Bailiff Comments

Week Commencing: Sat 27/09/2025

Korda Social 2025

 

I can’t believe that a year has passed already since the last annual Korda social here at the Big G.  For everyone both at Korda and the staff at the lake it is certainly a date on the calendar that we all look forward to each year.

Read on to see how the lads on the Road Lake got on this year.

 

We can’t not but start with the return of Korda coach Rob Burgess.  As some of you might have read or seen on social media Rob made history just two weeks ago fishing from Tea Party 2 where he went on to catch a record 80 fish in a single week!  And that included going home on the Friday and not fishing for three of the nights either.

But let’s fast forward from that and see how he faired this time around.

Draw done and ball number three graced Rob’s hand, and with Tea Party 2 and Turtles already out of the draw it was no surprise that he placed himself in Tea Party 1 this time around.  Round two, ding ding!

Setting his stall out fishing to the right of Turtles Corner as he looked out at 20 wraps, Rob deployed two rods out in this area keeping his third rod and options open to start with.

Rob went in where he left off, fishing multi combi rigs to his favourite Longshank X hooks with a match the hatch boilie hook bait, plus a shot on the hook all set up onto a running lead clip arrangement.

Despite a slow start, Rob wasn’t worried as this is exactly how he found it on his last trip with us.  But with plenty of fish showing it was only a matter of time before they moved over to his spread of boilie.  Infact it was Sunday afternoon when the fish had moved onto him, and he was into his first bite.

All be it a smaller fish of 28lb it was a start, the spot was right, the rigs were good and the baiting strategy on point.

Ron’s Common followed shortly, first time over 40lb at 42lb 4oz, which is great for the lake.  Always nice seeing fish on the way up.

To cut what could be a very long story short Rob went on to end the week on 46 fish to his name, another incredible week, but we didn’t expect anything less from him.

Other notable captures for the week included ‘The Archer’ at 51lb and ‘The Grey’ at 52lb.  The Grey was also a repeat capture for Rob from a couple of weeks back, so this fish clearly took a liking to Rob’s bait.

Starting off with a boilie only approach he later went on to introduce both hemp and some maize into his baiting up to bulk out the boilie as he was getting through a lot.  This didn’t do any harm to his catch rate as the fish just kept coming, mainly throughout the afternoons seemed to be his best time for bites.

Well done Rob, another Masterclass achieved.

 

Having had ball number one in the draw and fishing right next door to Rob in Tea Party 2 was Dave Vergeer, or “Big Dave” to us all.  Dave is from Holland and works on the Embryo side of the company looking after Carp Atlantis, where he does a great job of it.

Again, like with Rob, it was a relatively slow start to the week, but his first two fish landed both ended up being over 50lb’s.  So, a great average to get your week going with.  These fish were ‘Missing Link’ weighing 52lb and ‘After Work’ at 51lb 12oz.

Dave had managed both fish from 20 wraps out, where he was baiting with mainly Cell boilie, but also included in his mix was maize and Smart Liquid.

His rig of choice was a Spinner rig made up from Boom material and a Wide Gape hook in size 4 baited with a spicy yellow pop up.

Having a move around with his spots after losing a couple of fish Dave pushed out further to the far tree line and shorter at 17 ½ wraps and went on to end the week with 26 fish to his name, including a nice 33lb mirror and ‘Wilbur’ weighing 38lb that we managed to get everyone around from the Road Lake for a nice group photo.

Dave is always great for a social and supplied plenty of us with some special cold refreshments from his native homeland.

Well done Dave, we will see you soon.

 

Having pulled ball number four out of the hat we had Brad Greening put himself into fish from Shingles.  Brad is a lovely guy and one of our long-standing sponsored anglers at Korda and I am sure that many of you will recognise him from magazine articles over the years.

Despite being as close to the main pack of fish as he could get in Shingles it took until just before dinner on Monday before his fist bite and at 46lb a great opener to have.  This fish came over a bed of pure boilie and a matching bottom bait cut in half with a pink corn topper for extra attraction and visual effect and was caught from the known area of 18 wraps out towards the dot island.

Moving a rod out to open water in front of his swim at 16 wraps Brad went onto introduce a big bed of hemp with his boilie and switched over to fishing bags in this area.   Well between 9:30pm and midnight he managed to land five fish from this spot, made up of 3 x 20’s and ‘Mr Miyagi’ at 41lb 2oz and ‘Vouvray’ weighing 48lb 2oz.  Hook bait in the PVA bags remained the same as his other rods.

Action then continued for the rest of the week and he went on to end the week with 25 fish, 14 x 20’s, 5 x 30’s and a total of 6 x 40’s.

A couple of other notable captures for Brad included ‘Jamil’ at 36lb, ‘Tre’s Belle’ weighing 41lb and ‘Phil Macrackin’ being the biggest of his week at 48lb 2oz.

Cracking week from this swim, a good angler who angles well will always reap the rewards and Brad certainly achieved that this week.  Well done lad.

 

Carl Hoyle aka ‘Carlos the Crayfish’ took the last ball in the hat and ended up with the last choice of swim.  Taking his time to decide on where to fish from he thought he would start off having a go from The Beach.  

Within Korda Carl started off his career being one of our account managers out on the roads of the northwest but now works from home in his comfy slippers working behind the scenes keeping the shop ordering system in line and the other account managers with all the information they would need with new products being released.

