Day 4 : Big Zalk

Tue 25th August

Bertie's shot from the road across the lake

Preparation

Upon arrival we made up a bait mix. Today we would introduce the initial feed with bait-up feeders rather than the catapult. The wind was already gettiing up and we didn't want to be scattering it too far. We clipped up to 30m. I started with 20 feeder fulls laced with chopped worm, mashed corn, casters and pellets. The photo shows me sat on the white box/platform with Garry to my right.

Time to start

Finally I was ready to start. I cast in, tensioned the tip and got a bite immediately that resulted in a Bream. The signs were good and I just hoped it wouldn't be like the Vechte with an early Bream then nothing. Happily, a few minutes later I had my next Bream. This continued and I had 4 Bream in the net before Garry really got started.

Garry's woes

Garry was having one of those days where everything was going wrong. He pulled out of his first Bream near the net . The second got into a huge bed of submerged weed. He lost the fish and pulled in a big raft of weed.

The 1st of many weeds rafts pulled up

Throughout the day he would loose several fish to that weed. Additionally his hat blew off (and got soaked in the lake). Multiple times the wind gusted at just the wrong time resulting in him hooking clothing or nets. It seemed that everytime I looked over he was in a pickle and painting the air blue. To his credit he persisted and was regularly putting Bream in the net. When we broke for lunch his fortunes improved and his afternoon was much less fraught than his morning.

Simple tactics

I was using a window feeder. I know the usual trick is to load with particles and seal with groundbait but I still had plenty of my mix which was laced with particle anyway. Also, I was using 2 dendras on the hook without tipping with corn or anything else. I would have switched tactics but this simple and efficient approach was working for me all day.

The weigh-in

The end result was 144lb for Garry (brilliant considering his morning from hell) and 170lb 3oz for me consisting of 45 Bream and 3 Roach. I hadn't realised that this was just a couple of pound short of my biggest catch - just 1 more Bream!

Current tally is 2 wins each.

My tip-back

Tomorrow

We haven't really decided on our venue for tomorrow. We are going out for a meal with Bertie and his wife so need to finish early tomorrorow. I therefore suggested an early trip out to the canal confluence near where I stayed on my first trip. I had Bream and Tench from there. We decided on a drive out there before we lost the light to make sure it wasn't weeded up. When we got there it was dubious weed-wise and there were no pegs so would need some work before we started. We therefore decided on a different lake.