Bailiff Comments

Week Commencing: Sat 06/04/2019

WC 6^th April

With a new group of lads raring to go and the weather looking a lot more consistent than the week before, a few bites were certainly on the cards.

Jamie Fennell came out early in the draw and decided to jump into Tea Party 1. Carrying on from the previous week he decided to concentrate his efforts at 17.5 wraps towards the big tree in the corner of Turtles treeline. Fishing solid bags filled with sticky bloodworm pellet and manilla boilie crumb, Jamie was off the mark quickly, landing 5 fish in his first night! Mr Massive @46lb 4oz was the biggest from the haul and a new PB for Jamie, backing this up with two 30s and two 20s. Baiting up with 5 spombs of Sticky manilla and whole and crumbed boiles after every fish to keep the swim topped up, but the best was yet to come! Sunday night saw Jamie land only one fish. but what a fish it was! Troy’s Chunk at a whopping 56lb 12oz and another new PB! Jamie decided to up the ante with the bait the following few days and topped up with 15 spombs which seemed to push the fish further out as his next bite didn’t come until Thursday night, landing 2 40s on the bounce, Cuppers @42lb and Jack @40lb! What a result! A change in tactics and distance paid off as Jamie fished 21.5 wraps straight at turtles swim for the last 2 nights, swapping his solid bags for Ronnies made up of size 4 Kamakura Krank B’s, 25lb boom with a Manilla wafter hookbait. Good angling Fen!

Martijn Markwat found himself fishing in Turtles Corner, a swim he has got to know well over his time fishing the Road Lake. Landing 13 of his 14 bites Martijn fished Ronnie rigs with half a bottom bait and half a pop up over a mix of our particle and manilla boilies, baiting up with 5kg a day. Fishing at 19 wraps, Martijn fanned his rods from the dot island to the orange marker pole near T1. The pick of the bunch from Martijn’s haul was a 41lb 12oz mirror called ‘Kids Arms’, this was backed up by 3 30s, 8 20s and one of the 2018 stocked fish that we introduced at the end of last year. Was nice to see one of these on the bank with a decent weight gain of 3lb in 6 months. A mention to Daan Pikaerts, who moved into the swim with his mate Martijn for the last couple of nights taking it in turns on Martijn’s rods and landing a couple of his own! That’s what fishing is about!

Next up is Scott Gillet who fancied a bit of Shingles for the week. Deciding to fish 16 wraps towards Turtles treeline for his left spot, produced 2 fish for him which were a 34lb 12oz mirror called ‘Inky’ and a solid looking 45lb mirror which swims by the name of ‘Eddy’. Scott baited this spot consistently all week with 15 spombs a day of chopped, whole and crumbed Manilla boilies, fishing over this with a solid bag filled with micro pellet and boilie crumb to start with, then changing over to a spinner rig later on in the week with a critically balanced yellow manilla pop up. Scott’s 2 right hand rods were fished towards the dot island and produced a 31lb common called Cage Fighter, this one was nailed on a spinner rig with ¾ essential cell bottom bait and ½ a yellow manilla pop up balancing the rig out perfectly. He baited this spot with 20 spombs a day as he was fishing 2 rods on it, but the fish seemed to prefer his 1 rod spot…

Neil Bunce started off in The Beach and stuck at it for a couple of days, but with fish showing down the other end of the lake he upped sticks and moved into The Goo. Another couple of blank nights got Neil on his toes again and he moved opposite to Double Boards where he’d seen a few subtle shows that morning. The effort was rewarded on Friday with a 28lb common, fishing 12.5 wraps towards the Poo over a baited area of whole, halved and crumbed Manilla. Neil used the ever-effective spinner rig incorporating a snowman style approach using a manilla bottom bait with a yellow manilla topper.

Dean Cook fished in Birches for the week but the carp were not playing ball, he decided to drop into the Stalking Swim on Thursday morning and knicked a cracking 33lb 4oz mirror that he named ‘Kaiden’. Fishing a couple of rod lengths out with a white manilla pop up on a spinner rig, feeding the swim with some half boilies little and often.

Ryan Feltham found himself in The Poo and similar to Dean the carp were just not playing ball. Scooting round to the Stalking Swim on Friday did the business, where he managed to winkle out a couple of nice 20lb commons, using the same tactics as Dean the previous day helped snare this brace of carp.

The weather was still pretty inconsistent with some warm days and some very cold nights, the air pressure was all over the place as well as the wind, but with 26 fish landed it is definitely picking up!

The fish are still slowly starting to switch on with a feeding frenzy surely on the horizon! Warmer weather will hopefully be here to stay in the next couple of weeks!

A really great bunch of lads and really happy that everybody managed to go home stinking of carp! Looking forward to catching up next year!

Until next time,

Tight lines,

Steve