Ryton Pike - Part 3

The weekend before last, before the big freeze, I fished an early session at Ryton. Arriving just before eight meant I had the place to myself with the choice of swims, I opted for the sand bank and it wasn't too long before I had a couple of dead baits out onto spots that had produced runs on previous trips.
To cut a long story short, it was another one of those long sessions that suddenly burst into life right at the end. I'd tried a few casts all around the sandbank area through the morning without a touch and decided to have one last cast into the area that had seen the first cast of the day. I was due to pack up at midday for an afternoon of festive shopping so had kind of got everything all packed up ready to go, I had a couple of twitches on my free lined bait which developed into coils of line slowly being pulled from the reel, I picked up the rod and allowed the fish to take some more line before closing the bale arm and arching the rod back into a satisfying curve with a resistance to match, at last a Pike. I was hoping for a good scrap and have one of the lakes 'big girls' roll into the landing net, the scrap was very dull and the small Pike gave up fairly easily.

At 8lb 8oz, it's not big but at least it's a fish on the bank.