red letter day

i would like to tell you the story of my pike fishing red letter day,
it was back in the early eighties,i had been experiencing a particularly barren run when i decided to change venues,i had been fishing my local gravel pit with little or no success ,so in desparation i turned to the river,the kentish stour has a reputation for being a very good roach river and where there are roach the pike are not far away,
it was a january day and bitter ,the puddles were frozen and so was i,
i remember putting out a leger to try for a livebait or two and finally in the early afternoon had a medium sized roach,this was put straight on my rig under a marginal tree and shot off more or less straight away,the fish was quickly subdued and to my sheer delight it looked like a 20,
the scales proved it,it went 24lb exactly,what a day !.
the roach i caught the pike on was still there and showing signs of life so i put it out again under the same tree while i sorted myself out,
i remember looking up and wondering where the float was,i lifted the rod slowly and noticed the line was shooting upstream,i hit it quickly and all hell broke loose,an enormous fish rolled just upstream of me and proceded to take 40 yards of line off my reel
20 minutes later i finally had the fish in the net,it was a thirty,i was convinced of it,on the scales it went to 29lb 10oz so i settled for that, i looked around for someone to take a photo but nobody was around,i took a couple of pics of then fish on the grass and put it back,
the pics didnt come out so i have no record of my fish of a lifetime,

what a days fishing,i am still trying to beat that fish and one day that 30 will come along,you will be the first to know

wow paul that must of been a great experience for you, would love to see the pics tho, do you still have them?? but weldone on the catches.

Nice one paul, But what a pain those pics didn't come out, the amount of times i had that with the old 35mm films, cost me some good pics in the past. Still the pictures are in your mind and they'll be there forever mate, well done.

pmsl ooops didnt see that bit...well it was a tad late when I read it, like pl said a shame... bout the pics.