The luck of the Fly

Today was going to be another day on the river at Barford with Barry, our last trip to Barford just happened to be on a match day, usually a Saturday, which spoilt our choice of pegs so with today being a Wednesday we thought we would have had the river to ourselves. We called in at Baileys in Warwick to purchase my ticket for the day and luckily/unluckily we found out there was a match on today, mid week. I'd prepared myself for a day of Barbel and Chub fishing but also brought a few frozen Roach to have a go for the Zander, the plans were now out of the window. Barry suggested a few places and we settled on the pound at Kingswood Junction, Lapworth, he'd heard of a good Pike coming out of there recently through a hole in the ice so it was worth a go. I've not fished there before so anywhere new is worth having a look at and on arrival it looked promising, the canal was free of ice along that section and the pound was clear up the centre. I was not prepared for Pike fishing having only my Avon rods with me but I put a small Roach on each rod and out they went.
After about ten minutes one of the yellow washing up liquid bottle top indicators on Barry's rod rose slowly and the line tightening as a Pike made off with his Sardine, after a short scrap a nice jack of around eight pound lay nicely lip hooked in the bottom of the net, it looked to be a good start.

A few hours later and after a move around to the mouth of the pound the only thing that touched my bait was a gull that grabbed one of my Roach when I cast it out, nothing else sniffed at our baits, so, with the wind getting colder, we called it a day.