Hello there it’s Luke,
On the 21st September I had my second session on Hunstrete’s Main Lake with James Collinson! You can read about my first session by clicking here. The main objective of this session was to get some sort of indication if the rigs and bait I was using would work. The rigs that I used on this session were made out of the new N-TRAP SILT. As you know (if you didn’t you do now) Hunstrete Lake has a silt bottom so I really wanted it to camouflage in. I was using a fairly long rig for mid water because the lead is most likely going to sink, an ESP Raptor Curve Shank hook in size 8 on a hair rig and attached to the mainline I had a Korda Silt Leader.
I cast the rod with the longer rig into mid water with a PVA bag of pellets. I was fishing with semi slack lines, so the line was going into the water just down by my feet. It wouldn’t spook any fish with the tight lines going straight down to the flying back lead. I cast my other rod just out of the margin exactly the same but with a shorter rig, and then I wait…
So,as I said at the start of this blog, all I wanted on this session was some sort of indication to know that my setup was working.
I arrived at the lake at 8:30am as I got a text from James quite early saying that it was getting busy so to get down here ASAP. James was there at 5:30am and was on peg 10 and I was lucky enough to get peg 9.
Once I had cast out it was the waiting game!
A few hours in James had a pick up! He striked into it and hooked into one! Bow waves were going straight ‘down’ the middle of the lake, this fish had to be big! The fish took him from peg 10, past my peg, past the one next to me and had almost got past peg 7, when, as James was slowing it down the line parted and a massive tail slapped the surface. It had to have been a 30+ but James was using a naked chodie which cut through the line when he tried to slow this monster down. (It just didn’t want to stop!)
As you can probably guess James was pretty gutted about this. But, being honest, I would have been if I was in his situation!
Getting back to me I had one pick up on the day towards late afternoon. I picked up into it and I felt it for about 2 seconds and then it came off… But that was all I wanted from the session, to know that I was doing something right! Even though a fish would have been nice!
Until the next time,
Luke
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