Seeing double ...

On a small stretch of river nearby there are a good head of pike, mostly small jacks but I have encountered some slightly bigger fish on a couple of occasions. I only ever lure fish for them here and up until now the largest fish I have landed is a mere 9lb 10oz but I know I have come close to sneaking a double out a few times.  I know full well it would not be anything significant even if I did land one but it would give me a certain sense of satisfaction to get double from one of these few swims that I regularly visit. After all we can spend our hard earned money travelling further afield to larger rivers or venues to fish for the big fish that these places hold, and I often do just that, but it's equally nice to have somewhere within a five minute drive from home that you can pop down to quickly and catch a few fish from, whatever size they are. In other words a double would be a pretty good fish from here.

Recently I bought a couple of new lures from a local tackle shop that were selling off their last few savage gear 4play jointed lowrider and lip lures. I bought the last two in 13cm a burbot brown lip lure and an orange/yellow low rider. This would give me a gaudy bright one and a more natural looking colour.  I've used the soft 4plays before and new they worked well but this would be the first of the hard lures in the range I have tried.
The first go with the orange/ yellow about a week ago produced a follow from a reasonable looking fish definitely one of the bigger pike but I couldn't get it interested again after that initial response.

Today I started on the burbot and cast it in the same spot to see if there were any fish around, several casts later I decided to swap it for the yellow as the light was starting to drop a little and the water although quite clear was darkening with the start of the evenings shadows. I soon decided to move up to the next spot at the head of the run where there is less streamer weed and a cast across the river can be drawn back unhindered. As the lure reached the middle I slowed the retrieve slightly to adjust to a more twitching action. Before I had time to continue a fish swept up and t-boned the lure across its flank. After a rather short but spirited fight I bundled the fish into the net before I knew where it was. And so with that it was done, finally I had bagged my double from the river at 10lb 15 oz and a new lure caught PB.