After my recent update of fishing effectively in weed, I returned to the syndicate fully intending to practice what I had preached. The lake was relatively busy for a midweek; with five anglers being present. With nothing to go on in the form of fish activity, I reviewed the upcoming forecast on the mobile phone and saw south easterly winds pushing towards a free peg come the morning. With temperatures hitting 28 degrees that afternoon, setting up was fun, but by 4pm I had everything set and fished with two rods tight to a gravel hump surrounded by light weed, and another on a gravel seam further to its left. Both spots were supplied with a mix consisting heavily of mixed size boilie in the form of Tails Up pro marine and some Hinders Salmon Pellets. The mix was given a good douse of Hinders Fish Pro and Tuna Oil prior to spombing.
Using a length of Kable leadcore on all rods allowed the line to bed down as best as possible once on the spot and feeling the lead down meant I could be relatively sure of a presentation. A slightly longer rig than usual of 7 inches consisted of Ntrap soft in 15lb presented snow man style using a size 6 Kurv. The weed didn’t feel too bad in the area and I had therefore used a conventional lead clip set up rather than the drop off system I would favour if the weed had been heavier. I had on this occasion made another very minor adjustment to the rig; using a longer piece of shrink tube over the eye of the Kurv. My thought process behind this had been that on my last session I had bumped a fish and the other two landed had been very lightly hooked. Adding a little length to the rig and some extra tubing had allowed the rig to flip quicker in my palm upon testing and I also felt it would give the hook more of a secure purchase during the fight. At 3 am I had a strange take on the middle rod; only realising it wasn’t a tench on the end as I came to net a pretty upper double mirror. With that returned the same rod was away an hour later with what felt a much better stamp of fish and a good fight resulted in a clean 32lb mirror.
The following day the expected wind arrived and for some reason the fish pushed off the back into deeper water. I didn’t know why they wanted to be where they were, but watching them show consistently was enough to get me on the move. Within 30 minutes I had packed, moved and set up again casting to previously known spots within the swim. Another warm day was in store and by 2pm I had been attempting to get fish feeding on the surface for around an hour or so, when the left hand rod fished on the deck went into meltdown! Cue the ensuing 50 minutes of being attached to a machine of a fully scaled which is pictured looking very handsome indeed. I stopped the night and landed a further four by the time I left at midday the following day, including two more low thirties. With that it made it three in total for what was very successful session and five thirties in my last three consecutive sessions. Although the lake is well stocked there isn’t a massive head of thirties in there so I am very pleased with the results I’m receiving at present and what more, each fish was incredibly well hooked after those small rig adjustments.
