Bailiff Comments

Week Commencing: Sat 22/11/2025

Grandson’s Name Sake

Six anglers joined us over on the Road Lake last week making the most of our now extended season fishing into the winter months.

A mixture of familiar faces, returning customers and first-time visitors.  

With the last couple of weeks getting tougher on the fishing front, let’s see how these guys got on.

Kicking off this report lets jump into Tea Party 2 and a customer who hasn’t visited the Gigantica complex for a few years and is no stranger to the Main Lake, and that was Luke Cornelius.

Luke managed to get amongst some fish earlier on in the week and kicked things off with a nice 44lb common that is called ‘Barrows’, and this was also followed up with 3 more fish in the 20lb category.

But the icing on the cake fell for him into the Tuesday, where he had managed to land and retain a much better fish.  And a better fish it was, ‘The Nose’ at a new top weight of 64lb on the nose.  An incredible and unique fish with such a big head on it.

After this bit of first half of the week action for Luke no more fish were to come and pay him a visit despite his best efforts.

Luke caught his fish from 22 ½ wraps aimed out to the left and the “forked tree”.  During the week Luke used a mainly a neat fishmeal boilie approach where over this he presented spinner rigs on lead clips and a size 4 Krank hook with a match the hatch bottom bait over his free offerings.

Well done on the fish you caught last week Luke.

Fishing in a similar body of water but going over to the other side of the lake in Turtles Corner we had returning guest Colin Chapman.

Colin also managed a bright start to the week, catching on the first morning.  A nice 23lb 8oz fish was his Sunday morning reward just as I was delivering breakfast.

Monday was to deliver his best reward for his work this week, and after catching a good sized common and when we weighed it in at 48lb 12oz Colin proceeded to tell a story of a fish in the Road Lake called ‘Riley’ and how he would dearly love to catch that as it is the name of his grandson…….well after doing the pictures and then identifying this fish it did turn out to be just that fish!  ‘Riley’ was his reward, which he was made up to find out about.

Three more smaller fish came Colin’s way up until the Tuesday with ‘Oakley’ weighing 28lb 8oz being the pick of the bunch.

Colin caught his first fish at 21 wraps to the dot island, and his remaining bites came just to the right of that, towards the first tallest tree to this side of the island.  Slip D rigs with size 4 Wide Gape hooks were his set up on a helicopter arrangement.  These were baited with a creamy sweet wafter hook bait and fished over a bed of flaked maize, corn and plenty of liquid attraction to make the mix very cloudy and soupy.

Well done this week and well done on catching one of the ones you wanted.

Keeping in that part of the lake and into Tea Party 1 we had first time angler here Jason White.

Jason was also one who got off to a good start on the first night when he managed to land ‘Big Albs’ weighing 38lb 4oz.  A great way to open your account on here and to get your heart pumping.

This was later backed up into the Tuesday with ‘Lou Lou’ that spun the scales around to 44lb 8oz.

Then just like the other lads around him the bites dried up then for the remainder of his week, unfortunately.

Like with Luke next door to him, Jason also used a mainly boilie approach but fished solid bags over the top of these to tempt his two fish to feed on his hook bait.  These were placed out in the usual direction of Turtles corner and fished at the edge of his boundary at 21 wraps.

Well done on the two fish despite the challenging conditions.

Moving onto another pair of first-time visitors to us here was brother duo Jason & Jamie Rowlinson.  Despite coming together and being brothers, they picked complete opposite ends of the lake to fish from, with Justin going into Dunkerque and Jamie dropping into Bacheliers.

So, let’s start with Justin Rowlinson who was in Dunkerque, and like another couple of the anglers managed a bite on his first night and a fish called ‘Joanna’ that weighed 34lb exactly.

This was caught from just 8 wraps out to his left and straight down the middle of Decoy swim as he looked at it.  This was also Justin’s only bite of the trip sadly.

Moving on to his brother all the way over in Bacheliers and Jamie Rowlinson.  Jamie believed he was staring in the eyes of going home empty handed, but he need not have worried as it all came good on the Thursday evening just as we were losing the light when he managed to land ‘Walkers’ that weighed 43lb 4oz.   He was totally relieved to have managed to land this one.  But he need not have worried as just like that his second came along the very next morning, again just as I was delivering breakfast into his swim, a fish was resting in his swim.  Coming back to do the photo’s we weighed this one in at 45lb exactly and it was a fish called ‘Molly’.  

Well worth the wait in the end for these two fish.

Jamie caught his fish at 18 wraps in the direction of what was the old single boards swim and baited here with 8 Spomb loads of bait, which was a mixture of 10mm Link and 14mm Cell boilies, added to this was corn and a good douse of Cell Smart Liquid.  Spinner rigs on lead clips were presented over the top of his bait mixture and these had size 4 Krank hooks on and baited with 12mm yellow pop ups soaked in the Pango Goo.

That’s it for another weekly round up on the Road Lake and our first year of opening for the winter fishing trips.  Eight anglers are booked on next week, let’s hope for some stable weather and a few more fish on the bank.

Well done all this week.

Tight Lines

Gareth “Gino”