Pike

A Pike trip to the Exeter Ship Canal planned for the weekend had to have a staggered start.
Karl and another new Pike angler Alan, had the day off work, so they went up to the canal Friday afternoon, and I joined them at 8am the following morning. (I'm NOT good at getting up at the weekends so this was no small miracle)

Base camp was at the swing bridge.
Karl managed to get a few live-baits out on the Friday night, and his luck changed at 5am Saturday morning with a run, resulting in his first Pike! (about 4lb)
At last!

I turned up at 8am, and did a little lure fishing but had no hits.
Karl however had another one at 10am of 7lb, again on small live roach under a float.

And another (4lb), at 11am once again on live roach.

We tried moving to another spot further down at the lime kilns, thinking perhaps we had disturbed the swims too much and might need fresh water. We tried and tried but just couldn't get another livebait out despite trying maggots and ground bait.
We tried there for 3 hours, but no bites on lures or deads.

We then drove round to the other side to try the opposite bank of the kilns for an hour, but once again, lures and deads made no difference.

The trip was great for Karl, having 3 fish of his target species.
Both me and Alan blanked, but that just means Alan wants to go again, and I always do anyway.
We had x2 deadbait rods and a lure rod each, and 1 rod for lives. Amazing when you see it all together how much we cart about eh ?

Lessons?
Without a doubt, the way to go is Livebaits fished from dawn to lunchtime. This concurs with most of the info we've had from other sources too.
(Exeter and District Angling rules state no more than 6 lives in any 24h period per person, and not more than 6inches)
Dead baits may pick up larger fish, but they are very much few and far between. On 6 miles of canal, FINDING the fish is the hardest part.
A great day with great sunny weather, if a bit windy, and I burnt the top of my shaved head :-(