Not My Day....

 I looked forward to a days Piking afloat SS Rudd in search of....ermmmm...Pike, all was supposed to be smooth with no glitches as the last couple of trips have done, well that most certainly wasn't the case, a lack of live bait opportunities owing to the colder nights made catching liveys very hard, I could live with that, but when we left our first port of call and arrived at spot number two I had found that some piece of sh@t had hit the side of my car and obviously driven away without a care in the world, a nasty dent and scratched paint work above my rear drivers side wheel arch meant I was not in the best of moods, understandably so too.

 Well lets just say it got worse before it got marginally better, a hard morning afloat without a knock for myself or Brian got our brains wracked, couldn't decide on where to go in the pool and what depths to fish so I decided just to pick an average depth and stick with it. I stuck with a Dace for the best part of an hour before it finally stopped in its tracks and the float vanished, I wound down and was met with very little resistance, me thinking straight away it was a jack I played it normally to get it in fairly quickly, but the fish was cruising towards me and as the tension was taken up the weight on the end got heavier and heavier, what I initially thought was a small Pike turned out to be an upper double around the 17-18lb mark, in the gin clear water we both got a very good look at her, the only problem was my Dace was only being held in its jaws, the treble actually wasn't set, as she approached the boat maybe ten foot out she coughed my Dace and came hurtling out the water, with one almighty lunge the Pike was gone, in pure desperation the bait went straight back in the area I thought she was but not a peep from my livey.

Right moody evening was in store.

 Could it get worse? good question, much to my delight it did....(a strong air of sarcasm), one days dose of bad luck was already administered the angling gods decided to continue the punishment, after losing that Pike at exactly 1pm the action took a nose dive until the tide had nearly finished running off, then just a little before dark a flurry of activity came our way when my float went, Brian's also went, both of us didn't connect but shortly afterwards mine went again and the rod went, as the tension held a decent fish was playing out deep down, I could feel it wasn't a Pike immediately, so it could only be a Zander and it was one, a really big one of possibly double figures and as it came up to surface it shook its head and spat my little Chub live bait and I was distraught, my day had just got more shit as it progressed, I was having one of them days where I wished I'd stared at the TV and done fack all.

It took a lot to crack a smile, not a good day.

 A little bit later on in the evening my float did go one more time and like an express train too, certainly a Pike and wasn't a tiddler, weighing just under 7.8. Scant reward for the effort put in but it seems to be a re-occuring theme. The Thames is kicking my arse at the moment.