Peter Hurst,
I turned up at the lake, armed to the teeth with my first batch of Sea Monsta, eager to get started with it. A near miss occurred when I almost slipped into a swim that had just done over 25 bites in 48hrs!
Although I had a great chance of catching a few, it seemed that a fair few of them were hungry young guns and I thought I had a better chance of a slightly better stamp in another area.
Using stiff hinges baited with 11mm Stinky Squidz pop ups, I cast them all quite close together onto a soft, silty bottom on the far side of a fresh weed bed. Baiting up with 18mm halves/crushed and whole 14mms baits, fish were soon showing in the zone. Then at 4am one of the rods was away.
Not long into the fight, it found a weed bed. I like to use mono for as long as I can get away with it on W1 and as the weed wasn’t in full bloom yet, I was confident of landing the fish. The rod was put on the rest for about 15 mins, whilst I watched and listened for the tick-tick of the spool. Nothing happened and so I wound back down and almost instantly felt a fair bit of weight on the move.
I was convinced I had a fish most likely covered in weed and continued to pump it back towards me. As the fish rose to the surface, a big head and shoulders slipped into the net, surprisingly with no weed attached!
I realised this was something special and was proved right when it turned out to be a 45lb 5oz mirror that made it the South Lake Record and a Personal Best to boot.
This was something to savour and cherish, I was on cloud nine (and still am). I continued to apply the same tactics over the next 24hrs and the fish were still mopping up the bait.
With another 6 carp caught, a really good session was made pretty amazing by the big 'un!
Peter Hurst
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