Pike's rights - River pike pt 2

I was originally heading to the Dove this morning to trot for grayling, but last night in bed the wife reminded me that her dad was coming round to help me fit a carpet in the box room at lunchtime.
So a quick change of plan saw me heading back to the same venue as last week.

The weather was cool but not freezing at about 4 deg C and there was an upstream breeze putting an nice ripple on the slow moving deep section of river I would be fishing. The pike float went out first with a nice big 5 or 6 oz roach dead bait on.  I'd tied some new traces the evening before, so one of them was clipped on to the mainline with a treble and a single so I could present a larger bait than the small fish I usually use for Zander.

The float rod was set on an alarm so I could take my eye off the float, I was just running  a line through my trotting rod ready to attach the float wen I noticed some movement on the pike float already. The float was away in that beautiful way they glide across the surface then slide under. I wound down to feel a satisfying weight and after a little struggle another pike was in the net.



8lb 12oz

After I had returned the fish a chap stopped to enquire as to whether I'd had any pike ? yes came my reply.
"Hope you killed it".   " No, I bloody well didn't ".
The conversation then slid into a lively debate . "Too many pike in the stretch and their numbers should be culled as there's no silvers left".  Verses my argument that  pike will live in balance  if left alone and that I never have any trouble catching roach, chub, bream or even silver bream along this stretch of river.  It's one of the most diverse stretches I know of. We agreed to disagree, but both agreed that the cormorants, gooseanders, and now otters were the main threat to the fish stocks here.

That pike was all the action I had for the morning, the other rod failing to produce any silvers ironically. I'm sure they're still there, just not feeding today.