I had booked in a pike session on Lough Corrib with http://www.facebook.com/tomi.guidedfishing for the 12th of April. It felt like the day would never come. Rang Tomi the night before, and we had arranged to meet up early. He suggested the pike fishing was going to be non existant after 3pm. So we met up at 6am and hit the water early. That morning I had set my alarm for 3am and hit the road at 3.45am
The weather was torrential rain on the trip down. I was expecting to get well and truly soaked, but it started easing off on arrival. It was light to moderate rain and Northerly winds for the first three hours. We had no fish to start, then we had a wind change as it swung around to the West. And then the fish soon decided to make an appearance. We were fishing with flies, jerkbaits and float fished baits. The first fish came to a small spinner, a jack of about 6 to seven pound.
Soon after that we had a couple of strikes on the fly and plenty of follows on the jerkbaits but unfortunately no hook ups. Now we were in the rythm of casting and working lures, I was chatting to Tomi, and a flash of silver from my jerkbait lure caught my eye. As I turned, from out of nowhere this large pike came from the depths and mullered my lure! I didn’t even have to strike it just nailed it and started taking line straight away. It was an amazing fight, it fought like fuck and after a good tense fight the fish was netted well by Tomi.
18lb 10oz
Looking at the fish in the net our original thought was it was a twenty, but unfortunately it only tipped the scales to 18lb 10oz but not bad for my first pike on a lure! After some photos the pike was released safe and well to fight another day.
18lb 10oz
We fished on with the lures but it was the float that disappeared next, I picked the rod up and opened the bail arm I held the braid between my fingertips as it began to peel off the spool. When the fish stopped taking line, I closed the bail arm and struck into the fish. the rod bended over and I began to play the fish in. There was some good knockin on the rod so I knew it was another decent fish. This one weighed in at just over 16lb.
16lber
We fished on with the lures but the rest of the fish fell to the float rod. The wind started going round again the the North and the fishing died off again. We called it a day around half four.
It was a hard days fishing but we managed to hook up with some good fish. Altogether we hooked about nine fish and missed another few as well.
I’d just like to thank Tomi for all his help and advice, it was a good days fishing by any standard and one I look forward to doing again in the future. Tomi’s knowledge of the area was second to none he really knows his stuff and I would have no trouble in recommending him to anyone….. Thanks Tomi.
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