Craig Manktelow

Field Tester

0

It was 8:00am on Monday 21^st May and I arrived at Linear Fisheries in Oxford and headed to Brasnose2

I went for this lake as I find it an interesting venue with all the different under water features and I thought I would have the pick of the swims. As I pulled up at the lake I could see one half was full so I went for the opposite side and found that six of the pegs were closed off for Jan Porter doing a tuition for a couple of days. So that made my mind up I went to the top end of the lake.  I opted for a peg that has produced for me in the past so I didn’t bother with the marker rod as the only real feature is an 18ft hole. I sprayed a load of boilies and set my traps.

Over head view of first peg and baited spot

This was a family trip and after my mother, daughter and myself losing a number of fish I decided to move back down the lake to the point peg as it had been empty for the last couple of days and you can command a lot of water and we could all fit on it and have a bit of a social time. And as the weather was starting to hot up it would be a good choice as it is 4-6 feet deep on all the features.

The point my chosen peg

A look out over my swim

Over head view of the point peg and baited spot

As I have also fished this peg a couple of years ago and I could see all the gravel spots I decided not to get the marker rod out. So I chucked my rod out on the spot and clipped it up then walked my rod and spod rod out and clipped it up 2 feet shorter than my fishing rods. I started off spodding out about 15-20 spods of bait and then scattered a few loose boilies over the area.

My made up spod mix

I chose to use two different rigs this session so I could try two different hook patterns still from the Nash range. The first rig is made up of a 6inch coated braid with a longish hair tied on a size 6 Nash fang uni hook.

My first rig

 The second is the same coated braid with a short hair and tied to a size 6 nash fang x hook.

My second rig

As I finished setting up in my new swim the weather was getting hotter as the day went on.  I had a quick chat to Chris Blunt (fisheries officer) and he said they would start spawning soon. As the day went on I could see a lot of fish swimming back and forth in front of me and you could see they was getting into spawning mode and not really into feeding. Then at about 7:45 that evening my left hand rod screamed off and resulted in a 14lb mirror.

14lb

I refreshed the baited spot with about 10 spods and a few loose boilies and baited my rod and set my traps for the night ahead. As that night went without any fish I had my alarm set to wake me at 5:00am as I think this is a very important time of the day as the fish start moving around and it is bite time. So I sat on my bed looking out over the lake and after a couple of hours passed my rod screamed off at about 7:30am and after a bit of a battle and weeding me up the net went under a lovely 21lb 4oz mirror.

21lb 4oz

I spodded out a few more spods of bait and a couple of handfuls of boilies and chucked my rod back out on the spot. At 8:10am that same morning the same rod screamed off again and yet again after weeding me up I finally slipped the net under a lovely 18lb mirror.

18lb

As the day went on it got hotter and hotter and the fish finally started to spawn so I brought my rods in until that evening with just keeping the area well baited. The fish spawned nonstop for the next two days and nights keeping us all awake. As those two days went by with no fish it was Sunday before I knew it. Now the fish had finally stopped spawning the fish started feeding again and in the next couple of hours I had two fish one at 14lb and the other at 10lb 12oz.

14lb

10lb 12oz

 As I awoke on my final morning and started to pack at 5:30 am my left hand rod screamed off and resulted in a mirror of 10lb.

10lb

So I baited the area and repositioned my rod and it went again and this time the fish weeded me for nearly an hour. As I was keeping the tension on the fish to try and get it to swim out of the weed my right hand rod went off so I slackened the rod off and put it on the rest and pulled into my other rod but soon after the hook pulled. I decided to leave my rod on the rest with the tip pulled round on it to keep the tension on it so I sat almost on my rod and after 15 minutes the tip pulled right round to the left and I knew it was out and after a bit of a battle it resulted in a 9lb 8oz mirror what I thought was going to be a huge fish with the run around it gave me.

9lb 8oz

Then I finally ended the session with a fish of 10lb 6oz

10lb 6oz

That was the end of what I think was a hard session due to the weather and fish spawning and remember when you get weeded up with a fish just take your time and be patient it will come out eventually. All my fish were caught on bio premium Phaze1 boilies over a heavily spodded area. On Sonik sk3 13feet 3.5lb rods with stillwater big pit reels loaded with Fox Aquos line in 15lb.

Get on the SBS baits as they are a great bait, Tight Lines.

By: Craig Manktelow