A new PB and "It's a 20!"

What a session that turned out to be! We had the highs, the lows and the awful. As mentioned before on http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CVnXUtMbSug&feature=plcp from SussexCarpandCoarse, we were off to a new complex known as Tanyard fisheries in East Sussex. The trip was to become very new to us as it was a new water, new tactics for some of us and four days long. It was nice to know that we had four days to catch and the pressure that we normally have was pleasantly gone for what we saw was a nice time to chill, with the addition of maybe a couple of fish. Though we were quite shocked to find it was very hard, what with this new-found heat wave of ours and the constant pressure these fish endure, we had a good time chilling and trying every tactic under the – rather hot – sun.

Our home for 4 days.

The session actually started on a different lake to which we were going to fish on. To be honest, it was a silly mistake as nothing was caught on the whole lake, let alone between us three. We decided to move as a pair of anglers had caught a ‘20’ during the early hours of the morning on the other lake.  We had brought a fair bit of bait withy us as the ‘Catch Report’ had given us a few tips on what was catching. We then knew that to catch these big fish, at this time of year, we would need to use larger beds of bait to keep them feeding. I had worked out that I was to roughly use a kilo per 12 hours with the addition of possibly some particles and 10mm pellets. On one patch, I would try to use just particle with chopped boilie. I decided to use this approach on one spot as I know the fish have all seen a lot of boilies, hoping that they’d slip up when feeding over a different type of bait. The issue was that this spot, that happened to be shallower, allowed the ducks and swans to easily clear me out of bait within half an hour.  During these hot days there was not much point in fishing with these tactics during the day. This allowed me to give the fish some free bait to get them used to it and also learn more from the water in front of me. 

5 foot, get a bait on it! 

I didn’t rush things when it came to feature finding with the marker float. I was glad that I did as I found – after an hour – a very small patch of where the lakebed drops off from 4 to 5 foot up against some thicker weed or chod. I believed the fish would hold up against this as the water would hold the heat from the day in the deeper water. Add to the fact that I then added a kilo and a half of fresh bait to the spot really made it look good for a bite.

Fresh bait was a must.

 I was given a new rig from Edwin, known as the Reverse Snowman Muzza rig, and I was very happy to use it as he had already caught 2 20s from another water. It paid off! At 1:30 in the morning I received a single bleep – which awoke me and allowed me to put my shoes on ready for battle – and then off it went. Being dark I could not see what I would imagine as a big bow wave leaving the swim! The fish’s fight was sadly short lived as it found a light patch of floating weed which covered its eyes and it gave up fairly quickly after that. Peering into the net it didn’t look anything special. However, after lifting the fish to the mat I certainly felt the full power of this fish as it woke again. Keeping the head torches to a minimal and covering the fish’s eyes calmed it down to safely lift it up for a good picture and weighing. At 22lb 9oz, it was definitely a new PB and my first 20! 

 A success and well earned at that! After that, we quickly decided we’d be back in October to once again catch an even bigger one next time!

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