I started fishing for pike when I was at boarding school, more than thirty five years ago. My pike fishing equipment included a nine foot hollow fibre glass ABU spinning rod coupled with an Intrepid Black Prince spinning reel. I couldn’t afford pike fishing lures or plugs in those days and so had a tackle box full of metal blade spinners.

I used to hike down to Scarborough Mere each Sunday and make cast after cast, never catching anything and always returning back to school ready for Sunday tea to report a blank to my friends.

One visit, I found an old wooden jointed pike plug on the side of the bank. Its hooks had rusted away but the rest of it was fine. Finds like this were always pocketed for remedial work back at school. In this case I had to repaint the body using my friend’s plane modeling gear, and buy two new treble hooks.

Tackled up with my first pike plug I headed for a weedy shallow end of the Mere that I had previously been unable to fish using my heavy spinners. I cast across the pool and soon could see my plug jerking across the surface. I was taking care not to reel in too quickly and snag the leaf strewn bottom.

Suddenly everything went solid, my rod bent and I realized there was something on the end of my line. However, the fight was short and a minute later I was proudly holding up about five pounds of prime pike! I cursed the fact that I did not have a friend with me or a camera to record the event. I knew that nobody would believe me when I told them back at school. But that doesn’t matter now, years later, as I can still remember the feeling of elation when I caught my first ever fish when fishing for pike!