Pike and the Mediterranean diet

      A truly lovely fenland afternoon with the inevitable stiff breeze, plenty of cloud, not too cold and a little sunshine. An absolute pleasure to be out and about pike rod in hand.
      Fresh bait was, for some reason absolutely uncatchable unless you liked perch, so it was going to be frozen deadbait all round and in this case sardines, three in a pack and all of them neatly cut in half with a foam insert to lift them up off the debris and weed on the bottom of the drain.
      Out goes the first half of sardine, the head end, and it's time for an urgent pee. Aah the relief. A quick check on the float and it's moving at a rate of knots across the drain, I sort myself out and strike. Bite missed and bait gone. Having a pee obviously has the same effect as pouring a coffee.
      The tackle is re-baited with the tail end of the sardine and ten minutes or so later down goes the float after making a bow-wave across the surface and a pike is on which stays deep. After what seems like an age the finally float appears and then the fish rolls into the net. A fish that needed the Avon Scales. 
      It weighed 21lbs 9oz, beautifully marked with a real girth on her, a lady with a fuller figure.

      Three more pike found the half sardine very attractive, they ranged from 8lb to 11lb 12oz, a successful afternoon's piking. By the time four o'clock had arrived I had run out of sardines and resorted to a wobbled frozen roach. Finally a jack pike of around 2lbs took the roach and as I drew the small pike towards the lip of the net it was taken by an even bigger pike and ripped off the hook leaving me somewhat shocked.
      Food for thought, if not sardines.