Rob Shanks can’t put a foot wrong at the moment and sent us this report, top angling mate!
It’s been a long standing ambition of mine since I started carp fishing 20 years ago to catch a 40lb Mirror and Common from my home county of Norfolk. Having been fortunate enough to have caught a 40lb mirror a few years ago I’ve since been looking for the opportunity to target a 40lb common and joined this particular water last spring. I had a good number of fish over the first season including 59 over 20lb to 33.08lb (common) but the lakes big common managed to keep itself frustratingly well away from my landing net.
I decided to change my tactics slightly in February and rather than chasing the main body of fish around I decided to just concentrate on trickling bait into and fishing areas that the big common has been known to get caught from and although my catch rate dropped slightly in terms of numbers the size of the fish I was catching increased including a brace of 30’s in February. I pre planned a trip to coincide with some warmer weather and the springs first south westerly winds but by the time the session arrived the weather, although still milder had changed and the forcast wind never arrived and stayed North Easterly. Luckily it was blowing straight into an area I’d been pre-baiting with Sticky Baits Vortex 16mm boilies only two or three days before.
On the first night of the 48hr session I set up so I could see a lot of the lake and it was clear during the night that the fished had moved into the areas I’d baited. Early the next day I was on the move and quickly set about getting my rods in position, my ever faithful ESP chod rigs running on ESP camo leadcore with a Sticky Baits Pineapple pop-up were dispatched to the areas along with a good couple of handfuls of Vortex boilies.
It was quiet during the day but as soon as dusk started to settle the fish were clearly still in the swim. I had a take a few hours into darkness at around 11.30pm which resulted in a 23.08 common which I was more than happy with. Little did I know what was too come in the following hours and at 5.15am my right hand rod was away and after a pretty tense 15 minute battle a set of huge shoulders appeared in the half light a rod length or so out and I immediately knew what fish it was as I drew it nervously over the waiting cord of my ESP sniper landing net. On the scales she went 40.00lb exactly and made me an extremely happy boy on only my third nights fishing of the new season.
Chod Rigs are one of the best methods of presenting Pop-ups over weedy, silty lake beds with lots of detritus on the bottom. For more information on ESP’s ready-tied Chod Rigs, click here.