Sunday 15 August 2010

Back Brooks own Serengeti...

Pike - Back Brook - August 2010

There’s a mini drama waiting to be played out along Back Brook. Every summer as water levels subside small isolated pools are left along this length of its run. Without wishing to sound too much like Jack Hargreaves, in years gone by the large pool down by the stone bridge where the Back and ‘front’ Brook joins before going the last 100 yards or back into the Ouse was a favourite fishing haunt and it was a real feather in your cap when the farm was occupied if you could fish this without the Farmer seeing and doing his ‘Gert orf my land’ bit. As fish gravitated towards the deeper pools as the levels dropped it was a bit of a fisherman's haven and still today there’s some sizable fish in there but I have not seen anybody fish it in a couple of years.

The old fishing hole this week

Mostly the other pools would gradually diminish, Herons and lately Little Egrets would move in to pick off any stranded fish and by midsummer dragonflies would be the only life ruling the roost. Not this year though. Whether it was a quick drop in levels or a flash flood that caused it I don’t know but there in still one more shallowish pool where a shoal of Perch, a shoal of Roach and centre stage one single Pike. You would think it would be a fox in a chicken house scenario but no. On a couple of occasions I watched the Pike glide through the shoals of other fish with them barely batting an eyelid (if fish have eyelids).

The predator is not on the big size, a youngster maybe a foot in length at most and I thought maybe it was just a question of the other fish being too big for dinner but a fishing friend informs me that pike with take on anything two thirds their size. Certainly nearly all the other fish come into its eatable range, so what’s stopping it?

Well you'd like to think that its the Pike's cunning, knowing it has a limited food source that has to last until the brook is flooded through and he can return to the Ouse to hunt at will. Clever fish imposing a crucial bit of rationing...

But then again if truth be told he's probably just full to the gills already!

Links:
Pike - Wiki
Perch - Wiki
Roach - Wiki

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