Early start for the pike season for Joe and for me - and it was much better than last season's start. It took me several trips even to catch a pike last year but we both had fish this week and I managed to begin to claw my way back into the friendly (?) competition with Joe since I had easily the biggest fish. We took the boat out onto a big glacial venue with livebaits and lures. It's a water I fish from time to time - a lovely lake with the prettiest pike you'll see anywhere.
There's a particular restriction on this lake which keeps the boat traffic to a minimum - petrol outboards are not allowed. This has the double advantage of keeping the Hooray Henries away whilst at the same time cutting down on noise pollution. There's a downside of course, in that it's very much slower going when you have to rely on an electric motor to get about and if there's any wind at all, it can be downright impossible to make any progress against it. In the past this has resulted in me never venturing out if the forecast is for winds of more than 10 miles an hour and of course that means I don't get out on there too often. My electric outboard is a high quality Minn Kota model with maximiser that delivers 55lbs thrust but even that isn't powerful enough in a blow so this year I've taken the plunge and invested in a second motor. I picked up a cheap 54lb thrust Rhino off ebay for £150 during the summer and I put it on the back of the boat alongside the Minn Kota. Using the motors together like this made a big difference to the speed we could get around on the lake and so allowed us to fish more potentially productive areas.
The water was quite coloured, unusually for this lake and the fishing wasn't so good. Joe took two small ones on livebaits and I had two on lures, a six pounder and a lovely 15lb 6oz fish. Both of my fish absolutely engulfed the lure and I had to use the cutters to unhook the bigger one, chopping up the hooks to get them out. Hooks are easily replaced and it isn't worth risking the life of a decent fish by spending too long unhooking it.
