Disastrous Day - Pike Fishing At It's Best

Myself and a mate decided to try a water for pike yesterday and it was a bit of a mess.
We got along all the roads no problem and then drove up by the farm on the 'road' up to the water....the 'road' was covered in ice and we slid sideways into a ditch and after trying everything we knew or were capable of between his athletic form and my heavyweights frame....lol....had to get the farmer and he pulled us out with a tractor, which was very good of him. Not so much as complaint. He even asked if we'd like to park in the farm and walk to the water instead, rather than trying to negotiate the road but we thankfully declined because we had 3/4s of a ton of piking gear with us.
After some goodbyes and even the offer to park in his farm any time we wished from now on, we decided to try somewhere closer to home. We got all our gear together, negotiated a fence and walked down to the water only to find....it was frozen over. How much luck can we have on one day?
I decided it would be a good idea for Andy (my mate) to stop where we were to watch the gear while I did a quick recce. I came back and we did actually manage to find a space to get out rods in for some fishing at least but as luck would have it, the only space we could get out rods in was the No.1 choice for noddies everywhere. By this time we had had enough and thought we may as well try our luck, even for a jack or something to show for our efforts.
Oh yes....we blanked.

......Andy......

PS: If we get a thaw this week, we,ll try for the original water again at the weekend and drop a few beers off to our new farmer friend....

i know what you mean andy, very same for me. 25 miles up the road to find the water frozen. had a walk round and found one corner with no ice....... and no fish.

pretty much the same story for me and tootall today..... except according to the manager the lake had defrosted overnight and was absolutely clear by the time we got there at 7am.
tootall had 1 run and lost it, and i had a fish take a sardine as i was winding it back in, i managed to recover a very torn to pieces sardine which i promptly re-cast to the same spot and gave it a few twitches, low and behold i had a dropped run from the same fish.
from the feel of it when it took the first time it was only a small jack anyway, but at least we wouldnt have both blanked.

I have spent much of the weekend trying to find an alternative to frozen Pits or a high river. Bingo! Canals..i thought. My local, the Grantham, is very disused (since 1936! ) but holds good Pike & Tench, it was frozen. There is the Nott'm to Beeston canal, that doesn't freeze owing to boat traffic etc.. There are Pike in there, few and far between from catch reports., Plus it tends to be frequented by chavvy types & drug users, they tend to doss under some of the arches etc... There is a Marina without the chavs etc, posh boats & Narrow Boats, Pikey i thought, Trent Piker has fished it & done nowt. The Erewash isn't far away but is like the Notts/Beeston minus some of the druggies etc. Hoping for my old quarry to thaw & I'll have a bash