Mission accomplished

Dawn this morning, as seen from my swim on Black Dyke

Knowing that Bev's cancer treatment will be getting underway very shortly, my session down on Black Dyke, this morning, might just prove to be the final one of this Pike season? I had been down to this same stretch yesterday and blanked, although did have a dropped run. The bait being rejected before I got anywhere close to the rod. Because it is such an intimate venue, last night I decided to ditch the centrepins and use the Okuma CBBF 5000's with open bale arms instead. Indication would be provided by my home made drop-off arms in conjunction with the Siren R3's. 

My homemade drop off arms are as simple as it gets? 
That's a champagne cork (painted orange) on a length of carbon rod with map pins for the line clip.

I will never know if the switch from centrepins to open bale arms had any effects on my success because the Pike are incapable of passing on such information. What I do know, however, is that I landed two fish this morning and one of them was to see my "double" from Black Dyke challenge ticked off. The first one might have weighed six, or seven, pounds, the second one was an absolute beauty of 14 lbs 7 oz and ensured my journey home was with a huge smile on my face.

To quote James Denison - "That's a wrap!"

Although conditions were rather gloomy, I kept the polarizing filter on the 18 - 55 mm lens and am very pleased with the results. I had the camera set in manual mode, 1/125 th sec exposure with auto ISO setting, it being mounted on a bank stick, via a Gardner adaptor. Always happy to learn, so Youtube isn't such a bad place to seek advice, if camera techniques are concerned, as no Pike are harmed if the information is inferior.