Thursday 26th October

Back on the river again. Today's session was with long time friend and fellow "Ol Bill" Andy Ramsbottom. Andy picked me up from my home address at 0830hrs and after a brief chat we loaded up and set off for Carrow Yacht Club. This club is situated on the peninsular of the River Yare and the River Wensum. We didn't have the use of my normal boat, so we borrowed one of the club boats, this turned out to be a small Cathederal hulled vesell of approximately 12'. As for power, well you would laugh if you could have seen us, I brought along my ancient Seagul longshaft outboard. This little beastie has been hanging up in my garage for well over five years without a touch of maintenance. Andy began to row our boat into position and I fiddled with the engine. I was absolutely amazed when the beast sprung into life after the third pull!! We motored up the river to our chosen location and began to sort ourselves out. I had the use of a couple of borrowed boat rods, these were set up to trot our livebaits down stream. I placed Andy in the more open area of water and within five minutes his livebait was swallowed up by a hungry Jack which subsequently spat everything out. Seconds later, I was away but again, a hungry Jack was the culprit. It never ceases to amaze me how such a small predator can do so much damage to my carefully made traces! Anyway, we soldiered on for an hour or so but to no avail. A change of location was in order so I fired up the Seagul and off we went. We fared little better on the main river, Andy scoring again with another Jack. It wasn't until we headed off to my favourite area that the real action began. Almost straight away Andy was into another fish but, yes you guessed it, another Jack. We then hit a bit of a purple patch with both our livebaits dancing around to the tune of Mr Esox Lucius but nothing of any reportable size came to either of us. The time was creeping on so we called it a day. I was quite surprised by how small the fish were today considering the size and quality of the livebaits used. Also, the river current was exceptionally slow but reasonably clear. Again, we saw nothing of any other Pikers so I have no real idea how the river is treating others. Next week will always be better !!......................