Pike success from the Mets and a tip for carp anglers

Well it has been a white n coming but I finally felt that I was at home around the Mets. I have been a member of the Mets / Thorney complex for a year and apart from taking some nice photo’s of the place I have not done a lot else. well that changed this weekend. I decided that after I had dropped my wife off at Heathrow I would pop down for a couple of hours with the lure rod to see what was up.

I couldn’t resist giving the river Colne a quick try on the way round and soon I was into the first customer of the day in the shape of a 4lb pike. Not a monster but still it was a fish, and after speaking to the bailiff’s it was the 1st one that weekend for anyone 🙂 One tip, if you are a member of the syndicate, fish the colne from the Mets side, there are far far more swims and access is a lot easier.

After spending too much time on the river, I decided it was time for the main event and whilst I didnt really envisage catching that much I decided that I could be very productive with a lead head jig. Some carp anglers will often visit a water in the winter to “lead about” that is cast a line with only a lead attached to look for gravel, bars and to count the lead down and gauge the depth. Well, here’s an idea. Instead of casting a lead around why not cast a lead head jig ? you get almost the same effect and there is a better chance that you will get a pike as well 🙂 several times I cast my jig into non pike containing areas just to see what the bottom was like. The lead head jig may not be as good as a 4oz feature finding lead but if combined with braid, and you use the “Hubber technique” ( pulling the line back with the rod pointing directly at the lead / jig) you will get accurate results.

Back to the session report. I eventually found that at the back of the Mets there were loads of snaggy areas and these in my experience are where pike hang out.  I wasn’t to be disappointed a further 3 pike were taken including one around 7lb. Sadly I didn’t have any kit to take a remote capture with me so all the shots are at arms length on my HTC wildfire but you get the point.

Successful lures were white rubber shads on lead head jigs and when this fishing slowed down I swapped over to a rapala jointed shad rap in “craw daddy” colours ( red and brown). All in all a successful few hours, I have probably had more fish than anyone else from the Mets this year 🙂 and hopefully I can start to replace that number with carp starting next weekend.