Pike 0. Zander 1. Perch 6



      A quick afternoon visit to a favourite local drain to fish for pike but there wasn't one run from a pike and not one pike caught, and this despite wearing my lucky cap.
      I was so keen to get to the drain that upon starting to tackle up I found that I had forgotten to put my box of traces in my bag. Bugger. So back home I went wasting half an hour. In retrospect I rather think I was made to pay for that sloppiness in not checking the contents of my bag before leaving home.
      Compensation came in the form of six decent perch and one small zander.
      Because the session was to be a short and quick one I only took one packet of frozen roach, ten roach baits of about four to five inches long, which are normally enough for an entire afternoon, but not today.



      After one hour and forty minutes of drifting the deadbait along the drain under a float the bait supply ran out. Amazing.
      In fairness the action was all in the first hour and the last bait lasted nearly forty minutes, so on balance I should have gone before and not after lunch, and it would have helped if I had remembered my traces.



      The fish were all in the near margin and right in the edge, they must have been feeding on the fry in the reeds and just in front of the reeds and the fry that were visible were very small, maybe the roach under the float looked like a bonus mouthful.
      Right, when Saturday comes I'll be back, with my lucky cap firmly on my head.