Thames Recon.

 A brief session on the Thames this morning for a Pike or two had me out of bed at 5:40am, on the bank and set-up with 2 rods baited and out before sunrise, the Thames so far this season hasn't had a lot of my attention and I feel that the river has a hell of a lot to give, with every possibility of a real monster, my younger brother Richard's personal best of 25lb 2oz is a Thames fish and he has seen them larger than that, although it is an enormous system, it has a good head of Pike.

A fantastic trot for a Pike.

 The conditions were the same as they have been for around a fortnight, in Surrey we have been very lucky to totally escape the wrath of the storm that had battered the midlands up and the east coast of England, but there was still the aftermath of the last storm we had last month where there was dozens of downed trees and swims totally clogged up with trees up to 60ft in length, but these hold ups in the current did give me extra places to fish at for Pike, but after a couple of hours of fishing I only had one take which I did hook up to and was in the form of a Pike around 5lbs, it was probably a little bigger than that but I didn't get the chance to weigh it as the crafty bugger slipped in and it managed to throw the trebles into the mesh and flipped out of the tangled net and back into the vast river it came from.

Thames just after sun-rise.

 With that being the only action on the Thames I headed off to the Mole for more of a wander than to fish but having the gear with me it was inevitable I would have a cast but through the mile or two I walked most of the swims didn't look appetizing for Pike so I only fished around 4 swims but in one of the swims I had a follow off a good Pike probably in the mid-double range which came out of the murky water and chased my small perch patterned diver up to the bank where it unfortunately saw me standing on the bank that it rocketed towards then did a 180 straight back to the deep water where I never saw it again, but it was encouraging to see, I may come back for that one or maybe any others that are with it, nearly half way through my winter challenge now.