 5-1, so the 30th of January and pike fishing today on the Bristol Avon. Must be about three or four years since I last did it. But yeah, I'm not good and there's a time and place for everything. I should be doing my tax end of year tax return. So I'm going to get set up as quickly as I can. Starting off with my chair. It slowed down nicely. Still a reasonable pace and a little bit of colour, not much. But the weather is absolutely spot on. It's now 14 degrees. I've chosen the spot where I've got my dog leg in the river. So I've got a slack on my inside line where I'm going to put the float out. There's plum in the depth. I'm not using the plum here. I'm using the two ounce lead. That's actually plum depth. I've got a three pound Tesco carp rod. I won't use the bait when I function on it because it's going to be my float rod. Oh yeah, so 18 pound line is a minimum. A large specimen net and it's nice and cheap. I've cut holes in it, I will, and to get trebles back. So at the terminal end, I'm fishing half a mackerel, single hook at the top. That is barbed and treble into the dorsal fin at the top where there's a little bit more bristle for the hook to stay in. Other two points are barbless. That's a size 8 or a size 6. SSG is in a good lead on a separate piece of amnesia line. That's to stop the abrasion of the lead. And then I've got a sliding pipe bar. I'm using a 35 gram sliding float. I've got a bead above it and then I've got a stop knot and that's tied with power gum. I've already plumbed the depth. It is important to plumb the depth with all deep hooking. Layed out there, I've got my own hooking mat. I've also got a wasling, some snips, long nose foresets and some standard foresets. There's no point using long nose foresets if I can see the hooks nice and close to the front of the mouth because they're less effective. My plan is to fish with a bait just to spend it off the moment. It's very snaggy down there, so I'm going to move my stop knot down by the length, same length of the trace so it's just off the bottom. So that's drifting round in the eddy in circles basically. Any food coming down if any dead fish that have been killed by the frosts, recent frosts or floods I hopefully be pulled up in this area. The baits I'm using today are mackerel. They're still a bit frozen but I'd much rather than be frozen than defrosted if I'm honest. I want them to be as fresh as possible. Pike don't like resistance. That's why you'll see a lot of pike anglers fishing with their pike rung flat on the surface, slightly over depth and in the depths of winter I've found that pike can sit there, eat the bait and the float not move, so that's why I'm not doing that today. A ledger bait set up. It's on an 18 inch long running trace and I've elasticated the the hooks down onto the mackerel and I'm going to flatten these barbs down. Be really careful when cast out to make sure that the bait lands away from the main line otherwise you could end up really damaging the pike. I thought it set up high as possible to get the line out the main flow. Alright now it's passed, nothing's going on so I'm just going to move down to the next corner where it's a little bit slacker, a little bit shallower. You can see it slows down a little bit more, I've got much more of a slack. I'm obviously not the only one that fishes here because shells on the bank are hotter. As I said, I've only got an hour left, that's going to pick up my sun and the winter these fish can sit their dormant doing nothing but weeks on end. So you do sometimes just have to get mobile and find them. There's a definite bit of pike movement up on the surface, just another 20-30 yards down where it really slows down the flow. Now you get that niggling feeling and the more you think about it, the more it won't go away. I need to move, even though I've only been here for about 10 minutes, I need to move. You see from the huge amount of silt that's deposited down here that when this reverse really chugging through, it's all being dumped on this bend. It settles up nicely on that silt bank. As far as to put money on which bait were to get hit first, not that either necessarily will be hit, it would be the float just because it's moving around a little bit more naturally in this current. If I was to put money on which lines most like to get snagged, it would be the float just moving around and it's going to find a snag and I won't know about it until I try and wind it in. So I don't leave it out for more than about 15 minutes. We don't see any point in fishing further away than what's necessary. I like to be able to have a good vision on the float and also on where the line ends to the water. I'm using a lead. Just looking at my pike bung and I'm wondering whether maybe something's picked that up. If I am going to strike, I'm going to strike really hard. Yeah, that was a definite bob. Right, let's get this going. Well, I'm open. That's going. It's a jack. Now, bold accounts there should be loads of huge fish in this stretch because there's shoals of stream here between four and seven pounds. So somewhere out there, you'd think there's a huge 20, 30 pound fish. So I'll just check in some mouth for any hooks. I know there's none, but they are. It's a pike. That's great. Let's get it back. I'm not going to use the net. I'm going to put this one back in my hand. But I'm not going to be treading on that silt because it looks lethal. Instead of some damage to bind his gill on the other side, I think there might be, you know, maybe a heron or a cormorant that's tried to get it get hold of this fish. Otherwise, it's like a very healthy fish. But yeah, just behind his gill plate on the right hand side. There we go. He is gone. Good stuff. Well, I was right about the float going first, wasn't I? Must be right about something for once. I wonder how Jesse's getting on. He had a fantastic fish when I fished with him last time. That's what inspired me to come out and give it a go myself. Do you know what I think? I've got another bite. That float is travelling upstream. That's a run. That's a bit of fish, isn't it? Yeah, that's a bit of fish that's staying deep. God, Limey's woken up. Oh, you missed all that. The camera's facing the wrong way. And that was out for about five minutes after that little one. Well, it's bigger than I thought, actually. Yeah, nice fish. Possibly pushing on double, of course, lively. I'm trying to do is turn him upside down. There you go. Lift the gill plate. I can see the hook is actually in the gill. So I'm quite careful here. It's out the gill. Take the treble out, get some forceps on the treble just so that if he flashes around, it's in the forceps, not me. I might have to do this single is a flat in the barb to get that out. There we are, that's out. So we'll see he's easily pushing on double figures, fracking fish. That's what's coming out for a net. It's worth changing spots until you find the fish. I will use the net to put this one back. I won't weigh him. All right, it goes great. I'd better go home and pick up my son from school and then do my tax return. Cheers for watching.