The Traditional Fisherman's Forum

With high hopes, buoyed by a half-remembered bit of verse about the North-East wind making pike lunge hungrily, I set out to a club pike match yesterday.
Two pike were caught.

The verse was googled this morning, and turned out to be this:

"Jovial wind of winter
Turn us out to play!
Sweep the golden reed-beds;
Crisp the lazy dyke;
Hunger into madness
Every plunging pike."

- From Charles Kingsley's "Ode to the North-East Wind".

Further googling reveals Kingsley to have been a kind, Christian, bigotted, Odinistic, racist bundle of contradictions... not the best source of advice, piscatorial or moral.

Maybe I should re-read Ted Hughes' "Pike" next time; or possibly not.

Vole wrote: ↑Mon Dec 02, 2019 9:08 am With high hopes, buoyed by a half-remembered bit of verse about the North-East wind making pike lunge hungrily, I set out to a club pike match yesterday.
Two pike were caught.

Maybe I should re-read Ted Hughes' "Pike" next time; or possibly not.

Or listen to him read it himself: https://www.poetryarchive.org/poem/pike.

I think I once met 'Crisp'

Stathamender, many thanks for that link, it was grand! He really did manage to cature both pike and pool, didn't he?
Well worth several listens!

Great stuff Vole, I enjoyed the poem, never mind the source!!