Bailiff Comments

Week Commencing: Sat 14/10/2023

Mixed fortunes and mixed weather

A new week for us, a new set of anglers and a new weather front arrived on Saturday.

With another full line up of anglers for the penultimate week of the year on the Road Lake, they all arrived eager with expectation of a good week ahead.  We had a mixture of some familiar faces to Gigantica and some who were first time visitors.

We started the week with a nice sunny warm day, but this quickly changed with a change of wind direction to a more north easterly direction to much colder temperatures and very fresh winds for the first few days, with near frost night-time temperatures.  But then to end the week we have experienced much stronger winds and a lot of rain did fall from the Thursday making a wet pack down for all.  Very biblical weather to end on.

Lets start off with the very fortunate, and first time Gigantica angler, Adam Tarry who picked out ball number one from the hat and had the very easy decision to put himself into The Beach after last week’s 31 fish hit.

With big boots to fill from last week Adam was soon enjoying himself in getting a fish into the net, all be it one of the smaller residents it never matters it’s about getting that first one into the net that matters more.  A 23lb mirror opened his account and was tempted with his Dynamite Baits Robin Red pop-up boilie presented on one of his spinner rigs comprising of IQ boom section to a size 4 Korda Krank hook all set-up onto a lead clip and tubing arrangement.

Alex carried on catching a few for the rest of the week and ended up with 11 fish to his name for his efforts, sadly most of the fish ended up being some of the smaller residents that we have in the lake but went away with three forties to his name including ‘Cooky’ at 40lb 4oz, which is a new 40lb fish for the lake, ‘Layla’ weighing 42lb 4oz and also another one that weighed 41lb 4oz but sadly that got away from us before we managed to get a photo of it.

All of Alex’s fish were caught over a feed of Aqua Dynamics Edge boilie and maize at 23 wraps to the middle and left-hand side of the bund as he looked at it from his swim.

Plenty of fish are still showing and are present in this area of the lake so am sure that next week’s angler will have plenty of fun it there.

Chris Gurney came out the draw with ball number two in his hand and put himself into Shingles, again off the back of the good fortune it had brought the previous angler from last week.  But as ever on here no two weeks are generally the same.  And this couldn’t be nearer to the story for this week.

Chris stuck to the spot and his approach all week and was rewarded early in the week with ‘The Reincarnated’ weighing in at 62lb.

This was Chris’s only action for the week but if you are going to catch one fish make it a personal best, and this is exactly what he had done.  Well done, Chris.

Chris again used a spinner rig made from a Boom rig length to a size 4 Wide Gape hook with a Sticky Baits Pineapple & N-Butyric 12mm pop-up soaked in the Isotonic and Pineapple Goo’s to increase its appeal.  This was presented at 20 wraps to the island and fed with Mainline Cell boilie, maize and hemp with a good helping of the Smart Liquid.

Swapping swims after a few days into the week Richard Grayling eventually found himself in Double Boards after starting off in the swim opposite, The Goo.

There was plenty of fish showing here so he felt the swap put him a little closer to the bulk of the fish that was showing in that area of the lake.  And after watching for a couple of days and tweaking his approach eventually he messaged me saying he had a forty-pound fish for me to come and photo on the Friday morning.  Well, this fish went from being a low forty to, after swapping for some bigger scales, spin the dial around to and settle on 59lb 12oz!  What a mega fish and once on the mat for the pictures in the water it was quickly identified as being ‘Big Pecs’ and hadn’t been out for almost a year to the day.  This one is sure to be another sixty-pound fish for the lake on its next capture.  A new personal best for Richard as well meant that we would go on to share the PB bucket treatment that evening with Chris.

Richard also managed a 27lb common on the last night, this time being caught from down his right-hand margin.  A good end to the week for Richard, who kept plugging away and will go away happy with that I’m sure especially with the lake fishing tough.

Both fish were caught on a solid PVA bag approach using the Baitworks Edge pellets with matching liquid for added boost and a single artificial grain of corn for his hook-bait.  This was fished with drop off inline leads to a size 6 Krank hook and short braided hook length.

Very well-done Richard on your new PB.

Jon Parker who was on his second week with us at Gigantica Road Lake drew ball number three this time around and put himself as near to the bulk of the fish that he could in Decoy.  Jon sadly drew himself a blank the previous week in Turtles Corner so was this week looking for a bit of justice his way.

Early part of the week would see Jon net two fish from his right-hand margin area, the biggest being a 30lb 7oz mirror going by the name of ‘The Half Lin’.

Despite this early bit of action Jon again like many kept plugging away at it but just could not create any more chances for himself.  Baiting with maize, hemp and boilie (crumbed, chopped and whole) Jon presented D Rigs on lead clips over the top with Baitworks PineapHell wafters for hook-baits.

In Turtles Corner this week we had Aaron Gurney, who had plotted himself up on this bank to be next to his brother Chris in Shingles.  And to be fair I could not tell these two apart all week.

Aaron had a tough week like many others this week, and again like many he had a lot of fish showing both over his spots and in his area’s and eventually managed to net one weighing 22lb 14oz.  A nice little mirror to be fair but the carp kept on being frustrating and not getting their heads down enough.

A very, very, very tough week had by most this week and with only next week to go before fishing stops for the winter on the Road Lake let’s hope we go out with a bang and a good number of fish get caught, and who knows maybe even the lakes first 70lb’er would be nice too.

Until next time.

Tight Lines……

Gareth “Gino”.