Well my van was off the road for nearly two weeks with fuel injector and pump problems, so my fishing was on hold, I was aiming to fish Lough Allen for large trout, and the weather was perfect for the big lakes, So all I could do was tie some flies for next year, but I was going crazy stuck at home, I normally tie flies when the weather is bad and fish in high pressure when the weather tends to be good. but it doesn’t always work that way.
So vans back check the weather, the forecast is great for two days, Friday and Saturday, with a big low coming in on Sunday. So time to get everything checked and ready , my favourite type of pike fishing is static dead baiting, using long pencil type floats leaving the bait fish on the bottom, but its far too early in the season for that tactic ,so I will be trolling baits and lures, I will be using big floats with diving plugs, bulldogs, spinning baits, weed less baits for the Lilly pads and dead roach trolled slowly, all depending on what works best. all with fingers crossed as you always need a little luck that the fish are ready to play ball.
So Friday an early start, the alarm goes off at 6 probably an hour too late, but I’m not used too the early starts just yet. As normally the summer trout fishing means late starts, but with pike fishing as the winter really gets going you really can not afford too miss any of the daylight, When I arrive at the lake in Leitrim, the mist is still rising off the water, and now I wish I had got up earlier to see the sun rise, but I will get my chance tomorrow. So I decide that my first method will be slow trolling with two rods, with a dead roach on one and a small bulldog on the other rod, fished about seven to ten feet deep , using two big wooden floats to control the depth of the baits, using stop knots . The speed I will be going, will be, no one on my electric motor, so just enough to give a little movement to the baits. It was not long before I had my first fish on the bulldog, a little jack of about four pounds, its always good to hit a fish early, as it relaxes you, and you will always fish better in the right frame of mind, ie I have not blanked. Another hour later I hooked into a heavier fish on the dead bait, which came in at ten and a half pounds and I am thinking I am on for a really good day 
After my first two fish I start getting hit and not connecting with the fish, probably five or six times, a quick hit lift rod and nothing , I start to think how the fish can miss the hooks when in the boat they catch everything, coats, bags, boxes, and boy do they love the net, and the odd finger. Unknown to me, as I was looking forward and at the depth finder trying to skim the Lilly pads and keep the baits from grounding and picking up weeds , the pike were hitting my floats. Later on in the day I started too move off the edges of the lake and into slightly deeper water, so then I started looking at the floats more, to get an early heads up on the bites, when I saw a pike breach the water completely, missing my float by inches , the penny dropped, but the day was coming to an end and I was wondering if I would regret my missed chances, but I will be back.
The next morning I am up an hour earlier and do get to see the sun rise, with the mist rolling around the lake. I see I am not the only one to be up early, as I see a Great Crested Grebe swimming along with a small fish in its beak, it then found its chick and fed it in the reeds. So anyway back to the fishing I again started the same way as I did the day before, but with no luck but, then the float was attacked again and this time I changed tactic straight away, by now the sun was up and it was a beauty, hard to believe tomorrow was promised so bad, a real calm before the storm.
The Fishing took off, ten fish came to the baits, mostly evenly spread through the day with the odd forty feet between two. The baits I used were smallish type floating baits that, trolled slowly would keep breaking the surface just like my floats the previous day , great fun but all Jacks, Not one broke the four pound weight . There are big fish in this small lake, which is stocked with trout every year for the last thirty years, and there has been four twenty pound fish in my boat in the last few years, with some four or five big doubles in a single day, when conditions are right but not today. So for the last two to three hours off the day, I went deep with deep diving plugs, fishing fifteen feet deep, to cover the last section of water that I had not fished, in the hope of hitting something big, but alas I caught another Jack, but still fun. This two day pike fishing has really wet my appetite for the season ahead, and I will be coming back to this lake near Carrigallen many times this year, looking for the big girl day. Tight lines
