Pike off the surface on my local canal (with footage of a take :D)

Myself and younger brother Sam have always been extremely keen anglers and pike fishing was all I did for nearly three years before I came to uni. One of the highlights of my trips home is always a visit to the local canal just a stones throw from my house where we target the predators that lurk in its murky waters. Just this year though we've discovered just how effective fishing with surface lures can be for the pike. It makes a lot of sense really, the area we fish is no deeper than 6ft and the visibility is for the most part, very poor. A lure making a loud racket on the surface such as a depps buzzjet is going to interest them, that is a fact. Over the past few months though when by chance we've both been at home, we have been trying to get some footage of the pike taking the lures off the surface. We have managed to get plenty of rises without hook ups and similarly plenty of fish that have thrown the hook once hooked, but this weekend we finally managed to get a  video from start to finish of the cast, retrieve, take and of course landing the fish. The fish in question is only a jack but we will keep trying for a bigger fish on film. We know there are some very big fish in the canal as we have had a good number of fish in the 15-20lb range and one over 20lb, so hopefully its just a matter of time. Here is a link to the video though, I think you'll be surprised at just how close in the take is, I know my brother was as you will notice by the sudden movement of the camera :)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qfxh-kBuaK0

The following day we returned to the canal, this time with both of us concentrating on catching rather than filming. It was a fairly decent session with 3 fish landed and one lost. Only small fish but great fun to catch nevertheless. Here are a couple of pics of the fish. The end of this month should produce some better fish, fingers crossed I can get my second 20lber.

Thanks for reading,
Tight Lines,
Ross