Thorney Weir Pike

As some of you know I have been lurking at Thorney Weir quite a but this year for very little results (which will change next year… I will get a  30 out of there), so as it is winter and the pike season is in full swing I thought I would give it a crack for pike. I had been fishing the river Colne that runs between Thorney Weir and the Mets lake for a few weeks but with the ice levels receding on the main Thorney Weir lake I thought I would also give that a go as there are several likely looking areas.

Anyway arriving at Thorney a little later than planned I was surprised to see the road bank completely full. Not sure why people were fishing this side as I would have been at the other end ( which is what the bailiff did) as that would have given the best chance of a fish (IMHO) but I suspect many of them just wanted to get out and go fishing with the minimum amount of hassle.

We decided to start on the river Colne as that is where I have had success from before,I rigged up with  small white rubber lure on one of my favourite rods for small water lure fishing – the spro godfather. The rod is a light weight, through action, 6ft single piece rod that is really designed for zander fishing from a boat. However, it makes a fine lure rod for small quarry.

Sadly it was not to be. The “hot” swims from before were not as hot this time. The river was very heavily coloured and there was a fair amount of melt water still pushing through. The only fish was a small jack of about 2lb which was caught from right under my feet and made a good impression on the rod / reel combo and it went airborne to try to escape.

Anyway with this fish released it was time to swap over to the main Thorney Weir lake as we has exhausted all river possibilities. Whilst I have never targeted the pike seriously in Thorney in the past ( apart from one brief session) and was not even certain that it contained pike. I figured that as it was close to the river pike must have gotten in there at some point in the past.

The normal swims were checked but what makes a good carp swim does not make a good pike swim ( thankfully) as whilst I want large open water for carp with features on the bottom with in easy reach, for pike I want the overgrown swims. The ones with a sunken tree blocking half the swim, the ones that it would be suicidal to night fish and you could only get 1 rod out. Those are the swims that you need to target for pike.

Thorney weir has quite a few of them in the back part of the lake and thankfully they are not popular with the bivvied up carp anglers meaning that they are generally free even when the lake is “full”.

To cut a long story short after quite a while of casting into likely looking places, success was achieved in the form of an ( estimated)  5lb pike which on the light setup was quite a handful and was great fun. The pike tail walked across the water like a shark with all teeth bristling shaking its head in an attempt to loose the hooks, constantly chewing the lure in its anger.The pike was swiftly netted by Danor ( as there were bank side obstructions that meant we could not easily hand land it) and it was placed gently on the awaiting mat. Sadly the pike chewed the lure to bits ( one of the risks with soft plastic lures) and to my dwindling stocks of “the white wonder” are dangerously low.  If you know of a suppler of lures like the one in the pic above please let me know.

Considering that one of the carp anglers had caught anything it was quite a relief to walk away tot he car victorious and with all objectives met

How has your fishing been recently ? do you have stories to share ? why not put them at the bottom of this article as a comment ?