Despite being a bit naturally down from coming out last in the draw Carl got off to a great start on the first night he landed on just over 50lb’s by four ounces, which was a fish called ‘Eddy’.  A fantastic opener from clearly an unfancied swim.  

Carl then went on to have bits every night apart from the last two of the week.  Carl totalled 7 fish landed.

He did manage one more 50lb during the week, at 51lb, but was more like a bar of soap for him to hold than a carp as it done the off before any real photos got taken and despite his best efforts to get the fish back to the mat with cramp in his leg it had done the off.  From the pictures we had I was still able to identify the fish as ‘Boilie Head’.

Other notable fish were ‘Eutopia’ first time over 40lb at 43lb 8oz and no recorded capture since 2019!  ‘The Fraud’, which is an incredible looking fish, at 32lb and a nice scaly 24lb 12oz mirror called ‘Humpty 8’.

Carl fished with a new nut flavoured test bait from Mainline mixed with hemp, corn and pellet and fished D rig styled rigs tied up from IQ fluorocarbon with Wide Gape hooks.  Hook baits consisted of a match the hatch boilie and a yellow topper soaked in Pango Goo.

 

Young Harry ‘H’ Sheard, who if anyone has watched and of the Dovie Spooner Vs films on YouTube might have noticed him as ‘the ref’ in these films, spent most of the week fishing in The Poo.  He then went on towards the end of the week to spend one night in Dunkerque before then settling for the last two nights in Double Boards.

With the fish starting to show in this area on mass over the last couple of days it was a shrewd move.  

His first fish from here resulted in a new PB for him, which he was over the moon with.

Friday evening almost resulted in a total rod wipe out for him, having landed a small fish one of his other rods where away, which resulted in ‘Lock Down’ weighing 39lb 2oz and then after a funny occurrence on his remaining rod resulted in him winding it in to find the lead had gone and he had obviously been ‘done’.

Effort equals reward as they say and the effort of keeping on his toes worked out in the end for the young lad, well done H.

 

Over in Decoy we had Richard ‘Rick’ Burnett, who within Korda towers is the man that prints all those lovely T-Shirts that you all wear out on the bank.

Despite a though week and sticking at it, his reward came his way Wednesday night when he had his only bite of the week, which he manged to slip the net underneath of.  This turned out to be ‘The Stalker’ weighing 46lb.

This was caught from the 18 wrap spot out towards the Cage swim as he looked and was caught over the new nut test bait from Mainline which was also accompanied with a whole bucket of hemp that was introduced just that evening.

Rick fished the ever-popular multi combi rig with a match the hatch bottom bait with a pink Maize I.B. topper, with the rig being connected to a lead clip arrangement.

Being fairly new to the company this was his first taste of a Korda social, but I am sure that he will be back for many more to come.

Well done mate.

 

Another new member of the team at Korda is Edward ‘Ed’ Newall.  Ed is a Junior Content Creator within our marketing team, and he opted to fish from Billy’s for the week, which is a swim that has been on great form this year.

Taking his time to settle on a ‘spot’ he opted to fish long out in front of him at the edge of his boundary and unfortunately managed to lose two fish on his first night from here.

He kept on with this location and was rewarded Monday night with a cracking 37lb 8oz common that was caught on a bottom bait with a pink topper and was fished over a bed of Cell, Essential Cell, ISO Fish boilie and hemp and corn.  He certainly kept his bait options open!

Coated braided rigs with longshank hooks was what he used to land this incredible fish.

Despite his best efforts nothing else came his way, but he cannot go away disappointed after catching this great fish.

Well done Ed, great to meet you.

 

John ‘New John’ Carter, again another newer member of staff with Korda, works within the Marketing Team back at HQ.

Having had ball number two in his hand during the draw, he chose to fish from the ever-popular Turtles Corner.

 After last week with a lot of the bites coming from the left-hand margin John decided with the bulk of the fish showing more towards the dot island, this is where he picked to place his rods.

And again, like some of the anglers this week had a slow start to the week but went on to land a total of 12 fish from here, with his largest for the week coming right at the end of the trip on the very last night in the shape of ‘Minky’ weighing 36lb.

Another nice fish landed by John this week was ‘Hazy Maisey’ weighing 32lb 2oz.

John fished with multi combi rigs with size 6 Wide Gape hooks with a match the hatch fishmeal bottom bait fished over a bed of boilie, hemp and maize.

Well done John this week.

 

Christian Read who works within the sales team at Korda Towers dealing with Carp Porter customer services fished the week in Bacheliers.

Christian fished as hard as he could all week, and managed to have four bites this week, landing three of these.  One of these fish weighed 20lb 2oz with both others spinning the scales around to 26lb.

His first fish came from 15 wraps towards ‘the lone tree’ on a solid bag with a dumbbell hook bait, infused with Buttercorn Goo, mounted to a ready tied solid bag rig.

Using similar tactics, but with a yellow I.B. corn hookbait this time resulted in his second fish from 25 wraps out in front of him.

And then lastly, using a spinner rig with Krank hooks and a snowman hook bait produced his final fish from 25 wraps towards the left-hand marker pole in front of him.

Christian baited with boilie, hemp, pellet and corn, and was introduced with a mixture of the use of a Spomb, throwing stick and a catapult.

Well done from a challenging swim.

 

That’s it, Korda Social 2025 is a wrap.  Really great to catch up with the guys who fished on both lakes here, and to meet some of the newer members of the “team” from Korda HQ.

Roll on next year and the Korda social 2026!

Well done everyone.

 

Tight lines,

Gareth “Gino”