With such a mild Autumn I didn't start my Pike fishing until the beginning of December when at last the temperatures began to fall and feel more like winter. Although I should of been careful what I wished for, as by mid December the whole of the UK was in a deep freeze with most lakes and drains frozen over!
The only place that had ice free water to fish was the River local to us, so rather than not fishing my brother and I headed to the River for a Pike session with a plan to move swims every half hour in the hope of stumbling across some fish.
Arriving in the dark in minus 5 temperatures with snow still on the ground we made our way along a lovely backwater in the darkness until we spotted a swirl around a bend. Highly likely to be a Pike striking at baitfish, we soon flicked out a couple of rods each with little Roach on the end and sat back with anticipation as further swirls appeared in the half-light.
A few minutes later a line of bubbles appeared below my float just as a pike took the bait and the float vanished upstream! An angry Pike was attached and after a short scrappy fight and a bit of ice breaking in the margins we landed a lovely looking low double. A good result considering how cold it was. As we took some quick pics the backwater we were fishing froze over with cat ice and we had to move onto the main river where there was a bit of flow keeping it ice free. Sadly, despite fishing ten or more different swims through the day we never had another take but we'd had a lovely day out in the snowy conditions. We made a short Youtube film for our channel during this session, so if you'd like to see how we went about it then feel free to check out the link below.
