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I no longer feel the need to keep secrets, a trait that resulted in me being refused admission to the Wimbledon PAC region. So during a recent lure fishing session on the Thames I babbled inanely at Neil Depledge. He listened to my tales without a whimper and resisted the temptation to jump out of the boat. An act of bravery that meant, when an email arrived the next day asking me to write an article, I could hardly refuse. The story begins in the spring of 1995. Simon Lampard, my fishing partner at the time, and I were planning a fishing trip abroad – but where? Some years earlier Simon had caught a giant 38lb fish from Norfolk’s river Thurne and consequently received a request from Dutch pike luminary Jan Eggers (the pike ferret) for information pertaining to the capture. Simon surprisingly gave him the details, this turned out to be a good move and when he called upon Jan for information on pike fishing in mainland Europe he was keen to reciprocate. His tip was the Baltic Sea. That’s right the sea! A couple of weeks later an article appeared in one of the weeklies reporting pike of mythological proportions from the Baltic. This just poured fuel on the fire. The tickets were booked, plans were made and sometime in early May of that year we were ready for the off. We’d planned to catch the ferry from Harwich across to the Hook of Holland but due to some erroneous map reading on my part we managed to miss the boat. Simon changed the tickets and we caught the next one, this time from Dover to Calais. By mid afternoon we were heading north through France on the long drive to Travemunde in the north of Germany, a journey not without incident. The first of which was heralded by a nasty knocking sound from the back of Simon’s Astra van which we both tried to ignore, luckily not for too long as it proved to be a rear wheel hanging on by it’s two remaining and un-tightened nuts. A quick pit stop and we were back on the road. The next morning was freezing cold and two very tired pikers pulled into a service station on the outskirts of Hamburg. I went into the toilet to relieve myself of the burden of a rather nasty kebab taken en route the previous night. As soon as I began that odious nay, odorous, business a knarled hand like an upturned vultures claw appeared from under the door. I had awakened the Kraken! The Keeper of the Khazi! The screeching voice rose to fever pitch as I pondered her foul intent. Surely not that. No, it must be money. I tipped a mixture of English and French coins into the claw and it withdrew. I heard the crone shuffle away mumbling to herself, blissfully ignorant. For in the haze of tiredness I’d nearly crossed her hand with brown rather than the silver that she expected. We arrived at the port of Travemunde in a couple of hours and joined the ferry for an uneventful trip across the flat calm Baltic. We docked in Sweden six hours later and headed east on the motorway, a two-track road with passing points every few miles and a 50 mph speed limit. We reached the town nearest to our destination at about 10 pm and pulled into a bar for a beer and some directions. Unfortunately, even though the majority of Swedes speak English, none of them would speak it with us. I ordered two beers that cost the equivalent of £14. Perhaps that explains why the patrons were so miserable. An hour later we reached the spot on the coast where we’d planned to make our base, dragged out our bedchairs and slept al fresco. I was rudely awoken the next morning by a huge tree crashing to the ground some 30 ft from my head. I woke Simon who’d slept through it all and we approached the lumberjack. He turned out to be a good deal more helpful than the cretins we’d met the previous night and sent us in the direction of a man who might hire us a boat. Our luck was in and we rented a 13 ft aluminium Sea Nymph for the week for 1 bottle of whisky (£10 on the ferry £60 in Sweden) either way a pretty good deal. We could also make camp on his land, use his fresh water and charge our batteries in his garage. We were set and could at last turn our attentions to fishing. We had a freezer full of deadbaits but the idea of flinging static deads out into the sea and sitting back on your bedchair was frankly ridiculous. We needed a mobile approach. Neither of us were keen lure anglers at the time so it would be trolled livebaits. I’ve cast maggots into the sea before, catching estuarine school bass in the late 70’s whilst on holiday in Devon but was still surprised when a perfect 6oz roach attached itself to the stinky grub I’d thrown into the Baltic. As we pushed our boat out with a bucket full of salty roach in search of seafaring pike I could hardly have guessed the nature of the strange denizens we would encounter on this weird sea. Jan had pointed us in the direction of the Baltic but that was as far as he was willing to go. Simon had talked to John Bailey who’d generously passed on his findings. There was a bay fenced off from the main body of water where the pike were said to spawn. Unfortunately the cost, £70 per day, was prohibitive