Catch Fish with
Mike Ladle
Information Page
Freshwater Fishing
For anyone unfamiliar with the site always check the FRESHWATER, SALTWATER and TACK-TICS pages. The Saltwater page now extends back as a record of over several years of (mostly) sea fishing and may be a useful guide as to when to fish. The Freshwater stuff is also up to date now. I keep adding to both. These pages are effectively my diary and the latest will usually be about fishing in the previous day or two. As you see I also add the odd piece from my friends and correspondents if I've not been doing much. The Tactics pages which are chiefly 'how I do it' plus a bit of science are also updated regularly and (I think) worth a read (the earlier ones are mostly tackle and 'how to do it' stuff).
Pike for tagging.
The pike tagging studies on my local river will continue for another season so, now that the sea fishing's slowed down, it gives me an excuse to wave a rod about. The other day I went to see what was doing and I carried a little tag reader in my pocket - just in case. In fact my fortunes were mixed. First chuck I had a bite within one minute and after a bit of a tussle landed a reasonable sized fish. A quick scan showed that it was untagged so had probably never been caught before.
I moved upstream a few metres to another promising spot and sure enough I was soon into a bigger fish. As I was playing the pike, which did a fair amount of thrashing and head shaking, I tried to extract the camera from my bag. Big mistake! I must have eased the pressure a bit and the circle hook with its flattened barb came unstuck. I tried again but the fish showed no further interest. The next spot, again just a little way upstream, produced a third bite. Well, I say bite but the pike couldn't catch my bait and eventually drove the bait into a mass of overhanging brambles without getting hold of it. Again it wouldn't have another go - strange!
Having had three attacks in about fifteen minutes I thought that I was in for a good session but that, as they say, was that and I never had another touch. A few days later I went with Nigel to try again. This time I decided to use a smaller (size 6) circle hook and appropriately smaller bait in hopes of a big perch. As it turned out I had no perch but managed two decent pike, each nicely lip-hooked on the perch gear. For some reason Nigel couldn't manage to buy a pike bite so he switched to float fishing with sweetcorn and caught a couple of nice grayling - the best weighed 2.25lb.
If you have any comments or questions about fish, methods, tactics or 'what have you!' get in touch with me by sending an E-MAIL to - docladle@hotmail.com
Got one.
Untagged.
Giddup!!!
Landed.
Perch hook.
- and another.
