Hey guys, welcome back to the reel, first video of 2024 and it’s a bit of a lament of the Winter for me. I had grand plans of doing lots of pike fishing and well it didn’t quite work out that way. In November me and my Dad went up to Pitsford reservoir and the most exciting thing that happened that day was driving the boat through the tunnel. We fished hard in the hopes of big pike but whether it was the cold snap or just plain bad luck, we didn’t have a touch all day. We fished over weed beds in shallower areas, over slopes of increasing depth and in some really deep areas too.
It was a good day out and we hadn’t fished from a boat for some years, hopefully we can return earlier in the pike season this year and get a fish or two.
I think most will agree the Winter fishing was made harder with the amount of rain we had and river levels not really relenting. I next made it out the week before Christmas on the Avon in Dorset and was joined by Paul and Dave who I last fished with at the Orvis Saltwater Festival and Greg from Meon Springs who I fished with for the first time.
The river was over it’s banks and in the fields and finding slacks was hard work, but we found one where cattle go to the river to drink and it seemed to have a few fish in it. I had a couple of casts and was into a jack but didn’t have the GoPro on wide angle so the view is pretty naff. Greg unfortunately missed a couple of takes before Paul and Dave had a go and Paul managed a Jack too before we moved on, but apart from a couple of takes that was it for the day.
So between Christmas and February I managed to fish some very short sessions on my lunch breaks on my home river before me and my dad managed to find a day in the diary at the start of March where we could both get out for the day and were thinking of somewhere like Pitsford or the Dorset Stour but it was too late in the season for a lot of the reservoirs and the Stour was pretty blown out so we decided to try a canal.
This was quite handy really as my son Jack expressed an interest in joining us for his first proper full day of fishing and the canal is a lot safer than a blown out river. In the morning Jack came running to tell me his Grampy was into a fish, a nice little Jack. I ran to go and help and my GoPro started playing up but we got a nice picture before putting it back.
Later on at lunch we saw a jack crashing into some bait fish and I got Jack fishing to try and catch it, but it was me who ended up hooking into it but it didn’t hold. Towards the end of the day, after Jack had been persevering to catch, he finally did and caught a little Jack which made all of our day!
You might have noticed in the clip where I lost the fish that I didn’t do any false casting when I cast my fly and this is thanks to a tip from Hector, he’s Hector Fly Fish on Instagram. For venues where there’s little to no space to back cast, he recommended trying a running line instead of a normal fly line with a bit of weight, up to about 3g on the fly, and it worked really well, particularly on the canal as it’s not far to cast to the other side. I could still fish flies and get them where I needed them. So a good tip if you want to fly fish canals or overgrown venues.
So yeh, not the best Winter as far as fishing was concerned, April is around the corner now so I’ll be back out on the saltwater after the bass and mullet which I’m really looking forward to and hopefully getting videos out a bit more often again.
Until next time, tight lines and I’ll see you in the next one!