Name:

Dan Handley

Where From:

Berkshire club water

Capture Details:

with the weather forecast high pressure and the temperature due to drop, it wasn’t looking great for my two nights down at the Berkshire club lake I’m currently targeting, a cold north westerly was blowing down the lake when I arrived it felt chilly so I set up on the back of it for the first night, I heard a few through the night but nothing has happened by the morning, I wasn’t surprised as it was bitterly cold, after a couple of laps I hadn’t seen much of note so stayed put out of the wind, I was fishing one rod down the adjacent margin, to a lovely gravel run that leads down from under the marginal snags till it drops in to the silt at the bottom of the drop off a rod length ft from the bank I’d been baiting the spot for the past couple of weeks but not seen much on it, the coots loved it though and were diving on me constantly at the top of the shelf, after being picked up a couple of times in the shallow water I moved the rod to the bottom of the shelf to get it in to deeper water away from them, I still baited heavily for the night about 3kilos of whole and chopped 12 and 16mm krill, only about an hour later out of the blue the bobbin picked up and stayed at the top, I looked across expecting to see a startled coot pop up at any minute all looked as usual though with the birds still busy clearing the shallow water right next to bank, I picked up the rod and was greeted with a solid resistance, I was in! The fish put up an almighty scarp especially considering the drop in water temperature once succumbed and in the net it looked a good fish, on the scales she went 34lb 8o I got some great self takes in the fading afternoon light before slipping her back.

Gardner Products Used:

Mirage flourocarbon mainline, covert dark size 6 chod, trip wire, chod skin