The water is question is a brook typically less than a foot deep. I know it's pretty much devoid of all fish and Jeff (Idler's Quest) confirmed it. However, he failed to spot the Pike on a recent scouting mission and that left me a little bit doubtful as to the vailidity of the previous sightings.
So, I went round my mum's to borrow their trusty hound and to save her the bother of walking the aforementioned mutt, known as Murphy. She told me look for the Pike by the footbridge and so off I went.
"The Murph"
We took the long walk around to the spot in question so that I could tire Murphy out a bit. As I approached the footbridge I started to look at the water at bit more closely and it was as barren as ever. I honestly wasn't expecting to see anything. I then reached the footbridge and looked under it first of all - figuring that it would give a fish a bit of cover. It wasn't there.
I then looked downstream and this is what I was greeted with:
As you can see it's a narrow brook and looks unremarkable. Then I looked harder and sure enough I spotted a fish - a very big fish for this water. It's smack bang in the centre of this photo:
I photographed it from various angles to see if I could get a decent shot of it. This is the best I could muster in the end:
I threw in a couple of sticks and measured them against the fish as they floated past. It's about 2ft 8ins long by my reckoning, which according to a Pike chart would make it about a 5lb fish. It also has some strange white looking marks on the back of its head.
I know that it's really just a Jack, but it's a fish of incredible proportions for the brook in question. I seriously hope it's a vegetarian though, because there's next to nothing for it to feed on! How it got there is a real mystery. I've never seen a fish of more than about an ounce in this water in about 30 odd years. I would never have believed that a fish like that could turn up out of the blue.
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