Facing the formidable, fearless pike on Lough Carra

She lay like a log in the water, stationary and barely visible. Thick vegetation hid half her bulk; shafts of reed and water rush blended well enough with their own shadows to cast camouflage stripes along her length and half hide the light tremor at her front end.
Indeed, I had to squint and stare a minute more before I finally made out her form, before I saw her blunt, broad head with forward facing eyes and her leering grin with its trap of razored teeth.
How long had she been watching me, I wondered. Or had she seen me at all from the watery world that was her forever home?
The shoal of perch circled the boat with caution. I saw them approach those serrated jaws, saw the eyes above almost glaze with indifference, watched as her mouth gave an involuntary twitch. Perch passed by and carried on their circular route around the shallow bay.
In summer these perch had numbered in their thousands, but then they were small, an inch and no more. Each time those that spawned them came to call there were progressively less, for there is little these fish like more to eat than their own offspring. That pike, together with more of her kind, would also take a daily toll from the same shrinking shoals until now, six months from their birth, the many had become few, the thousands reduced to no more than a few score.
Those among us humans who would eat a pike are likewise few. ‘They eat rats!’ is a common complaint, although if all the pike in the world depended solely on the local population of rats I think they would remain very small indeed, and would never attain the great length and considerable weight of the fish that lay like a log in the water before me.
I steadied the boat and picked up my rod, testing the line and giving special consideration to the knot at the end with its carefully wrapped coils and double-tucked tail. The log gave a toothy gloat. Every other fish has its eyes one to each side; those of the pike are forward facing, for the pike has nothing to fear, other than another, bigger specimen of its own kind.
My lure was a soft, rubber-bodied artificial perch armed with a strong single hook sticking up from its back, so that it might not catch in the weeds. I threw it beyond my target and slightly to the left, and pulled it slowly back toward the boat. It had reached somewhere about half way when the pike gave no more than a flick of its tail and was gone, leaving a cloud of silt to mark the spot where it had been.
I uttered a silent oath at my own clumsy approach, yet even as thoughts of self-reproach were formed the line drew tight and the rod pulled sharply down.
The fish gave a heavy swirl, as yet unaware that anything might be amiss. Then, pulled slightly off balance, it made a sudden run of 30 yards or more. Confident the hook was well home, I leaned into the fish hard. It thrashed briefly at the surface, making such disturbance I thought it alarmingly too large and too heavy to handle.
The fish made another run, this time back into the shallows. On feeling sand beneath its belly it gave a leap, a great, furrowing, greyhound bound amid a blast of frigid winter hail on an already cold, late November day. I saw the huge mouth open wide – half a yard, I swear – saw line over line of interlocking, inch-long teeth, heard the tail slap angry at water and watched the line fall slack as the fish claimed my lure and took it into the deep.
The shoal of perch reappeared, watching warily lest their nemesis be still on the prowl, while I wound up and picked up the oars, already plotting my return.
How big was that fish? Should you want to know the truth, ask another, for all anglers’ fish grow in the telling of them, as you likely know.
The record Irish rod-caught pike weighed a little over 42 pounds. A Mr Farrell reportedly once caught a larger one of 71 pounds from Lough Erne. In 1962, two Lough Derg anglers battled for two hours to bring a five-foot, eight-inch pike of more than 90 pounds ashore. Another Lough Derg fish, or perhaps the same one, now 84 pounds in weight, was found dead at Portumna some time later.
My fish was bigger than that, of course. Like a log.

Michael Kingdon, a naturalist and keen fisherman, lives on the shores of Lough Carra, Co Mayo, the best example of a shallow marl lake in western Europe and an SAC of enormous ecological and conservation importance.