Having seen loads of Milemead’s stunning fish popping up on my Facebook, it was only a matter of time before I went for a trip down there. Before my visit, I did my research by asking a few guys about the lake and how best to approach it. From the feedback, it was clear especially in the winter that a very ‘small’ amount of bait was the best approach to nick a bite.

I got down to the venue early on the Tuesday morning, but due work commitments I did not actually get the rods out until about 11am. I set up in peg 2 on the Specimen Lake as it was sheltered from the cold wind and I had been told it contained the deepest water. With no signs or shows to go by, the deeper water in the cold always seemed to be a sensible option.

The main feature in the swim was a big reed line, but the marginal shelf was quite weeded and I did not feel that it was worth trying to find a clear area on such a short session. From experience it’s apparent that on similar small venues like this (it’s 3acres) the fish really don’t like noise and especially leads going in, so casting around to find spots would likely spoil everything to start with. In hindsight, I think that leading around quietly pushed the fish out at the start of the session.

Eventually I found where the shelf ended and the weed stopped. The bottom of the shelf was silty and about 6ft deep. I fanned all three rods out and fished them all in the deeper water along the edge of the weed.

I decided to fish the same rig on all three rods; as it’s a presentation that I have a high level of confidence in as it has worked well for me many of times for me before. It’s a Fluoro combi-rig consisting of 15lb Soft Subterfuge connected Albright style to 25lb Trickster Heavy Braid. I like the fluorocarbon for the combi-rig as the lake’s very clear, so it makes sense to keep the terminal tackle hidden. This went down to a size 8 barbless Covert Dark Mugga. I fished that blowback style with a scaled snowman style hook arrangement, using a 10mm Cell bottom bait with a matching 8mm pop up. The critically balanced set-up went out with a small bag containing crushed boilie and micro pellets. Some people struggle fishing with such small baits, but for me it works wonders. With a couple of pouches of 10mm baits catapulted over each spot, I was fishing.

The day passed uneventful, however as it started to get dark, the reeds opposite started to knock showing some active fish had moved into the area. I would have liked to fish really tight to the reeds (where the fish were) but I could not get a drop. That evening ‘Top-rod Jamie’ came down and told me VERY tight to the reeds is clear and shallow but you must almost touch the reeds on the way otherwise you would be in weed. We’re talking less than a foot away! This was really valuable information that I wouldn’t have realised otherwise. Cheers for that mate, owe you one!

The rods had been out all day but to save the disturbance, I left then out into the night. At 10:30pm, and after they had been in the water over 12 hours, the first bite came on the left rod (almost in front of peg 1)… and turned out to be a pretty mirror of about 10lb.

The rest of the night after was uneventful. At first light I reeled in the left hand and middle rods and fired them up tight to the reeds in the hope the morning sun would bring the fish back up to the reeds. I also cast the rod I had caught on back out onto the same spot and added another little 10 baits.

At 9:30am the left rod was away again, this time resulting in a lovely upper double mirror. The reeds were moving all day but as I added 10 freebies over the top in the morning (massive mistake) the ducks murdered me in the shallow water. Then at about 3pm the ducks finally left me alone and I got a bite from really tight to the reeds, after re-casting numerous times. Soon enough a nice ghost common of about 10lbers was in the net. Less than 5 seconds after re-casting it back out, I had another bite! This time the culprit was a hard fighting dark coloured upper double common. As I started to pack up just before dark, I caught another small common from tight to the reeds once again. That spot had really come good.

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