The Pike Pit*

This small gravel pit is the smallest and the most northern of the 3 pits on Thatcham AA's ticket. It got it's name from the pike removed from the other 2 lakes and placed in here in the early days of the club (I was told).

Most of my fishing here was in the late eighties and early nineties here, as described below, but I did return briefly in 2006, to find a less enjoyable fishery.

• 14th October 2005, "Hordens Mere"

1985-1992

Pike Pit was my favourite among the three pits on the Thatcham AA permit at that time and allegedly got it's name from the pike that were removed from the other pits and were placed in this one. It was favoured because it was near enough to walk from where I was living and also was the smallest and for me the most feature rich. It is perhaps 150yd by 35, and had shallow water on the North bank, and on the whole deep water off the South, up to 12 feet under your rod tip in places. The west end had a kind of bay area and a small lagoon as well. There were lumps and bumps all over the lake bottom and reed beds on both sides also, plus plenty of tree cover.

For me it reeked of fish. My first experiences there tended to be general float fishing, with mixed maggots, and in 1985 and 1986 you could fill a net with mixed roach and perch on a warm day, especially if you fished in deeper swims,where the fish were under the bank as often as not. For a couple of years the perch were everywhere, but then ( and as you would expect) the pike made an appearance feeding on the perch. I know this because I lost a lot of perch that way, and landed at least 2 pike of about 3lbs that just wouldn't let go.

Attitudes to pike were still basic even then, and it was not unusual to find dead pike on the bank or in the rubbish bins. Duh. As most things go full circle, when the pike food runs out, the pike fade away (and a few big ones make it by eating the others). While on the topic, <RANT>pike don't "spoil fisheries". If they have food, they prosper. If they don't they won't. If you stock 3000 handy silver live baits and you have a breeding pike population...well go figure. Some would say the fishery was spoiled earlier than the pike's appearance.</RANT>

Anyhoo, around about 1989 we went for the "Boxing Day" Pike fish, and stap me if we didn't catch some. I think we ended up with about 8 fish between us, with my best about 8lb and my brother catching a 12lb fish from Jubilee. Not very scientific, and on a frosty and clear Boxing day very satisfying

I got broken up here once (I keep quiet about this normally, I'm up to seven times now). I had a run, and hit it, feeling resistance like a bag of compost on the end. Absolutely immovable. I kept the rod up, and the line tight, and got a couple of tugs. After a bit with no other movement I lowered the rod tip, and with a sudden and powerful pull the line was broken. That was it. One of those moments that makes a prickle run down your neck - the biggest pike I ever caught in Pike Pit was 10.5lbs, and I caught that one twice, but have remained convinced there was a bigger one in there somewhere at that time.

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1985/6 (ish) I used to fish most evenings for the Wild Carp, which were under fished at that time and ran to about 9lbs (my best was 8.5lb). The method was as simple as you like. I fished only a couple of feet from the bank on the south bank of the lake. The water depth was between 9 and 12 feet, and I initially used a 3BB crystal antennae, but ended up with a 1BB version. That 1BB was put about 6 inches from a size 8 lonkshank carp hook, packed with sweet corn, and then loose feed more of the same. The float was attached with braid and I used a braided trace made up with 11lb "Black Spider". I joined this to 8lb mono with a four turn water knot - the braid having been painted with polyurethane varnish for about 3 inches on one end. This worked well, and I never had a break on the knot. I used an 11ft 2lb test curve all through action carp rod (I still have it).

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Fishing that close in meant absolute quiet and stillness. I used to sit on my rucksack cross legged and wait. Several regular visitors learnt to keep quiet and low when dropping in. The bailiff of course clomped about in a white T shirt. This appears to be mandatory. On a good evening you might get three fish, and fishing into the darkness with a beta light would often get another.

The first run from these fish was electrifying and seldom less than 30 yards of head down sprinting. Watch a beta light sizzle 50 yards across the water in near darkness is quite something as well. The fights were hard, and the fish slender and fit, unlike so many over fed fish now. The rather poor picture here (of a great fish) is scanned from an old photo, and was taken at night with a flash.

The other advantage of this method was that is occasionally produced other fish, and there were a few tench, roach and crucians in the lake then, and one evening fishing at the last south bank swim before the reed bed started which was oddly carpless, I had a bite and after something of what I though was an atypical struggle for a 'wildie' discovered this was due to a typical dogged bottom hugging battle from a tench that went just over 6lb, which even with the tackle I habitually used, gave a very good account of itself. Tench do not often exceed the speed and length of run of a wild carp, but the power is often in excess of its cousin, weight for weight, and they are a harder fish to bully where they don't want to go.

One evening, sat in the corner swim, I watched a crucian make it's way along the east side in a series of jumps, and as my bait was 10 feet down, I was not holding my breath as it disappeared for the last time 6 feet from me, but 15 (long) seconds later the float flicked twice and vanished abruptly and I found the crucian was around 2lb, although it had little to say on 8lb line and a 2lb t/c carp rod, although it did it's best.

