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Kayak pike fishing on the Thames


chrisjpainter
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The Thames is well up at the moment and moving through at a proper lick, so opportunites to even launch, let alone fish have been few and far between. Happily, whilst there's plenty of volume, the clarity's not too bad, so a couple of lure trips have been managed. The first trip produced three fish, only two worth even bothering with a photo, though. They were all caught within 20yds of each other and all on the same lure, an 18g jerk with a really good rattle and a pretty quick retrieve. three fish (two and a half, really!) in 3 hours isn't bad in these conditions.

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This afternoon was much harder work as the river was up another half foot and a little murkier. After losing one on an ultra natural soft plastic, I switched over to jerks fished slow and...well...jerky! It looked like it wasn't gonna be my day, until, with the last cast, I bagged this low double on a 12cm 53g jerkbait I'm not sure why I bothered to launch 2 miles upstream and paddle down - this was once again caught in that same 20yd stretch of slack! A nice way to end what was a hard fishing session, but a beautiful spring paddle

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16 minutes ago, aga man said:

Very nice, but surely you are tempted to go and try a dead bait in that slack water before the season ends?

Deadbait schmedbait! I'm sure there are bigger fish out there (which is nice for the health of the river), and deadbaits would be a great way to get them, but I love my lures! I love the feel and connection you get with the lure, the water and (hopefully) the fish. I did the bite alarm, buzzers, rod pods business with carp and I just got bored of it. It just became bird watching. then I'd miss a bite and the thing would be in the weeds! Now it's just the kayak and a changing scenery, with the occasional fish to punctuate it.

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2 minutes ago, chrisjpainter said:

Deadbait schmedbait! I'm sure there are bigger fish out there (which is nice for the health of the river), but I love my lures! I love the feel and connection you get with the lure, the water and (hopefully) the fish. I did the bite alarm, buzzers, rod pods business with carp and I just got bored of it. It just became bird watching. then I'd miss a bite and the thing would be in the weeds! Now it's just the kayak and a changing scenery, with the occasional fish to punctuate it.

Yeah i can see where you are coming from. I got addicted to catching the big pike, using float ledger set ups on the areas you describe, but i do get the lure fishing thing, especially using braided line. Those lean river fish really do fight too. Quite a lot of skill involved tho so fair play to you 👍

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1 hour ago, aga man said:

Yeah i can see where you are coming from. I got addicted to catching the big pike, using float ledger set ups on the areas you describe, but i do get the lure fishing thing, especially using braided line. Those lean river fish really do fight too. Quite a lot of skill involved tho so fair play to you 👍

I can see the attraction of float fishing for them; watching a float suddenly bob as a pike finds the bait would be pretty cool. I might give it a go next winter, but I have no tackle for it these days, so it'd need a whole new set up - and I've just ordered a new lure rod anyway!

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