Here comes the rain

With several days of rain forecast, you could be forgiven for asking what's happening to our weather and what it's going to do to our fishing for the remainder of the river season.

First there was the unseasonal cold snap - perhaps not so much unseasonal as it is *technically* winter, just a bit colder than normal.

After a couple of weeks of this, parts of the UK have this weekend experienced a third of a month's rainfall 12 hours.

"And the miserable conditions are due to continue over the next few days," reports the Daily Mail.

Many hoped slightly milder weather might bring the pike back on the feed and there were encouraging signs on one or two waters last week.

A few more weeks of crap weather and the fat lady's going to be singing for this season on the rivers. Best make sure those waterproofs are, um, waterproof then.

Wettest summer since records began

As pike anglers who look to start their season on the drains and rivers bemoan the lack of rain, Met Office figures say 2007 had the wettest summer since records began.

Look at the table at the bottom of the BBC report - click here - and you'll see last October, November and December had unusually high rainfall.

Rob Shallcroft makes some interesting observations about the importance of rain to river anglers in an article in the current edition of Pikelines. was last season so good on our rivers because we had so much rain early on, he asks...