After Monday’s success it was with some trepidation that I picked up the minibus from Slough Council offices on Tuesday morning prior to taking the lads from PAYP Slough out on the same course. Twynersh was the proposed venue and although it does not hold the stamp of fish we experienced yesterday, it usually produces some smaller pike. This venue allows the use of live fish as bait and this time of year they are easily caught with a whip and maggots as bait.
Three of the four students were able to make it and we were soon on lake seven and catching small roach. At least it was dry and with a blustery wind I was able to dry out the tackle that I could not bring indoors last night. Two pike rods were cast out with the small roach as bait and the third with a sardine as dead bait. One of the lads had never fished before and so I was able to give him some tuition with a whip and he managed a nice roach as his first fish.
This was to be the highlight of the day as the pike failed to show on the fish baits but the two more experienced lads, who attended some of my summer courses, were able to do some lure fishing and got a couple of half-hearted follows from small pike.
Today I was back in Reading picking up the lads from the swimming pool car park. Tom (the key worker) was worried that five young people had been booked to attend today’s course. I explained the extra dangers involved in this type of course and was reluctant to exceed my maximum number of four pupils. The problem resolved itself when one lad turned up with his right arm in plaster and was therefore unable to come fishing. His key worker apparently knew of his temporary disability and sent him anyway (obviously doesn’t know much about fishing?).
It was eleven a.m. before we got to the lake and I was expecting another anticlimax, it couldn’t be as good as Monday, could it? Sure enough the first hour passed without result. I was making excuses, saying how we’d had a great day last time and now it was back to normal. Then the first bite indicator went off and a seven pound pike was on the unhooking mat, shortly followed by another smaller fish.
An hour’s break was welcomed by my sore right wrist and then the rod that I had been using to demonstrate float fished dead bait techniques was bent by one of the students, into a large fish. This fish visited a couple of smaller weed beds on its way to the net but he managed to extricate it on his own, having really learned from my demonstration yesterday. Once netted and on the unhooking mat with its veil of weed removed, the fight really started. More damage to my sore wrist - I hope my GP doesn’t read this as he told me to rest it. The fish weighed eighteen pounds, the biggest yet reported this season from this venue but unfortunately the lad who caught it was too frightened to hold it himself.
The aim of this course is to teach the safe handling of pike and I always tell students that a pike will not bite defensively like a dog will but the photo below looks like this one was trying to take off my arm, which of course it wasn’t.
The final fish of the day was one of about nine pounds, the total being four fish once again.
I’m spoiling these kids!
I’ve just been on the phone to the Wasing Estate office and have got their kind permission to take the group from Slough there tomorrow.
Watch this space!
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