Evening all,
Think this sums up my first predator session on the River Lark this year!
Read below to find out what happened! lol
Fancied a full session on my favorite river, as has been a while. Arrived to find the river in perfect form. Nice breeze and some nice colour. I used three rods on this trip. Two on ledger and one using a sliding ledger float rid. Baits used were sardines and roach dead baits.
The first hour or so was quite, then the left hand rod beeped a couple of times, and the drop back indicator dropped off. Struck into the fish, and caught the smallest jack ever. Pretty little fish though.
After after about half an hour or so the right hand rod screamed off. In fact the run was very much like a carp, nice one tonor and bend in the rod. I picked up the rod, wound down and struck into the fish. The rod simply lurched right round and I felt a lovely kick of it’s tail.
My heart was telling me, that this was either a upper double or ,may of even been one of those elusive River Lark twenty pounders. The fight was very much like the twenty five pounder I had last year. Difficult to explain why I came to this conclusion, but if any of you have had a twenty pound+ fish, you will understand what I mean.
Anyway, I had a nice scrap with the fish. Then the the unthinkable happened. I hit a nasty knot in my line, which caused a birds nest. After recovering from the birds nest, a nasty loop appeared which tightened when the fish took some line, and the line just stopped moving and I couldn’t do anything with the fish. In a desperate attempt, I tried to turn the fish to retrieve some line, but just couldn’t turn it. So I then decided to try and get to the next swim, retrieving line at the same time, but it was two late. The fish made a last ditch attempt to bolt down the river, and then there was the fateful CRACK! as the line snapped. It was gone.
I stood there in a state of shock, swore and threw the rod to the ground. Was very upset with myself.
After calming down, I recast the rod and waited until lunchtime, hoping it will return. No joy.
Around lunchtime I packed up the ledger rods and had a wandering session with the float rod. Had one run but missed. Could of been a cray fish or a very small jack. Gave it another hour, and moved to a new swim.
The next move was just a mile or so upstream. Found a nice reed bed, and chucked a roach deadbait out. After about 20 minutes, the float just bobbed and slid under the surface. Managed to hook another pike, but this one was bigger. Just over 5ib.
Not massive, but better then blanking. After this one one, the action stopped, it was getting dark, so I packed up and headed home.
Despite what happened, will definitely be back on the Lark very soon. Next trip will be back on the drains, in a couple of weeks. Cannot wait!