I had the privilege of fishing a new water today, I will be lucky enough to be doing a bit of a campaign there this winter. The water which I will simply refer to in future bloggings as 'The Lake' is a lovely place. It does though have a reputation of being notoriously hard, but with a bit of effort I'm told the rewards can be great.
There is no litter, the venue is very well kept and isolated and best of all I'm told that it holds a good head of Pike, and there are one or two monsters hanging about.
Well this makes good reading doesn't it! So I set about having my first session on there today.
So you can imagine my delight after only being there for three hours to see my float bobbing and my reel stripping line. I was in! And I was connected to a right old lump to boot.
After a brief fight and some bullying to stop it making for the nearside bush I readied the net, when out of nowhere it tail walked about three foot in the air and disaster! It shook the hooks.
I stood on the side of the bank, legs shaking - I was a despondent man, thinking about what might have been. It was a good fish, easy an upper double, I'd rather not dwell on it's size too much.
Despite sitting anxiously until the sunset. I didn't get another take. I now know that the rumours are true, there are some good fish in there, and anyway who did I think I was turning up for my first session and almost catching one of the lakes lunkers.
In a strange way I'm glad I didn't catch it, I'm glad she got away. I'd rather a challenge and the sight of the magnificent beast will make me all the more keener for my return!
So to the question. Is it better to have love and lost then never loved at all? You bet it is....
There is no litter, the venue is very well kept and isolated and best of all I'm told that it holds a good head of Pike, and there are one or two monsters hanging about.
Well this makes good reading doesn't it! So I set about having my first session on there today.
So you can imagine my delight after only being there for three hours to see my float bobbing and my reel stripping line. I was in! And I was connected to a right old lump to boot.
After a brief fight and some bullying to stop it making for the nearside bush I readied the net, when out of nowhere it tail walked about three foot in the air and disaster! It shook the hooks.
I stood on the side of the bank, legs shaking - I was a despondent man, thinking about what might have been. It was a good fish, easy an upper double, I'd rather not dwell on it's size too much.
Despite sitting anxiously until the sunset. I didn't get another take. I now know that the rumours are true, there are some good fish in there, and anyway who did I think I was turning up for my first session and almost catching one of the lakes lunkers.
In a strange way I'm glad I didn't catch it, I'm glad she got away. I'd rather a challenge and the sight of the magnificent beast will make me all the more keener for my return!
So to the question. Is it better to have love and lost then never loved at all? You bet it is....
