With severe winds, rain & hailstorms on the final Saturday of the month, it wasn’t looking very optimistic for the quick session that I had planned the following morning. BST had arrived and the forecast was not looking good at all. Waking up an hour late the next morning, I was extremely shocked to find the sun blaring in a cloudless sky. “Good old met office strikes again” I thought to myself.
Upon arriving on the complex, I opted to fish the shallower end of the lake, due to the warm weather. From up a tree a carp was spotted basking and just hovering above an old patch of sedges, not really looking interested in anything. A small common was also swimming around a lot more active than the bigger fish. After watching these fish from up the tree, it became clear that they were both commons and one was excessively larger than the other. To see if the bigger fish would have a little feed, a few pellets were fired out. As expected he didn’t budge, even when a pellet virtually dropped on his head. Admitting defeat, he was left on his own to bask in the sun.
With no fish action, I decided to go look if the common was still in the safety of the sedges and more importantly if any others had joined him. I was quite shocked to find the fish had only moved around 2ft along the sedges. He was still basking in the sun popping his back out of the water then sinking below the surface again, leave a big swirl behind him from the fanning of his tail. I managed to watch him from up the tree for a good while, with the smaller more active common visiting, circling around the larger common then disappearing again. I left them to it after a while but did notice he had a white spot on his other side, so it would be a recognisable fish in the future.
Around 4pm a few fish were staring to roll and a young lad who was walking around, had stopped to see of I’d caught anything. Out of the blue he starts shouting, “What’s that!” Pointing towards two sticks, which were coming vertically out of the water and then sinking back below the surface. After about five minutes of watching these sticks, the back of a fish came out of the water. As it was so close to where I was watching the common earlier I had to go investigate. As I climbed the tree to see if the common was still there, The back of this fish came up again, it was now becoming clear what was going. The sticks looked like they were tangled up in some kind of rig or line. This fish must have been tethered or towing a trailer, hence the reason why he wasn’t active or moving very far.
Something needed to be done so, I was soon in the water with a rod in hand waiting for him to surface again. A few minutes later up came the sticks again so I cast to them but dropped a little bit short. Again the fish topped and the second cast was made, it landed just beyond where the sticks had sunk. I quickly sank the line and wound down which resulted in my rig picking up what ever he was trailing. The fish was on and all I needed to do was get him in, which turned out to be a lot harder than expected. This common turned into one angry fish tearing off into the deeper water and using this to his advantage. The trailer he was towing kept getting snagged up on the lakebed debris.
It didn’t take long to gain control & after a few minutes exhaustion got the better of the fish, and wallowing on the surface was a larger than expected common. Straight in the net he went along with the biggest amount of what can only be described as cr*p, dangling from his mouth. Another angler Andy came round with his carp care and unhooking mat. He assisted with the removal of a “Chod Rig” and the mass of line and debris attached to it. The fish’s mouth was not badly damaged but we treated the wound and up on the scales he went 20lb 4oz.With a couple of record shots taken, he gently rested in the margin before swimming off into the depths to live another day! Looking a lot happier, I must say!
On inspection the rig itself was set up correctly. The only thing that we could see that wasn’t in my eyes good enough was that the swivel that ran up and down the leadcore leader, was just a normal size 8 swivel. An “O Ring” swivel would have moved more freely with the bigger bore. The beads were a decent size and passed over the loop to loop knot easily. With the swivel not coming off the leader, the debris got caught in the trailer getting worse the more the fish swam around.
It just makes you think, is your set up as safe as possible. If this fish has got snagged up in the deeper water, out of human sight. This fish would have died.
Fish safety should always be priority, Just have a think about that
Tight Lines
Nick Winwood
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