John Bailey – The Kingfisher Diaries
October 26th 2009
A Change in the Weather
It's the middle of the month and I've just been enjoying the first pike fishing weekend of the season. A lot of fish came out but, interestingly, only one a really decent size. A few scraper doubles and then scores of jacks. Mind you, it was hardly late autumnal weather...air temperatures were consistently hovering around 14º and the water, too, I guess was abnormally warm. We always traditionally used to think of pike fishing beginning after the first frosts when temperatures plummet and perhaps there was always a lot of sense in the old fishing lores and experiences.
Whatever you think about global warming, I think we have to appreciate that the climate is changing in subtle ways and as far as I'm concerned that's why tench, say, and bream and barbel are just growing so big. I've never really held with the opinion that it's high-protein baits going into waters that makes this amazing difference. In fact, I can think of many totally unfished tench waters where the fish have still gone from an average of five pounds to perhaps eight or more. My own belief is that warmer water makes for richer food supplies and longer feeding periods.
My old mate, John Wilson, would also add that the cormorant threat has also cut back on the number of silver fish in waters. This means less competition for the food that is available.
Fishermen traditionally tend to exist in their own bubble and providing we're getting bites, it's easy to ignore what's going on in the world. At present, I think that rising temperatures mean that we fish for pike later in the year and perhaps begin our tench campaigns earlier in the spring than we ever dreamed possible when we - I at least, were kids!
And we haven't even mentioned the sea. One of my pike fishing cronies was telling me that his bass fishing friends expect to catch the species now year round. The only slight dip, sometimes, is in February. Long gone are the days when we knew bass would depart out shores in October or November.