Bailiff Comments

Week Commencing: Sat 12/10/2019

WC 12th October 2019

The Sparrow has landed!

The trees have turned their leaves into the most amazing reds, yellows and golds......Autumn is definitely here. We had a lake exclusive booking this week a mix of anglers who had fished the lake before and first timers. The weather forecast looked brilliant for the week, with Southerly and South Westerly winds, low pressure and fairly warm temperatures. On paper it ticked all the carp fishing bible weather conditions for catching loads of fish. Time would tell whether that would be the case.

Andy Sparrow picked Stink at the draw and decided to start off with two rods at 27 wraps towards Baxter’s and one at 15 wraps towards the corner of Treeline. He was using chopped and crumbed Baitworks Royal Marine mixed with pellet and maize, and started off with 10kg split between the two spots. Disaster struck on Sunday morning when after a long fight with what felt like a good fish, he suffered a hook-pull. He took it well, “got back on the horse” and put the rods back out. Just after first light on Tuesday morning he got another chance when his Yellow Pineapple Scent From Hell Pop-Up was picked up and this time made no mistakes. His reward was the “Buzzin’ Fish” at a new biggest weight of 56lb 8oz. 

Dan Stroud couldn’t decide between Big Southerly or Beach, but eventually chose the Beach (the fact that the Immaculate came out of there at 87lb 8oz the previous week might have helped!). He went out to 25 wraps towards The Alamo with all three rods and baited up with 6kg of Mainline Link mixed with pellet and fished Link Wafters on Spinner rigs over the top. It took longer than expected to get his first bite, but on Sunday night and in the early hours of Monday morning he landed himself a nice brace of thirties. He topped the bait back up and had another fish on Tuesday evening before they appeared to drift back out to the central area of the lake. 

Gary Edwards was in Co’s Point and chose to fish the productive 27.5 wrap area towards the “Tits”. After a quiet first night where he baited fairly lightly, he upped the anti on Sunday and put out 7kg of DNA S7 and Royal Marine mixed with pellet. This had the desired effect, and on Sunday night he had two bites resulting in a brace of twenties. The following day he increased the bait quantity to twelve kilo and it appeared that it may have been too much, as it took 24hrs before the next bite came. Gary reduced the quantity back down to 5kg and picked up another fish on Friday night, ending the week with four fish. All the fish came to Pop-Ups on Spinner rigs; either Scent From Hell Pineapples or Citrus.

Steve Bartlett fancied a crack at The Alamo and chose the right-hand side, fishing all three rods at 29 wraps towards the Beach. He chose to bait up with 5kg of pellet and maize to start with, and despite plenty of activity in the evenings, a frustrating couple of nights ensued. Cutting the maize out and going to just pellet yielded his first bite on Tuesday evening, which was from one of the stunning scaley new fish known as “Ripper”. The fish came to a Mainline Link Wafter fished on Spinner rigs with running COG leads. He finished the week with another scaley cracker known as “Apostrophe” on Thursday evening. 

Jeremi Gualandri was on his third trip, and the fish had managed to avoid him on his previous two trips. Keen to make up for it, he got stuck straight in at Oblivion. Fishing 26 wraps towards the big tree left of Beach, he put all three rods out to the area and baited with Mainline Link and maize. A few fish could be seen in the area, but nothing occurred on the bite front. On Tuesday he switched over to introducing pellet and this had the desired effect as he finally landed himself a fish. His White Link Wafter was picked up by a cracking 26lb Common. 

There were fourteen fish landed altogether, and a few of the lads did struggle to get to grips with the fishing, but have learnt a lot, which they can put in place on their next trip. It was good to catch up with some of the old work party lads, and an enjoyable week was had by all.