and we were to concentrate our efforts at the mouth and surrounding area. The first afternoon was spent trolling the shoreline close to our camp to no avail. Tomorrow we would set out at dawn to find the bay. Arriving back at our camp that evening we were greeted by three extremely jovial East Germans. We cracked a bottle of whisky and talked sh** into the early hours. Since the fall of the Berlin wall things had got a good deal better for the East Germans. They were two plumbers and a carpenter, all unemployed, but due to the reunification now in receipt of benefits equal to the wages of their western counterparts. This new found wealth meant that not only were they free to travel for the first time, they also had the money to do it in style. The brand new Mercedes sitting on the drive of their holiday cottage was testament to that. Still, these Easterners hated the people of the GDR, something I’ve failed to understand even to this day. I took the boat out alone the next morning. Simon’s assault on the Famous Grouse the previous night meant he was in no fit state to fish so I spent the morning trolling a large bay close to our camp and was rewarded with two small pike, our first from the Baltic. Small they may have been but when I informed Simon of my success he forgot his sore head and was fired up and ready to go in search of Bailey’s bay. The bay was a 45-minute boat ride from camp and as we arrived we could see a large fence separating the bay from the main body of water above and below the waterline. Right on cue my rod wrenched round in the rest and minutes later the hardest fighting 8lb pike either of us had ever seen was lying in the bottom of the boat. We thought we’d cracked it but we were wrong. The only other pike we saw that day was dead. It was floating up against the fence and too far gone for either of us to want to pick it up – but it was massive, closer to 40 than 30lb. On the way back we came across some locals fishing for herrings by casting a line baited with bare hooks to which the hapless fish would attach themselves 10 at a time. This method would provide us with baits for the remainder of our trip. The next few days were spent in the mouth of the bay and surrounding areas but with only a few pike and none over 10lb to show for our efforts. We decided to move camp and loaded the gear into the boat. There was a huge salmon pen some 3 miles up the coast. We were to make camp on the closest island but it turned out to be infested with huge ants so we moved to the next island, a 1/2-mile out to sea. Moving further out to sea just reinforced the strange aura of the place, a feeling not diminished when I spied through my binoculars a set of antlers heading out to sea. Simon turned the boat and we headed off on a mission of mercy. As we approached, the beast attached to the antlers became more and more agitated, swimming further out to sea. So we decided to head back in to a local youth hostel where we could contact the coast guard. On the way we saw a whole herd of deer swimming in the sea. These animals that make their home in this archipelago swim the open sea from one island to the other as part of their daily routine. All rescue attempts, however well meaning, are quite unwelcome. We retired to our new base, soon to discover that deer were not the only beasts to traverse that water. Our new home was to be a tiny island just big enough for our two dome tents. A small crack in one side provided a convenient shelter for the boat. We put up the tents and as I set about the evening meal Simon relieved himself of last night’s repast on the other side of the island. “Silas you dirty b****rd””What?””There’s a massive turd back here””Well it ain’t one of mine””Oh no? It must be that other bloke’s, over there””Ahh shutup and eat yer dinner”. No sooner had my head hit the pillow, a rolled up jumper, than I heard a loud banging and scraping sound emanating from the direction of the boat. “What the **** that?” came the response from Simon’s tent. “F*** knows”. “Do you want to go and have a look?” “No. Do you?”The din rose and it soon became clear that if we did nothing our boat would be trashed. “Right, get your torch we’ll both go out together “. “5 4 3 2”, long pause, “1”We dove out of our tents simultaneously and shone our torches down the crack towards the boat. What happened next is a blur. There was a large black hairy beast in our boat! We both shat ourselves and by the time we got our torches back on the boat the creature was gone. Our boat was a mess, whatever it was it had a fondness for herrings. The boat was overturned, tackle was smashed and the half eaten contents of our bait bucket was strewn over the rocks. We sat and smoked into the early hours that night, listening for the return of the beast. The fence that marked the entrance to Baileys bay was the boundary of a reserve that housed specimens of all the creatures native to Sweden. We concluded our interloper was most likely an escaped bear! What sleep I managed that night was fitful to say the least and at first light we left our rock and returned to our original base on the