Quietly does it !!

After the laughter and banter of a week with the Cumbrian lads we have a very quiet and peaceful week now in progress. With 4 nice Dutch lads booking the lake exclusively the positive is that the lake seems very peaceful and quiet and the downside is that with all 4 anglers on one bank the carp can keep well out of the way should they so chose. Having said that some nice fish have been banked already with a total of 18 so far including 8 x 30lb+ carp and two catfish at 55lb and 28lb. The big cat came when 2 of the lads were away at the shops and after seeing Jurien playing the fish for about 20 mins I decided to stroll round and see what was causing such a struggle. Lambert was snoring loudly in his bivvy at the other end of the lake so could not be called to help so I sat quietly in the bivvy to keep dry, filming all the action, whilst Jurien battled away with his catch. After around 1hr the fish was no closer to being netted than when it was first hooked and to add a little more interest to proceedings another of Juriens rods took off with a screaming run. I lifted into the fish and passed the rod to Jurien whilst I held the ‘cat rod’ and proceeded to give a little and take a little as the cat held out in the middle of the lake. A cracking 29lb mirror was duly landed, weighed and photographed and Jurien took over the cat rod once again. The fight lasted one and a half hours and the catfish turned the scales at 55lb. Best carp so far are a 34.1 to Lambert, 34.2 to Reinier, 33 to Simon and 30.8 to Jurien.

The importance of using a quality fishmeal freezer bait was make very obvious over the weekend with the lads using readymades over their own pellet for the first 36hrs and catching just the one carp. Once they changed to our crab boilies over our high fishmeal pellet they had around 25 runs landing 16 fish in the next 36hrs. Its not just our bait that catches but I really suggest that if you are bringing your own over then you select a good quality fishmeal based bait in either fresh or frozen form.

Trevor the terrapin has left us I am afraid!!! The little fellah was spotted by several of our anglers over the past couple of years and quietly got on with his lonely life around tha lake. We rescued him from the vidange point a couple of months ago and released him, non the worse for the experience into the lake. Yesterday Sophie found him squashed on the road !! the saddest thing was that although in a pretty ugly mess he managed to lift up his little head and looked at her.

Jimmy put him out of his misery will a well aimed blow from a shovel !!!

Jurien and his 55lb Catfish.

A nice 30 for Simon.

A good mirror for Jurien.

~ by jimeveriss on June 16, 2009.