Fishing has been a bit slow of late what with all the ice and snow that we have had recently with only two nights spent fishing since Christmas so when we finally got a few days of mild weather I just couldn’t wait to get out for a couple nights fishing. So I packed up the motor and got to the lake on Thursday 18th of February at around 11am and had a walk around the lake but didn’t see anything which wasn’t surprising considering the time of the year, so I chose a swim which gave me access to the deeper end of the lake and is normally a decent winter swim. I wasn’t in a rush to get the rods in as I was hoping to see something while I set up the bivvy and got some new rigs tied up and as luck would have it after about half an hour or so I saw three fish show right in front of the swim I was in at about 50yds range and all within a30yds area so that is were I put my rods with two pop ups on the left and right rods and a bottom bait in the middle just to cover all my options, I then scattered about 2 to 3 kilo of bait over the area with the throwing stick, the bait I used was SBS baits Ace Lobworm boilies in 14mm which is the bait that has produced the most fish over the last two years on this lake. Just as I had finished putting the bait out I had a run on my right rod and considering how cold the water still is it put up a really good fight and must have taken me 15 minutes to land, when it went in the net it looked a good fish and after unhooking and weighing it took the scales round to 32.8 and I was well happy as the lake hadn’t produced a fish since October. After getting the fish back and my rod back out I must admit that my confidence was up and I was hoping for another bite but nothing else happened so when I woke up in the morning I was a little disappointed and with the weather getting colder again the temperature seemed to be dropping by the minute. Then at around 10am the left rod slowly tightened up and the started taking line as I hit in to it I thought it might be a good fish because it was a much slower fight compared to the last one although it kitted left then right it didn’t take any line but just came slowly to the net and as soon as it went in the net I was almost certain of which fish it was, after getting it on the bank it was confirmed and it was the fish I thought, and my target fish for this water although this was not the biggest fish in the lake it was the one that I wanted the most so was over the moon, on the scales it went 47.3 and a great result for this time of the year. I did have one more night left so I was hoping for another but the weather was turning colder and as it turned out must have turned the fish back off the feed because I never saw another fish or even had a liner for the rest of my session so although disappointed not to have had more fish I was well made up with what I did have and to top it all it was a new PB mirror for me upping it from 46.4 to now 47.3 and a great start to the new year for me.
The gear used was..13ft 3.5 tc Greys Torsion rod with 50mm rings, Shimano LC loaded with ACE Velocity Camo 12lb mono with fluorocarbon leader to an ACE lead clip and a 2.5oz ACE lead finished off with a fluorocarbon hinged stiff link hooklink connected to a size 8 stiff rig hook. Hook bait was a 14mm lobworm pop up and a new white corn popper from SBS. |
