Personal Best Pike

LOCATION: Lough outside Carrickmacross town.
WEATHER: North Easterly, Gale force winds, Rainy at times with complete cloud cover.
TACKLE: Pike spinning rods with 80lbs braid.
                   12ft carp rod with 30lbs Mono.
                   Large selection of lures, Deep/Shallow divers, poppers, spinners, jerkbaits etc..
                   Landing net, scales, unhooking equipment.
METHODS: Spinning and trawling.
                     Fishing between shelfs, shallow rocky water, and along a long shelf with a big rock at end of shelf.

Went out fishing a lough in Monaghan on Saturday. Wind was very very strong and made the fishing really difficult.
Done some spinning with no luck, so decide to trawl a variety of lures.
After trawling for only afew minutes I got a serious knock but no hook-up.
Continued on that line then swung around to cover the ground agian, great success after using a deep diving plug in about 6-8m of water.
Hooked up to a decent pike that gave me a great scrap,running left, right, shallow, deep, front back sides and under the boat.
I managed to land it, get to the bank, give it some watering, weighed and picture within about 2minutes.
Weighed in at 12lbs 8oz.

Continued trawling after that, had a few knocks but nothing connected.
Switched to a large Alien eel lure, quite deep lure but fished it over shallow ground, thought I caught the bottom but my reel screamed out line, but gave up shortly, an 8lb fish was in the net.

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Few more jacks over the day but 12lb 8oz was the best weight and my PB.