Avon Piking.

 During the weekend I had a trip to Dorset organised for Wednesday in the vein hope of catching some Pike, with only a shade over 90lb left of my Pike challenge I hoped that I'd locate some and chew into that sizeable weight, I was up and early as usual at just gone 4am and on the Royalty for opening, the sun was just starting to rise and was met by a pair of Owls hunting the flooded plains behind the fishery, in the mean time I tackled up and cast out, the Piles was my first port of call, the river was up about a foot-and-a-half and the Piles offered a big back eddy with a slack against the inside bank where I thought I would find one but nothing doing.

Sunrise on the Avon.

In flood well and truly.

The Piles at dawn.

 With the river up the amount of choices were limited even with me donning my thigh waders due to the force of the current, the Pike would be easier to find you would think, if anything it was totally the opposite, although you would expect to find them in the slacks and almost all of this water was fished and I only had the one run but as I was getting ready to bear down on it, the bugger dropped it, my only inquiry for the entire day, until right at the end of the day when I had my ledgered dead bait Sardine on the buzzer started to wander off into the current and my buzzer slowly bleeping at me as it steadily headed off, without wasting anytime I tightened up and struck......absolutely nothing again, what on the earth was going on, my only guess was that they were both small Pike and the bait simply to large for them to properly take it and was simply taking away from the spot to munch on it in due time, or simply eyes bigger than it's belly.

All set.

The Great Weir at full capacity.

 My first trip to the Royalty where I haven't caught my target species and now it stands at 6 Pike in 3 trips, so I still have a good record there but disappointed slightly by my unfortunate blank, but that's fishing and with less than 2 months of the season left I may need a very good run of Pike to do my target but who knows what's instore.

The only angler who caught out of five.

Until next time, tight lines.....