I also had several surprised roach to a bit over a pound, but nothing larger - big roach are terribly shy, and with the obsessive attention I gave to quiet and keeping out of sight, I would hazard guess that there were very few larger. Hindsight is easy, but I wonder about the possibilities of paste and meat if I'd fished in the same way with them.

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This type of fishing was for the most part a solitary business, relying on quiet and low profiles. Typically I'd pick out a swim in the reed beds and then bait with a few grains of corn only 3 feet form the edge, and rig up a 1BB crystal float with that BB about 6 inches form the hook.. Depth was 9 feet or more. I'd lay the rod on the ground and sit on the flap of my army rucksack and wait. This became a regular thing for me with most evenings being a few hours by the lake until past dusk.

It's a great time as the light fails and you strain to see the float. As mentioned the target was the wild carp, which ran to 8lb or so. As long as you were still and movements were few they cam with regularity. These sessions saw the development of the sixth sense some of us claim as I'd regularly 'know' a bite was imminent. No reason, but a stillness would come over the float and I'd find my attention focussed, and my hand on the rod. I was seldom wrong, and while it is easy to convince yourself that you knew something was about to happen (forgetting all the times it didn't), I pulled this trick off with company.

My regular visits made me a feature and both the bailiff and a lad became regulars. The boy, probably 12 or 14, after initially strolling up and to my mind putting down the fish, understood after we talked about why I did what I was doing and became stealthier as time progressed. One evening, he sidled up and I was lolling off the rod. I was asked if anything was happening. Not at the moment I replied, and then 2 quiet minutes later, I sat up laid a hand on the rod, saying "there is now" and the float vanished with no preliminaries, as it tended to do. I repeated this trick with the bailiff and also with "Call me Zen".

There were times this didn't happen of course, but it's odd. With longer sessions it became clear that the failing light was a key time, so I got a torch and a betalight 3BB (just replaced the beta light, still works), and fish into the night. I had a small torch and used to do all the tackle bits inside my small bag using the torch lest the light fright the fish.

Everything changes at night. The surroundings draw in, making where you are sat enclosed. Your other senses are heightened, a limbic response to those day when we were on the menu. Reeds and leave rustle, fish suck at the reeds.

On one occasion I spooked myself and packed with the frenzied calm that is the last barrier between normality and blind panic. No reason, no ghosts. Calm and measured tread through the bushes between the two lakes and along the track with the muscles on your back crawling. You don't look behind because you know there's nothing there, that would be silly. Then the palpable relief on reaching the far side of the sports field and the street lamps. Unnerving.

One early year Pike trip in 1997 the lake was shrouded in a mist which persisted into the late afternoon. Like so many, it killed noise and did odd things to sounds. The brother and I were a swim apart at the end of the lake nearest the road, and I cannot honestly recall whether we were piking or general fishing.

We had spent some time discussing things of the past and had at length discussed my maternal grandfather, Gramp, and the influence he had on us both as fishermen (and myself as a rough shooter). He had unfortunately died the previous year.

The thing about Gramps was that he had this cough. It was half a throat clear and half a cough. It had a double note like a return call to a wood pigeons [hoo-hooo(hoo)]. When you consider that he had smoked since he was 14, and he had pretty hard life as boy, and then continued with the unfiltered fags all his life, Senior Service and latterly Woodbines (a less aptly named cigarette I cannot think off, but amusing was a B&B in Ambleside, "Woodbine B&B. No Smoking"), it's a wonder he lived past 80 - although the young doctor who told me "smoking has killed your Granddad" at his last visit to Winchester hospital was lucky not to be tossed out of the second floor window (oddly the same ward my wife worked on, before this, even more odd, the same ward his son was on, when diagnosed with cancer as well, at a premature 65). When you add the time spent fighting fires in Pompy and Southampton during the darkest days of the war, 80 plus years was a victory. As he said he had a good knock and no complaints.

Still, the cough. If you had the bad fortune to be stuck in the queue for the loo while Gramp was having his morning cough you needed a stout bladder. But leaving that aside, this half cough would resurface during the day. We got used to it. It was a calling card. A throat clear with a glottal stop on the end.

On that day in the curling mist, after remembering him fondly we heard the cough. I risked a look at himself. I'd like to think I had a wooden face. The sibling started visibly and looked at me. No one spoke. A minute or two passed, during which I suspect, neither of us pointedly didn't look behind us. Footsteps up the bank passed quickly through nerves to rationality as a normal figure with a slight but altogether wrong cough, materialised out of the white fluff and with an "alright lads" moved on. Well that's OK then.

Sly sense of humour Gramps had. 'Old Bob' may have caught us that time. If we'd heard a chuckle it'd not have surprised us.

1992 (ish)

We were fishing on Pike Pit and this wondered past - we couldn't quite believe the size so we hoiked it out with the landing net. Big isn't it? Non native crayfish, bit of a pest now. Not great pictures but pre-digital camera you know. That really is an 8 inch baitbox.

*known as 'Horden's Mere' these days...