Twilight of the year

      The last pike fishing session of 2016 on a day that was finally clear of freezing fog but windy and cold; it was a strange one too with two family guests to look after but the main thing was that everyone caught at least one pike.
      My brother-in-law, who lives in Aberdeen is more at home fishing for salmon with a fly on the Rivers Naver, Spey and Dee and my nephew who is normally charging around the sky in a fast jet is a mad keen lure fisherman for bass. Both slightly different experiences to fenland piking.

      Two of us decide to fish off and around the old moorings and the lure fisherman wandered, he caught one perch and then as darkness was falling a pike of around seven or eight pounds on a black minnow with his last cast of the old year. The salmon fisherman caught one pike on a fresh dead roach, his first ever, a fish that was about six pounds and he was so pleased with it you'd have thought it was a personal best fresh run salmon.
      Local knowledge paid off for me with four pike with the biggest of the four fish being around eleven pounds and it was taken on my last cast of the old year. There is a certain  symmetry about catching the last fish of the year on the last cast of the year. We all decided that it was a good couple of hours fishing, particularly with two anglers well out of their personal comfort zones catching pike. 
      Now it's onward into 2017 and there's only about ten or eleven weeks of the season left. Just where does the time go?