Catch Fish with
Mike Ladle

Information Page

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 four 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. 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 so if you are new to fly fishing or spinning these are the ones for you).

15 January 2006.

Same fish different method.

At last the camera is fixed and I have some pictures. These things are never as simple as they seem. In this case I bought a new card for the camera and Jessops only had a 256 megapixel (much larger capacity) version in stock. It worked fine in the camera so I went fishing and took some pictures of the pike that I caught. Then came the problem. When I tried to download the pictures - nothing! I fiddled with the little card reader, fiddled with the computer, fiddled with the camera - still nothing! As chance would have it I had just, that morning, had an email from a friend Ben Lagden. Having read of my flash card plight on the website Ben had offered future help if I needed it. I rang him and to cut a long story short he came over, took the camera and card away, downloaded my pictures, got me a new reader and told me that my old readed was incompatible with the new larger card. Would you believe it?

Anyway, enough of that. As I said I took my spinning rod to the river armed with the 'Bulldog' lure that I tried last year. It was a lovely afternoon, quite mild and windless. I worked my way through a few pools without a sniff just enjoying being out on the bank at last. After twenty minutes or so I got to the pool where my grandson had caught his twenty pounder (on bait) a couple of weeks back. I cast across and retrieved a couple of times then the third cast was along the slack water. Half way back I could see the lure wiggling slowly towards me when wallop! It was grabbed by a big fish that surged away and, in the shallow water, crashed and splashed about alarmingly. Eventually it was subdued and I was able to land it.

It only slightly took the gloss off the catch when I noticed that it was the same fish that young Ben had caught before. Still, at least it was caught using quite different tactics and was the biggest pike I've had on either the rod or the particular lure up to now.

Whoops!

Subdued.

Same again.