After nearly 3 months out of work and a small fortune spent at the osteopath, I am finally in the car on the way back to the lake.  I meet with a friend of mine in the car park who tells me that only a handful of fish have been out.  Due to the weed not a great deal of people are really having a go, just a few regulars that are picking the odd fish off the clearer spots.  On having a closer look I could see what he meant.  The weed was from the lakebed to the surface in most places but there were still patches of shorter weed amongst it.  The other anglers were fishing the less weedier swims on the lake, and as I have been away for so long and lost touch a bit I decide to go with what has served me well in the past and get in the thick stuff!

I set up in a swim that has a lot of weed in it, but also has 3 or 4 areas where the weed is not quite as long.  I fish the rods on these areas using the chod rig and tying on my leads with 1lb mono.  This ensures the lead will be lost on the take making it easier to get the fish through the mass of weed in front of me.  15 spods of hemp and crushed tiger with a few handfuls of maggots go over each spot and we are fishing. 

The first night ends quietly, but after a lost fish at last light on the second night my confidence is back up again.  6 o’clock in the morning and I am scrambling to my rods to hit a take, with my clutch fished tight and the lead discharged the fish comes to the surface almost immediately.  Due to the weed in the swim I play the fish hard and with a mass of weed over its head she gives up without too much drama.

A fish in the bag on my first trip back and at 31lb 8oz I can’t wait to get back down.

I am back on the bank after 2 weeks at home trying to earn a living.  The conditions are not very good, no wind, high pressure and hot.  Due to the conditions there is only 1 other angler on the lake and the fish are easy to find.

The fish are in the 2 shallow bays sunning themselves amongst the weed beds and if they stay true to form most of them will leave as the temperature drops at night.  I opt for the swim I fished previously, this is situated between the 2 bays so anything leaving the bays at night should come close to the spots, and due to the amount of weed I had to clear from the margins I don’t think it has been fished since I was here last.

I marked my lines out along the bank on the previous trip so no marker was needed and the spod is still clipped up at the same spots so I was able to get the rods out with a minimum of fuss.

My spod mix consisted of hemp, corn, crushed tigers, halibut pellets and maggots.  5 kilos of this was spread over all the rods.  Because of the amount of small food items in the mix it gets caught up in the higher layers of the weed, this acts as a good visual attractor as well as a food source and it also takes longer for the bird life to polish it off.  20 to 30 boilies were fired over each rod for good measure and then its time to put the house up and get some dinner down me.

3 am the following morning I heard a fish crash near one of the spots and again about 10 minutes later but all fell quiet again.  At first light I peer out of my sleeping bag cover to see loads of bubbles over the left hand rod and before I can sit up the bobbin hits the rod and line starts ripping from the reel.

As I lifted in to the fish it made a lunge for a large weed bed and weeded me up solid.  After 5 minutes or so of pumping from different angles I managed to get it free and up on to the surface.  The battle was epic, but eventually after about 10 minutes and clearing the snooker table size weed bed of the lead core, she graced the net.  A well proportioned mirror lay on the mat, a dark fish with a few small scales dotted here and there and pecs nearly as big as my hand.  The fish weighed 34lb 4oz and was one of the best looking fish I had seen from the venue.  Nothing else occurred for the next 24 hours but who cares I was going to be driving home with a big grin on my face.