Carnival of Death

'It's bleak. The fish I mean - they're bleak.' 

Dom Garnett's right in both senses. The cold sucking mud hasn't been improved by a marinade of spattering rain, but this is the Somerset Levels and wet by definition. Anyway we're not here for pastoral charm, though this landscape does have a certain quality of atmosphere that's perversely appealing. We've been drawn here by the sometimes hectic pike action, hoping for a few nice fish this morning on the fly. Perch are in our minds too.   

We arrive at dawn with high expectations which seem rightly justified as the surface erupts here and boils there, silver baitfish scattering like ball bearings across the surface. Thousands upon thousands of them - tiny bleak - their biomass we can only guess at, but it must be prodigious. And the predators know it - this feeding frenzy is positively Jurassic, a pike Carnival of Death says Dom. I feel like I'm inside a BBC nature documentary.

We are trying to work out which hits are from pike and which might be from perch. Right under the near bank in front of me, a bait ball of bleak explodes as a yard long pike scythes through the shoal, turning this way and that to swallow as many tiny victims as possible. I wonder what it must be like to end up with your mates, all intact but waiting to be slowly digested within a pike's belly. And like Jonah and the whale, I wonder if any get lucky enough to make the return journey.

A pattern begins to emerge from the chaos of the shattered surface. The attacks come in waves - brief, intense and across multiple locations - some in mid channel, some closer to the banks, followed by several minutes of calm before the next predatory raid. I imagine the baitfish beneath the surface being given time to recover and regroup before a new attack is launched. Sometimes the surface erupts with tiny bodies in several patches at once. I visualise a shoal of perch hunting co-operatively to herd the bleak into ever tighter bait balls before lunging in. Sure enough, I glimpse the back of a perch as it rolls to take fish from the surface - corralled under the far bank. 

We are flinging our smallest and most realistic streamers into the fray but between us we just can't win a take. It's a strange experience - confidence inspiring to be on feeding fish, but at the same time the failure to connect is demoralising. I take some heart from the knowledge that even Dom is having an equally tough time, but to be honest I would much rather see him catch.

We fish on but remain fish-less. But as blanks go this one is of the highest quality. Driving home through driving rain I replay the day's thought-movie and reflect: good memories are often made with good friends and so it is. To have caught a fish today would have changed the meaning of the day. I like this day just as it is, with mysteries unsolved, and I feel privileged and inspired to have been so close for a while to nature's wild, beating and yet untouchable heart.       
                

the follow of the pike

It is hard, with a low winter sun, to track the feathers as they twitch and glide back over the deep pool. I'm holding my breath, eyes straining for any movement beneath the reflections of the willow trees - muddy stripes on the jade surface. I'm sure there is a pike here.

I've searched this cold river for hours, dropping a streamer into any likely spot. My fingers are numb and I'm scolding myself for leaving those stripping guards. They seemed an extravagant purchase back at the Orvis store. The grainy fly line and cold water conspire to make tiny stripping-cuts in my fingers. No gloves for pike fishing though. For the primal trip it has to be hand to jaw.  

In these deep winter days distant seems the  memory of summer surface poppers and surging bow wave takes. It's so easy now, after these take-less hours, to fall into a mechanical way of fishing. Cast, retrieve, repeat. The cycle speeds up, the mind wanders, opportunities are missed. It can sometimes happen now that a savage take catches you out. Often in such moments I forget to strip-set the hook and the rod twangs straight again, leaving me with nothing but collywobbles and a melancholy wondering of what could have been. And there is that  certain frisson of angling for a species that can actually mess you up. Pay them respect and most pike are docile enough in the net. But now and again along comes a fish that fixes you with an eye of pure bedevilment. "Oh please bring those soft hands close, for so big am I and so very hungry." Safe catch and return, for both pike and for angler is a craft to be learned and not taken lightly.

I play a trick on myself t0 keep in the zone, imagining a pike detaching from cover and approaching my streamer with ill intent. No more dogmatically stripping the fly back, now I pause and twitch and dart the feathers to entice a strike from my imaginary pike. 

When I first cast into a really pikey looking lair anticipation is high and nerves can be stretched. Sometimes the fly is hit violently the very instant it splashes down. How can a fish lay motionless, unseen and silent yet ready to explode in a nanosecond, nailing the fly in  one take? 

More often there is no immediate sign. When the water is deep and the pike are likely holding near the river bed, that's when I imagine a following pike. No, I'm not imagining, I'm willing a pike to manifest. And, I've found, if you will really hard then sometimes you can conjure up a spectral shape behind your fly. At first this may seem like a trick of the light or the misreading of some reflection. But pike can materialise in mid-water as if gathered of the very atoms of their surroundings. If you stare very hard now the loosely defined shape of a fish may resolve. And when your ghost fish actually follows your fly it is as if a shadow has crossed the spectral plane to become fin and flesh and tooth and bone. Something visible and definite and real you can connect to. 

Your task now is to induce that final rush and predatory strike, and remember to strip-set your hook. Invariably there is but one chance. Usually (but not always), a pike that follows but doesn't take will probably not take on your second, third or tenth retrieve either (though they may well be content enough to follow from their own idle curiosity or need for entertainment). So I try to judge the mood of the pike as it follows. Aggressive fish may dash and hammer a fly that speeds away from them, for fear of missing a meal. 

Sometimes an uncooperative fish can be provoked to strike seemingly out of irritation at a gaudily dressed and arrogant interloper (your lovingly crafted tinsel confection you have named 'pike teaser' or some other confidence inspiring appellation). Sometimes I feel as if my most colourful streamer is like some flamboyant and suicidal transvestite sashaying down the middle of death row. The cell doors are open and a cry of "come and get me girls" is ringing out.

But there are many times when a more sombre pattern scores, when my instinct is to match the hatch with baitfish colours and just a little flash. Now, more pensive pike may tip to examine a motionless fly and take their time before opening those jaws and sipping in. 

But their are no real rules to catching pike on the fly. At least if there are they are made up solely by the pike who constantly change them and seldom share more than the briefest of glimpses.