A salvaged day

The promise of a full days fishing was unfulfilled. Yet another weather front blew over the country and despite me checking the river levels, which were good, it was a little too coloured. Not wanting to waste the hours drive I forged ahead and gave it a go.

I tried an area that gave me several grayling last time but apart from one missed fish, which it suspect was a trout, I failed to catch anything. Other previously productive areas were tried without success. I'd been soaked by the rain and blown apart by the wind, I was beaten.

The hour drive home gave me time to contemplate. I had no motivation to tie flies for the remainder of the afternoon. I wasn't due to collect my daughter until four o'clock. Arriving back home at two gave me a couple of hours and given the weather I had already put up with, I felt I may as well try something else my end.

Living in the Fens I am surrounded by many drains, big and small. The stocks of predators aren't what they used to be but I knew a very small drain that I hoped would get over looked. It's a little walk just out of town and I have caught pike there before.

Armed with my spinning rod and soft rubber lures I started at the end of the drain where the pump house is. Most of he smaller land drains have pumps to take the excess water out and pump it into the main drain systems.

A little way up I had a couple of knocks, as the lure reached the bank I could see a posse of perch attacking. I was using a 13cm Savage Gear soft 4play that  was much too big for these perch. A delve into lure my bag produced a much smaller 8.5cm version supplied with a SSG weighted jig head. I had around twenty minutes of fun watching the shoal of perch attacking my lure, as a bonus I even caught three of them. They were probably barely half a pound but he lighten my day up no end.

I missed a very small pike as I was toying with the perch, probably struggled to make 12" but again being able to watch the strike made up for the miss.

I reverted back to the original lure and made further progress along the drain. I caught a pike, again this was a small one, but I didn't care I was catching something. I hooked and lost another pike fished for a further twenty minutes without any more hits and that was my time up.

I can't complain, four fish in less than a couple of hours on a day I had written off.