Social fishing is when wives come along too, but days have to be allocated for socialising and others for fishing. A brief visit to Meadowbank Touring Park on the banks of the River Stour at Christchurch, was one such event this week. With rain forecast for Wednesday and sunshine for Thursday, a long lunch at the New Queen pub was the obvious choice for Wednesday, leaving Thursday free for my friend John and I to get on with the serious business of fishing, while the two Julies soaked up the sun. Er, one problem. The British weather decided not to co-operate. It rained.

Results on the Stour since the start of the season had been poor and so it was for John and I as we struggled to get through the minnows. John was thirty yards downstream on an opening out bend, while I had the straight above. Starting on a 3 gram stick float over eight feet of water, John soon switched to the swim feeder with bread on the hook, still unable to escape the minnows, until roach found his bait. Going back to the float, feeding hemp, but with bread punch on the hook he began to pick up the occasional small roach.

Upstream I had streamer weed stretching out past the middle of the river, but found a six foot deep run four metres out and began feeding tight balls of liquidised bread, ground carp pellets and hemp, plus boiled hemp seed, putting them in a rod length upstream. In front of me, giant hog weed had lined the bank, which the owners had cut back, then allowed to fall forward into the river, creating a tangled barrier which extended eight feet into the river. My first job was to drag out an area wide enough to get the keepnet in and to give space for netting fish. At last I was ready to fish and after thirty minutes of frustration in the form of bait stealing minnows, my swim switched on and I began to catch roach.

Making an upstream cast, the 6 No 4 stick float float was settling in front of me and under as I held it back, the fish being over the feed where it had carpeted the bottom. Perfect, but not quite. Streamer weed lined the channel in front and claimed two fish, until I began lifting them up to the surface over the weed to where I could net them.

Bites were plentiful, due mainly to the minnows, some of which were monsters, like small gudgeon, but dace had also invaded the swim, stripping the bread in seconds, lifting and bobbing the float, but evading the hook, leaving it bare. I tried sweet corn and neat hempseed on the hook, again bobs and dives of the float, but no fish. Back on the bread punch, I managed to land a few, but most tumbled off before I could get them to the surface. At least the rain had stopped and my Julie was able to remove her rain jacket and mine from her knees, when the sun came out. She went back to make some sandwiches.

I hooked a decent roach, that suddenly shot to the surface. A pike was after it and I swung it clear, just as the pike swirled on the surface.

The swim went dead. My attempts to revive it with more feed were mocked by the pike, that dived each time into the middle of it, scattering fish in all directions. Julie returned with freshly made sandwiches, which were consumed, before I asked her to go back for my spinning rod and plugs. Good wife that she is, went off, returning later with the pike fishing kit. I had begun catapulting hempseed over to the middle, ignoring the inside line, which was a mistake, as by the time that I had set up the spinning rod, the pike had moved, the surface fishing lure untroubled.

Trotting the float down the middle soon saw the float disappear and a small roach hooked and landed.

The hempseed feed with punched bread on the hook was working again and another roach was at the surface on it’s way to the net. The surface erupted and the roach was snatched off! Another pike, or the same one? I tied on another size 14 barbless hook and went back to my inside line, feeding only hempseed with bread punch on the hook. More fussy bites and a dace in the net. Good.

The float went down and the rod bent double with a big fish, that slowly swam upstream, then accelerated, powering out toward the middle, as I backwound the ABU 501 in response. I said to Julie that this was a big fish, maybe a barbel, or a big bream. Applying steady pressure it turned back and I got the landing net ready, but it kept deep and went off again. The hook came free. My disappointment turned to anger, when I saw that a small scale was impaled on the hook. It had been a pike, that had taken a dace as I hooked it, the hook pulling out on the second run.

Assuming that the pike would be content with it’s latest meal, I continued trotting down the inside line, holding back then easing the float bringing a positive bite. Yes! A good dace was tumbling deep beneath the rod top and I got the landing net ready, as I brought it up over the streamer weed. A green flash, the rod arched over and the dace was gone, the pike leaving a swirling boil on the surface.

That was enough for one day. I was tempted to have a go with a deep swimming lure, but sometimes you have to admit defeat. I had never got a chance to put a decent session together, before The Pike stuck his long toothy snout in to spoil the day. Even building a new swim down the middle had found a pike.

I walked down to John, who had also had troubles of one kind, or another. He had doubled my weight, but was in the process of packing up himself. Our verdict, Social 10 out of 10, Fishing 4 out of 10. Next time we will try a different spot and take some proper pike gear.