Some Spur action

On the doubles from Martin A on Vimeo.

On the doubles

We hit the road early this morning and were rewarded with a some nice Spurdog with three over 13 pounds.(correction from Gordon, the best fish were 13.7,14.2,14.3, 14,3)

              

  

Gordon insisted on calling me Brendan for most of the day, can't think why to be fair.

 

I really felt the cold today despite getting dressed in the dark with what I thought was warm clothing. It was good to be on a few decent fish nevertheless.

Pike -a short video clip from last week

January-The first fish of 2017 from Martin A on Vimeo.

The first fish of 2017

It was 8c when I left home at  6.30am. This was a full 12c warmer than last week on my journey to the loch. Would the Pike feel inclined to bite in the balmy winter conditions?

Certainly a high teen, perhaps a 20? My best Pike so far regardless

                           

                  

Relying on the GoPro in low light isn't the best idea for great shots but it's better for the fish just leaving the camera running.

And another nice fish. Both fish took a Westin Monster Teez presented

on an Uli rig.

I'll take the positives from today but I did have a few problems, bait, batteries  and I also left my paddle at home. I didn't travel too far on the peddles without a back up. All things considered I'm happy though, think I'm just a bit rusty after some time off.

I'll update the hit list as I work my way through the year, this was a decent start to the challenge.

It’s been a while

I’ve been getting lazy from a fishing perspective over the last few months so decided enough was enough. I had my first launch of 2017 today in sub-zero conditions. I would love to report a few fish but unfortunately it was a blank session. My plan was to fish deadbaits and do some trolling with large lures for Pike. This was scuppered right from the start, after I rigged up my float rod I noticed the mono furring up somewhere along the first three eyes of the rod as it took the weight of rig. Yes, another cracked eye…

 Given that the water temperature was just above 5c this was probably the method that would have worked best. In hindsight, I should probably have set up my heavy lure rod with a deadbait, instead I decided to track down the areas with plenty of baitfish and spend my time with the lures around these spots.

There is a lot of barren water, some areas had some life. These are baitfish represented in traditional sonar also showing in structure scan. There may be one or two slightly larger fish in amongst the mainstay of small fish.

When you see marks like this you might expect the predators to be somewhere nearby. Especially given the acres of lifeless water covered while searching.

On traditional sonar you just see the mass return on the left. It is open to interpretation  but I suspect there are a few dour Perch underneath that tree shown on the right. I spent some time with the dropshot rod around one or two spots like this.  A few worms might have helped. You can see the shadow of the tree on the structure scan on the top right.

I fished pretty hard to no avail.

 

These Patagonia gloves worked really well as did my new Thermos Ultimate Flask. Along with new neoprene socks over my drysuit feet I wasn't bothered by the cold at all. Just as well really or I would have been up the road after a few hours. I'm certainly geared up for the cold weather, I just hope it's worth the effort at some point.