Bailiff Comments

Week Commencing: Sat 01/11/2025

Tough Times

Plenty of rain greeted the guests this week for our walk around, with plenty of familiar customers this week let’s see how they got on by reading below.

Back for another week’s fishing after having just one week back home between trips was Chris Clarke.  After having pulled ball number seven out of the hat and missing out on his preferred choice of swim by one ball, Chris opted to drop back into familiar territory in Oblivion, where he had done so well in just a couple of weeks ago.

 Going straight back to what he did before it took Chris until the Monday night before he had some action.  The evening prior I had said to him I wanted to see three slings by morning, which he almost done by landing two carp.  These were ‘Cub 28’ weighing 24lb 8oz and this was also backed up with ‘Stargazer’ which spun the scales around to 51lb 12oz!

Chris’s final bit of the action this week came the very next night, when he slipped the net underneath ‘Mistaken Identity’ that weighed in at 44lb.

Chris fished the week as he had done previously in here, as I mentioned above, at the limit of his swim at 33 wraps and the same bait combination of two different boilies (one fish one sweet) mixed and combined with hemp.  Over this he fished his bottom bait rigs with match the hatch hook baits to tempt them to pick up his rigs.

Well done on a tough week Chris.

Jake Harrold who decided to fish from the big fish swim Big Southerly this week, caught exactly that…….big fish.

After a few quiet days and after contemplating moving on the Wednesday if he hadn’t of caught, had his first bite on the Tuesday night and managed to land it also.

A fish called ‘Septimus’ was his reward for his patience, and this one weighed in at 53lb 12oz.  This certainly convinced him to stay for at least a bit longer.

And it was a good choice to stick it out longer, as on the very next night he managed another nice sized common which he said was of similar size.  Well, it was a little bigger than before.  ‘Lashes’ is what he had managed to land, which is also our biggest home-grown carp swimming in our waters at 69lb!

This swim is known as big fish territory, and it kept up this form.  

Just the two fish for Jake, but what great carp they were to catch. 

Both fish were caught from 26 ½ wraps to the left of Alcatraz as you look out, and where caught over a mixture of Hemp, Pellet and ISO Fish in 10 and 15mm both whole and crushed.  Over this he placed spinner rigs made from IQ fluoro and size 6 Krank hooks, and these were baited with homemade Cell wafters.

Well done on two great fish this week Jake.

Another regular this week was our Yorkshire man from Italy, Nick Warburton.  Nick had a good draw this time around and chose to fish from The Alamo.

Despite the wind blowing straight at him for the start of the week he still manged to get some bait and rigs out long at 32 wraps to the left of Bob’s Beach.

And it didn’t take him long for him to hear his alarm indicating a bite.  This was on the Sunday night, where he went on to land a cracking 56lb mirror known as ‘K.C.’.

Despite the early action this was Nick’s only bite of the week, but a great fish to have caught regardless.

Nick baited his area with a fishmeal boilie and hemp combination, which has worked so well of late, and used IQ-D rigs over the top of this baited with a Cell bottom bait and yellow barrel topper which was cut down in half.

Well done on the fish, and as always pleasure to have seen you again.

Lastly to mange to catch a fish this week we have another regular, Darren Walker.  Darren opted to set up in the ever-popular Bob’s Beach for the week ahead.

Leaving it very late in the week for his blank saver, in fact the last full day, Darren managed to land a lovely looking common in the form of ‘Kool Carp’ which spun the scales around to 36lb.  With the tough fishing conditions that will do nicely.

Darren fished with multi combi rigs made with size 6 Wide Gape hooks.  His rigs were placed out at 22 ½ wraps to the left of The Alamo in front of him.  Rigs were baited with a match the hatch nut-based boilie and for feed Darren fed them two different boilies, one fish based and the other a nut-based boilie.  With this Darren also introduced hemp into his mix.

Sticking to it certainly paid off in the end.

Well with just seven fish landed this week it has been a tough couple of weeks now here on the Main Lake.  Let’s hope that the fish switch on to the feed more in the coming weeks.  

They are certainly very active still, showing all through the hours of darkness.

Until next time.

Gareth “Gino”