mainland. That day was spent around the salmon pens. The fish finder showed thousands of bait fish near the surface with much larger fish underneath. We fished static baits and trolled our herrings throughout the area but still the big pike eluded us. In the evening we moved and spent the last few hours in Baileys bay. Several more small fish were taken, but we’d yet to see a fish over 10lb and were wondering where all the big fish could be when the Germans pulled into the bay waving a very large pike. They were jubilant, but the fish was, unfortunately, in its death throes. German anglers seemingly kill absolutely everything they catch, in fact it’s illegal to put them back in Germany. We had to bite our lips and congratulate them. The fish was spawned out but despite it’s empty stomach still turned the scales at 23lb. The Germans had made a video of the capture and we were invited to the premiere that evening. The trailer was footage of a day trip they’d made to one of the rivers close by which showed a local angler catching a 50lb salmon on a fly. The main feature was even more remarkable. They took the boat out about two miles offshore and dropped anchor in the middle of nowhere. Two size 4/0 trebles were placed in the flank of the 3 inch roach bait which was then lowered 100 ft to the bottom. These bizarre tactics resulted in cod, one after the other. One angler who’d been spinning, left his Toby lure to drop to the bottom and joined the fray. At the end of the day when all the baits were gone the lure angler picked up his rod and began to retrieve his lure. Almost immediately the rod slammed over and battle ensued. The fish was powerful and made several surging runs stripping line from the large multiplier. Once near the surface it kited left to right and tested the rod to the limit but finally succumbed to steady pressure and lay wallowing on the surface. A very large pike from 100 ft of water. We were lost, the bigger pike had clearly moved out into the open sea and were dining on cod, leaving the herrings which had amassed in their millions on the shallow margins for spawning to the jacks. The next day we headed into town for some local advice. “Ven vind come from norf all pike svim out to sea”, said the fetid breathed tackle shop owner. “Come back in August and ve’ll troll ze open sea viz downriggers but for now turn off fish ID on your sounder ond look for ze errings ‘ere, ‘ere and ‘ere. “He marked three spots on our map. We thanked our herring-munching friend and set off to investigate these new hotspots. The first of which was a cluster of rocks close to the mouth of Baileys Bay. Plenty of bait fish were showing on the echo sounder but it was only when fish ID was turned off the true picture revealed itself. The screen of the hummingbird turned black from top to bottom, solid herrings, 80 ft deep. The next day we investigated the two remaining hotspots. Both revealed huge shoals of herrings but no pike came to our rods. Whether that was because none were present or that our baits were so hopelessly out numbered will remain a mystery and as we pulled our boat up for the last time our Baltic record stood at just over 9lb. The old man who’d kindly rented us the boat had invited us to “take tea” before we departed. So we cleaned up the boat, then ourselves and went to join him and his wife in the garden of their beautiful Baltic home. “These cakes are lovely. Are they a local speciality?” said Simon. “No, zeese is English tea cakes. My vife bought zem specially for you, and ze Engish tea”.I thought it was coffee!Their home reminded me of the house in ‘Thunderbirds’. A huge bungalow sunk into the rock. A man-made canal ran from the end of their garden down to the sea where an armada of boats ranging from a Robert Maxwell type yacht through to the small boat we’d hired jostled at their moorings in the afternoon breeze. “Please excuse my ignorance, but how did you come by such wealth?” I rudely enquired”Oh I used to fix typewriters”. He replied. “And your wife?” I asked. “No, no, my vife as never ad to take a job”. We talked of London, Sweden, the war and life in general. The old man, who must have been at least 100 years old, finally feel asleep on that balmy spring evening and we crept away to begin the long journey back to old Blighty. If anything happened on the journey home I was far too tired to remember it. We arrived in London at dawn and joined the infernal South Circular road towards my flat in Clapham. At every rat infested, s**t spattered litter strewn junction I wondered what made me live in such a place. My car had been wheel clamped while I was away. I stepped in some dog sh** whilst unloading the van. The moment I walked through the door all the bite alarms in my rucksack went off simultaneously. And my girlfriend attacked me. At this moment I knew what made places like the Baltic so special. Contrast!Silas Maitland ———-This story was first published in DropBack, the official magazine of the Walton on Thames Pike Anglers Club. For more stories and information about

Walton PAC, have a look at their web site – http://members.aol.com/waltonpac