As the Irwell was well up and the colour of hot chocolate, we fished a lodge in Prestwich Country Park for a couple of hours. This particular water has a reputation for great Piking and Matt wanted to catch his first Pike.
His clueless dad forgot to bring deadbaits, so we set out to catch some small roach.
You would have thought that single pinkie on a size 22 would have brought roach after roach but we couldn’t catch anything other than small Perch. I don’t like using them as live / deadbaits as they are not as effective as other fish as bait for Pike. I think you cant beat the oily smell from dead sea baits or the silvery flash of a roach for attracting Pike.
Try as we might the roach weren’t interested and as the prospect of Pike fishing lessened so did Matt’s patience.
So in two hours fishing(before Matt told me he was bored an wanted to go home) we had numerous bites and a few small perch to show for our afternoons fishing.
Even though 2 hours doesn’t seem like much of a fishing session, i think 2 hours on a January afternoon is fair enough and it was just starting to go dark as we packed up ( i bet if i had had another few casts the roach would have turned up in the twilight!).
