Lazy Fisherman 2018

Well the stats are in for the year, time to find out how far I walked with my lazy hobby this year. Turns out I walked 2,272 miles - slightly further than last year. That’s the same as 87 marathons, and if you combine both years it’s the same as walking the length of The Nile!

Distance Walked 2018


Distance Walked 2017

Wye Christmas

The river was looking the best it’s been all Christmas - I bet it’ll be perfect next week - but I had a last attempt to land a Wye pike before heading back to London.


The water had cleared enough to chuck a lure about. I had a few follows and eventually bagged a jack - not the monster I was after, but better than a blank. I will be back!

(Non) Frozen III

Time for the third annual Christmas fish-off, so after a Wetherspoon breakfast me, Steve and Dyl headed off into deep, dark Wales...


It was unseasonably warm and the fishing was tough going. Plenty of lost fish, we really struggled to keep them on the hook!


Long story short; Dylan won with 2 rainbows, me and Steve only landing one each - nice one Dyl, think I need more practice!


But a fantastic day as always, cheers guys, same again next Christmas? My year next time?! Right - time to find a Wye pike...

Bushyleaze

A couple of afternoons chasing pike on the Wye, no fish but the water is fining down - hopefully I’ll get another trip in before the end of the year. But now it was time for something completely different.


Me and Steve headed to Bushyleaze, our first trip there in search of trout on the fly, and it didn’t take long to find feeding fish - both bagging two rainbows on our 4 fish tickets before breakfast.


We could have filled our tickets in no time, but we left the feeding trout and went exploring the rest of the lake. We spooked a few jacks before I bagged a couple of beautiful perch in the clear water.


Back to the trout, we wanted two more each - typically it was more difficult to find fish now. But we both bagged another rainbow each before dark. Six trout and 2 perch - a cracking day's fluff chucking!

Christmas Wishes

As expected The Wye is in flood, but it dropped back 18 inches overnight - needs to drop about another 4 foot - fingers crossed!

Pike Sixty

Not big fish, but I love catching pike. So back to the ponds for another quick lure chucking mission and I landed pike number 59 and pike number sixty! Oh, and checking The Wye, it’s rising like mad. Crap!

Small Window

Don’t let the bright sunshine in the photos fool you - it’s bloody cold out there! I escaped for a quick afternoon pike fishing session on the ponds. The first pond was frozen all the way over but the next was ice-free, time to chuck a lure about...


An hour or so later with only one follow to show for my effort I cast a sprat out while I had cup of tea. The float sat for 5 minutes before hammering under resulting in a winter jack to warm me up. I hoped they had come on the feed and swapped back to lure fishing...


In the next 40 minutes I had two more pike, lost two and had a number of follows and missed takes, but then as suddenly as they had switched on they switched off. Very small feeding window - but the sun was getting low in the sky - time to retreat back to warmth!

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And hello to Matt who I randomly bumped into outside Streatham Tesco on Thursday (who occasionally reads this) - quick chat about all things pike. I can’t remember where you said you were going piking yesterday, but we talked of twenties - hope you bagged one!

Options

Another quick mission to the river hoping to add a few more barbel before it gets really cold. Short story short; I added three more - total now 71 - that’s 29 more to go and just over 3 months (99 days) left of the season - just keeping the 100 barbel option open...