As part of my University course, I was recently on a 4 week work placement at CEMEX Angling. The first week I was doing fishery management work around Kingsmead One, which gave me the opportunity to do work nights on the lake!

At 1.30am on only the second night, my 14mm Coco Nutty snowman hook bait was picked up. It was a very powerful fish, and after a tense fight where it picked up all my other lines, my mate Calum Kletta expertly netted it. The size 8 Continental Mugga (that I had stolen from Calum!) was firmly bedded in it’s bottom lip. At 44lb 8oz it was a new PB and certainly made the next few days of tree work much easier.

The next week was spent away from the complex doing electro fishing work, so the following week I decided to fish another lake on the complex, namely Horton Boat pool. After spotting a fish show the first morning while packing up for work, I mentally marked the spot ready for the night ahead. That night the temperature dropped to minus seven with freezing fog, but I was brimming with confidence. I was awake at first light, and at 7am the rod cast where the fish had shown produced a bite. It was no screaming bite, as the bite alarm was frozen, as was the clutch on the reel! It seemed I had struck gold again, as this fish turned out to be a new PB common of 34lb 8oz! It was a scale perfect golden common which looked stunning against the frozen white backdrop of winter. I couldn’t believe my luck, I was supposed to be working not catching PB’s but I certainly wasn’t complaining!