On November 8th 2009, myself and two friends set out on the 110 mile journey to Welney, Cambridgeshire to take part in the Pike Fly Fishing Association's annual charity match, held on the river Delph and the Old Bedford river. Having only recently taken up the sport of fly fishing for pike, we had entered the competition in an attempt to learn a few things about the tackle and tactics that other ( possibly more experienced ) pike fly anglers were using, and above all to enjoy the experience. We were also using our PIKESABERS for the first time, and I was looking forward to seeing what other anglers thought of my new baby.
The day of the contest dawned bright and sunny, not exactly good conditions for fishing in my experience, but it meant at least that we could set out to have a good wander around and have plenty of banter with the other contestants, maybe learning a few things along the way.
Everyone gathered at the Lamb and Flag public house in Welney village, where bacon rolls were consumed along with mugs of steaming hot tea, and the registrations of the 20-odd competitors were filled out. With formalities over, all the anglers trooped outside to the car park where tackling-up was commenced, and group photos were taken to record the day for posterity. At about 8-thirty, all the contestants wandered off to start fishing; this was a very informal event and there was no stampede to get to the hot-spots!
Dave Scales, John Dean and I traipsed off on a long walk upstream along the river Delph, heading for a stretch of river that I was familiar with from 35 years ago. It was a hot-spot in those days and my late Father and I fished there several times during the 1972/3 seasons, and it had never let us down before so it seemed like as good a place to start as anywhere! We had agreed to fish together as a team all day, and as we arrived in the area it looked lovely and fishy, in fact it had not changed a bit in the 30-odd intervening years. The water was gin-clear and prospects looked good for a take or two.
After nearly two hours of fishing hard, we had not had a single follow from a pike so a change of plan was called for. We decided to move to the Old Bedford river, which lay only a few yards away behind the flood-bank to our rear, and have another go. This water was also exceptionally clear, but after half an hour or so I had a take! I had the fish on for only a few seconds until it spit the hook, but repeated casting over the fish saw the culprit have another go at the fly, until I lost it again by striking too quickly. The pike followed a couple more times, but appeared to have lost much of it's eagerness and I gave up trying and moved further along to another swim. It had only been a small pike, probably four or five pounds maximum, but I was still a little sore from losing the bugger as I just wanted to "score a goal"! At that point, I had no idea how important that fish could possibly have been!
By now it was lunchtime, and mine was the only action of any kind the three of us had experienced. We sat down for sandwiches and tea, and pondered what to do next. Three more hopefuls appeared from further up the river with the news that one of them had caught a three pound fish, which didn't exactly fill us with enthusiasm for walking any further in that direction, so we opted instead to walk about half a mile back in the direction of the pub and fish a section of the river that hadn't yet seen an angler. We leap-frogged one-another all the way back to the road bridge without so much as a follow to show for our combined efforts, and to be honest we were getting a bit despondent and fed-up, especially when we learned from the other competitors that nothing had been caught at this end. It seemed that the young lad's three-pounder was in the lead all on it's own; now it suddenly dawned on me what that lost fish could have been worth, I might have stood a chance of a prize! I mentioned to John and Dave that a lucky fish in the last couple of hours of the contest might well put one of us in with a chance, and a decent fish would probably win it hands down. With renewed enthusiasm we set about the deep pool on the Delph, right next to the road bridge. Apparently anglers had been fishing it on and off all day but without any action, but we weren't about to let that put us off!
There were two day-ticket lads fishing the centre of the pool and both had been catching pike all day long, in fact one of them had caught about a dozen on livebaits, and his mate had managed six or seven. I found a difficult to fish spot just upstream of the bridge, and miraculously after about twenty casts a pike zoomed up out of nowhere and engulfed my fly, Dave ran across to net it for me and we weighed it in at 3lbs.eight ounces. Shit! I was in the lead! As we took photos, John shouted over that he was also in. I ran down to assist and we weighed his pike at 3lbs.dead. Suddenly, things seemed a little more promising, and it seemed like we might be in with a chance of winning something!
Meantime, Dave was fishing his socks off over on the other side of the river, he had been the first of us to change to a sinking line and a floating fly, a technique that we'd been working on for several months. John had followed suit and it had caught him a fish, so I left my shallow swim above the road bridge and changed my line to a full fast- sinker. I dropped in next to John down at the tail end of the pool and despatched a full 30 yards over to the tree-line on the far side of the river. The fly turned the leader over and dripped off the branches of an overhanging tree. I let it sink for twenty seconds and began a slow retrieve, twitching the fly back with little tweaks and pulls on the line. After a few seconds, all went solid, I struck and a fish kicked on the other end! We were in business!
It weighed a little over four pounds, and we reckoned that it had probably put me into the lead, unless anybody had caught fish downstream of us. Dave and John fished like men possessed, they weren't about to let Strelley get away with this without some kind of fight! During the following hour I lost two more and later I had another four- pounder, and I really started to think that I was in with a shout of at least a prize, when two anglers appeared from downstream with the news that nothing had been caught down that way, and they were the last two anglers back. We had another ten minutes fishing and then we gave it best, making our way back to H.Q. for the presentation.
I had indeed won the trophy with 3 pike totalling just over twelve pounds, second place went to the young lad we'd met earlier in the day with his 3lbs.6ozs. pike, and Deany was third with his three-pounder. Those five pike were the only ones caught , and we had caught four of them! I had also lost three in total, not bad for our first attempt, and a great result for the PIKESABERS! Roll on next year!
