambridgeshire’s Grafham Water, our first real big pike fishing challenge. Grafham Water is one of Great Britain’s finest and well known trout fishing reservoirs, not only is it a big favourite with international trout anglers but it also attracts many visitors to its overall 10 mile circuit including cyclists, dog walkers, joggers and sailing enthusiasts.
The potential of it yielding up some big pike is a real possibility and, with the added bonus, a large zander could also make an appearance. We have heard rumours that there could also be a possible record zander to come from the depths at Grafham in the near future too.
Grafham was constructed in 1960 and opened by H.R.H Prince Philip in 1966, It holds approximately 50 million m3 of water and covers over 1,500 acres (600 hectares). Depths range from 12’ in parts of the west end up to 60’ towards the east dam.
Unfortunately it wasn’t to be our day. After an encouraging start we had hooked into two pike whilst trolling with some large lures. Unfortunately, we never got to see the fish as they only seemed to grab the tail end of our large replicant lures, maybe they could have been zander? This was the only excitement we encountered that day.
The first round of the Cambourne Predator Cup was fished in the fenlands. We spent many a trip there last season catching those toothy critters on venues which included the Sixteen Foot drain, the Old Bedford, the New Bedford and the Great Ouse. We opted to fish the Old Bedford, the weather was dry and overcast and there was a cold chill in the air. Water levels were down somewhat at least 2 feet from normal levels. The river was very clear and much cabbage weed was still present so things weren’t going to be easy. Indeed that was to be the case; only 3 pike were caught all day with the largest weighing in at 8lb 4ozs.
At the beginning of November I took my wife Teresa, my dogs Skeet, Lucy and our new edition Freddie on a holiday to Colvend in Scotland. For those who are not that familiar with the area Colvend is near Dumfries, on the west coast of Scotland, and just 30 minutes away from Loch Ken, one of Scotland’s finest pike waters.
I checked the van to see if I had remembered to pack a couple of rods and, to my amazement, two rods and a bucket of lures had made their way with us too, (How fortunate!) It didn’t take me long to find a local marina to book a boat. I also got some local information from Dixie, the owner of Crossmichael marina. I was told by Dixie to fish the channel which ran along the lower end of the loch, this channel had depths of around 18ft to 28ft. After a short time trolling I had finally hooked into my first fish of the day, this fish fell to an 8” Yellow Crackle Replicant lure. Moving further up the loch sometime later gave me my second fish, it came while casting a 45g Sunrise Deviant lure.
A third fish fell to a float fished Trout dead bait in only 5ft of water and that was my last fish of my first trip to this famous old loch. On my return to the marina I had time for one more last troll, so on went the old favourite Yellow Crackle and out of the back of the boat it went. Minutes later I had hooked the double figure fish I had hoped to catch, after a short fight it had surfaced and it was looking pretty much ready for the net when disaster struck. With net in hand and my mouth wide open I watched in disbelief, the fish I had came all this way for had just decided to part company with my lure. That’s fishing I guess.
Have a Very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year from all of the Pike anglers.
Until next time good fishing Stuart