Thursday 15 December 2011

The River Wye


I was fishing with my dad. I had already caught my very first pike a couple of weeks ago and was desperate to get another one before the season ended. I trotted a dace live bait across the deep hole at the Brook Mouth and hooked into the tree at the bottom of the swim...

The bait was lost and a piece of bark was attached to the hook, as I wound it in a pike swirled at it. The excitement was almost unbearable as dad put another dace on the single treble hook...

I cast out and just as the bung settled it shot under the water. I remember my dad telling me to give it a few seconds but I was already striking...

An epic battle ensued, the only part of the capture I can't really remember, but soon the pike was gaffed gently under the chin...

A five pounder, a monster, photographed on film that would take an age before it was developed. To the utter horror of the match-men I later told, I slipped it back, hoping to see it again the following year...

I can't remember the year or how old I was, but I can remember every other detail. Details I reported back to my mum, brother, teachers and friends for the weeks (months) that followed.

Can't wait to go piking with my dad and brother at Christmas!

5 comments:

  1. Hahaha thats great and what a memory,
    Gaffed haha bet you wouldn't be doing that these days,
    Hope you have some good fun with the family at christmas,
    ,,,Paddy,,,

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  2. Nice Parka!!

    I reckon thats about 1985. You should post a few more of the oldies up, this one made me chuckle this morning. I seem to remember a good one of you emptying the water out of your wellies.....Those were the days:)

    Very much looking forward to it as well.

    Paulos

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  3. You remember me emptying water out of my wellies. I remember falling in. In the snow!

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  4. Yep thats right. Seems like I remember you starting out ankle deep and sliding out further and further in the slick mud whilst I was in hysterics on the bank!
    That was hell of a swim though, wasn't it.

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  5. Including both banks I think it did three nineteens and two twenties... Proper pike swim!

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