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One cold frosty January night, myself, along with a colleague (a part-time river keeper) went out lamping for rabbits in a meadow at West Chisenbury. He claimed he had permission to do so, but I weren't so sure. Whatever, I was most certainly up for it.

Crunching on hard frosty ground when the air is still is not the recipe for success. You need dark windy conditions when lamping on foot, but whatever the result, it was damn good to be out.

On our way back from our brief foray we walked upstream along a short stretch of the river. As a matter of interest, I casually shone my 500,000 cp (candle power) lamp into the river and we were both amazed at what we saw. The river flowed relatively clear for this time of year and the only way I can explain it, it was just like looking at stony ground on a sunny day, that's how clear it looked.

There were dace, roach, grayling, both species of trout, perch, and further up river, a large eelwe spied snaking its way over the stony riverbed. I remember admiring it's grace and swiftness as it combed the riverbed, a great privilege indeed.

As for the other fish, with the exception of a large rainbow trout that shot off like a bullet, it only took them a moment to settle down again. The spectacular thing about this was the fact that we could observe their fascinating natural behavoiur at close quarters.

We wandered further upstream until we reached the deep bend locally known as "grayling corner". Even when shining the lamp into five to six feet of water it showed much activity, not as clearly as in the shallower water downstream, but it still proved interesting. As a matter of fact, it got really interesting when that big pike appeared in the lamplight, every menacing inch of it! A pike this big on the prowl in one and a half miles (the lower stretch) of quality trout water would be a worry for any river keeper. At that present moment we wwere powerless to do anything. I had my 12 bore at hand but that would have been a waste of a cartridge. That pike was at least two foot under water. The keeper remarked that something had to be done to remove it as quickly as possible.

The following night, between 9 & 10 O'clock we crunched our way along that frosty, iron hard riverbank once more and it was even colder that the previous night. We scanned the same stretch of river once again in search of that big pike. We found it a little way down from grayling corner just hovering there next to some submerged alder roots.

Armed with three drain rods (attached) and a sharpened chainsaw file firmly fixed in one end, the keeper shone the powerful beam on our target. I made my way across a nerby bridge and as quietly as possible crept towards the area where the pike was. This tactic rapidly went "t**s up" so to speak.

The light shinning from the other side of the bank had exposed me so much I never even got within two yards of the bank beore it saw me then quickly disappeared into deeper water. A lesson learnt. From now on any other attempts would take place lamp side.

We soon picked it up again, but this time it was a bit more awkward to get at in deeper water. In a mad rush I stabbed at it and missed by a mile, it sensed danger, turned and speedily darted back down stream towards the shallows.

At this point we had developed a minor problem. The file had snapped off on impact with the stony riverbed. The van was parked nearby so off my colleague went to repair our spear while I wandered downstream in search of that pike.

Minutes later he re-appeared and we were ready for action once more. This pike must be a glutton for punishment because we picked it up again not far from the spot where we had found it first of all.

I have cut weed many times along this stretch of river and know it to be shallow at the banks edge. Saying this though, the weed is usually cut during June, but this was January! However, I was the only one wearing wellingtons so I had to go in and try and spike that awesome predator. The powerful beam was shone onto the pike then I mad my move. Grasping the spear in one hand I carefully eased my way down the bank and plopped into the water. The water reached mid-way up my wellies and although the pike was in range, when I tried to aim the spear, the vast length of the flimsy drain rods made the whole set-u[ flop about and fighting against a fairly strong current didn't help either. This was no good, I had no choice but to try and gain an extra yard or tow so an accurate strike could be acheived.