Kick in the b*lls Kingsbury

For some reason I love to fish Kingsbury Water Park. Over the last 15 years fishing partners have lost interest, bored of countless blanks, but I’ve persisted, don’t ask me why but I keep going back for more punishment.

Still trying to master the art of self take photography, as you can see...

Last winter I fished it hard with lures, catching on most trips but luring nothing particularly of note (biggest fish was 12lb).

This season I decided to give it a go with deads. “This will single out the bigger fish,” I thought to myself. However after five trips and one pike of just under 10lbs to show for my efforts I was getting bored of fishing behind static rods. Yesterday I was again sitting there bored and miserable so I decided to break my lure curfew and flick a Eumer fly around, I wondered off to find a few likely looking spots and after a while I came across a deep bay, where I thought I saw a large fish boil on the surface. Maybe it was a grebe. Anyway the area looked promising so I gave it a bit of time. Suddenly, as I was wondering what to have for tea my rod bent around and I hit into a fish, the line immediately went slack as the fish began to swim towards me at quite a pace, I wound in quickly to try and regain some line and finally I felt some strong resistance down below. Wow, it felt like a bit of a lump. The fish was 10ft down and stayed at that depth as it powered off across the lake, slowly ticking line off of the spool - like big pike tend to do.

Eventually I clawed back a bit of ground and managed to get the, now evidently large, pike to the surface, it boiled and I managed to see a fair old portion of it’s flank. It was big. Over 20lb in my head. Then off it went again, ‘tick’ ‘tick’ went the spool, then ‘ping’ went the fly as it lost its footing in the pikes spiky jaws.

I was (still am) gutted. Hopefully the Wye can cheer me up tomorrow…