Bailiff Comments

Week Commencing: Sat 21/06/2025

Gute Zeiten

A lake exclusive this week on the Main Lake, with twelve fresh faces for the Gigantica complex visiting us all the way from Austria.  For most of them, they had to go through the best part of a twelve-hour drive to get to us.

More calm hot weather on the forecast this week that kicked off another bout of spawning through the week, especially Wednesday and Thursday night where they were going at it heavily around the trees at Big Girls and Stock Pond areas.

Let’s start this catch report off with the angler that managed the largest fish of the week fishing out of Oblivion and that was Nicolas Sladkarov.

With the fish still holding in numbers around the edges of the lake, due to the ongoing spawning and the fish hanging around the margins waiting for the sexy time to begin, it was no surprise that Nicolas concentrated his efforts down his right-hand margin where fish had been caught from of late.

Fishing this area a little shorter than normal at just 6 wraps he managed to land a fish on the first night weighing 30lb 8oz.  A nice way to open your account here at the Big G on your first night.

But it was later in the week when in the early hours of Thursday morning that Nicolas went on to catch the largest of the week, ‘2 C’s’ weighing just over 50lb, at 50lb 4oz.  Again, this fish came to his right-hand margin rod. 

Nicolas fished multi combi rigs, true Darrell Peck style, and baited with a match the hatch bottom bait with a yellow corn topper for an extra bit of attraction.  This was attached to a lead clip set up.

During the week he kept his areas topped up with a mixture of ISO Fish boilie, maize and pellet.

Well done this week Nico.

Fishing from the very hot and sunny Big Southerly this week was Markus Reisner.

Markus was also another angler to get on the score sheet on the first night, landing one of our smaller fresh residents at 13lb.  This fish was caught from down his left-hand margin on a spinner rig with the traditional yellow pop up as a hook bait.

But one of the “lookers” of the lake came and visited him the next day on the Monday, when he landed ‘Mad Max’ weighing 43lb. 4oz.  An incredible fish and as soon as that sling was opened it was easily identifiable.

This like the last fish was caught fishing out to the left, but this time on a lone solid bag approach, no free offerings, with a single grain of slow sinking yellow maize as his hook bait.  

Like with Nico, it was no surprise that the edges in this swim had produced the bites for Markus, with a large number of carp visible in this area during the walk around.

Stunning fish Marcus, well done.

Bernhard Maierhofer fished from Baxter’s Hole for the week, with it also having a nice marginal area to fish at to the right of the swim, and the fish holding up in the edges it looked a good choice of swim.  

But surprisingly it was his open water rods that produced his first two bits of the week for him, when he landed ‘Goggle Box’ at 34lb. 

He then went on land one of our smaller original scaley bangers, in the shape of ‘Stinger’ that weighed 24lb 8oz.  Cracking little fish this one.  This one also came from his open water rod, which was fished out towards the “marker pole” at 25 wraps.

Then late on on the Wednesday evening, another of our nice scaley mirrors, although one of our newer stockies, came paid him a visit.  This time this one came from his marginal spot right in the corner to his right-hand side.  32lb and ‘Tipple M’ was his reward, and a lovely fish as well.

Bernard fished a German style rig constructed from Fluorocarbon and baited with a sweet smelling bottom bait with a yellow corn topper for added attraction.  Bernhard baited with matching boilie, pellet, hemp and flake maize in his mix to tempt these fish to feed.

Well done Bernhard.

We had a birthday for one of the anglers this week, which was on the Friday, and this was angler Manfred Stöckl who started the week fishing out of Co’s Point and at the end of the week on the Thursday evening made the move into Big Girls after having no fish activity in Co’s.

A move that was worth the effort, as he managed to land a birthday carp on the Friday morning in the shape of ‘Penny’ that weighed in at 33lb 8oz.  A nice birthday gift from the lake for him.

This fish was caught at 11 wraps to his left fishing in towards the corner of the lake and was landed on a spinner rig set up to a lead clip arrangement and baited with a yellow lemon smelling pop up. Manfred attached a small PVA stick to this for added pulling power and did not bait up the area with any bait due to the number of fish present in the area.

Well done on the fish Manfred, we hope you had a happy birthday with us.

Franz Ganster was another angler that made a switch of swims during the week, not having to move to far as he started out in Pole Position and then moved midweek into the vacant Stock Pond.  A move that worked quickly for him as on the Wednesday evening he had his only bite of the week and managed to land ‘Supersonic’ weighing 27lb 8oz.  This was caught from the far corner of the swim at 26 wraps and was tempted with a snowman bait presentation on a German rig made from fluorocarbon with a size 4 hook and a lead clip set up and a long length of gravel coloured rig tubing to blend into the environment well.

Well done with the fish Franz.

Leaving it right to the very last morning to land his only fish was Andreas Mild who had set up in Alcatraz.

A smaller resident was his prize, ‘Baz Rat’ weighing 18lb 8oz.  This was caught at range from the swim, and I think the only fish to have been caught out at range in open water this week.

An Esterblend 12 balanced hook bait enticed this fish to feed on his hook bait set up on a spinner rig.  Andreas baited with a mixture of boilie, hemp, maize and pellet throughout the week.

Well done on the last-minute bit of action.

I also managed to get amongst some action this week, fishing just the evenings after work out of Big Girls.  I had seven bites, landing five all be it our smaller fish, the largest being 25lb 4oz called ‘Star Baby’ it was nice to get a few bends in the rod with 2-3 hours of fishing after work.

All bar one of my bites came from 26 ¼ wraps fished tight to the far reed bed off of the head land, and the other bite came from 11 wraps to my left-hand side of the swim.

On my way round to the swim in the evening I introduced around 40 boilies per spot and then fished a spinner rig made up from 5” of Hybrid Stiff to a size 4 Longshank hook with a large D Rig Kicker and a 0.4g shot on the hook and baited with a pink coloured fishy smelling wafter hook bait.

My other rod was fished with a multi combi rig, this comprised of 20lb Boom to Loop Braid, a size 4 Wide Gape hook again with a 0.4g shot on the hook and the same hook bait as above.

Another week over and more hot weather forecast, now hopefully with spawning over with we should start seeing some improvement on the fishing front.

Tight Lines

Gareth “Gino”.