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Date fished 11/11/2023

8:30am until 3.30pm 

Two blanks from my last two trips, I was starting to get worried. With cold weather now approaching, the fishing was going to get tough. Looking at the conditions, and discussing with Ellis and Tom, a Tees trip was planned. 

What actually happened was Ellis and I went to a club water for pike and chub and Tom headed to an association water in search of pike. More on him later. 

I dropped in to get maggots and met Ellis at the venue at 8.30. A short walk to the river and we saw the frost waiting for us. In truth, the sun came out quite strongly and we both regretted not having sunglasses (for only about five minutes).

Ellis had pike gear and a ledger rod for chub, I had a chub ledger rod and a float rod for ..............

We walked a fair way upstream, avoiding a suicidal pheasant and decided on a spot, in hindsight the wrong spot. A few casts and some leaves caught.

I watched some bubbles move towards me, I knew what it was. An otter surfaced five feet in front of me, did a 360 flip and splashed away. A moment later popping its head out to look at me again. Was great to see. A few more leaves caught, so we moved on. 

Another spot fished, even more leaves caught here, so we headed back to the start of the beat. 

The fact this whole time was a few hours, shows the type of fishing trip we had, the highlight being a new jetty.

However, as always, it's not just about catching. Ellis and I had a good old chat and a giggle as every swim we fished in together. 

Picking a swim we both fancied, and should of started in. We fished again. After a few minutes Ellis's deadbait was away and a spirited pike swimming around in the deep slack. 

As we fished on, I remarked that we had not seen a Kingfisher. Not ten minutes later, one then two flew past, settled on branches opposite and fished there most of the afternoon. They caught more than me too!! 

With that premonition coming true so quick, I then tried my luck with declaring I had not caught a big chub, Ellis quickly announced he had not won the lottery yet! If he's not around tomorrow, he's won and not told us!! 

The phone was soon beeping with news from Tom's "lottery" win. He had caught a tiddler (his words). At 18lb 5oz, ( A new pb) it was a great pike. Well done to him!!

Soon it was getting colder and a quick move to another slack had me clutching for another blank saver. I had already tried and failed to catch a minnow. Ellis and I had both some snags to our tally though. 

It was not to be and the drive home was spent feeling proud of my mates and their pike! And I just got worms, not those kind!! Oh, and three blanks in a row!