Jo Green returned to the Road Lake at Longfield last week after a winter layoff and caught up with an old friend. Here’s Jo’s story:
Having been away from the lake few months, I was itching to get back. After the recent floods it was now fishable although the water was still high. There was nobody else on the lake and after doing a lap I decided on this little swim, with rain forecast I set up house pretty quick, then started to concentrate on getting rods in place.
The left hand rod was cast out to a gravel patch at 30 yards while the other rod was cast out to the right at around 25 yards on a silt patch consisting of a chod rig size 7. The first 24 hours drew a blank, so I decided to move the right hand rod a little more to the right and leaving the left hand rod on the gravel where it was. Sunday morning came and I had now resigned myself to a blank, so I thought, one more cup of tea and I’ll start packing up, no sooner had I filled the kettle and about to turn the stove on, the right hand rod had a slow lift then started to drop back down, liner so I thought, then the rod started to pull around to the right, very soon I was connected to the fish and finally after a twenty minute battle with a pretty angry fish he was in the net.
There wasn’t anyone else on the lake, so shaking I made the call and waited for Mike and Wayne to come round from Horton to do the weighing and the photo’s. While the fish was happily resting in the net I tried to identify which one it was, he was so broad with deep flanks and not wanting to stress him out I waited. Soon mike arrived and we were ready to do lift this leviathan out of the water, as I started to peel back the net I saw the orange spot and thought “no surely not, it can’t be.”
For the third time this season I had banked the highly sought, orange spot, the king of the pond, the scales finally settled at 42lb 6oz his best weight. I couldn’t be happier what a fish. Myself and the owner of the fishery were only joking the day before about me catching him again, how bizarre!
Tackle used
ESP leadcore leaders, chod rig for silt spot, raptorT6 size 8 for gravel spot, power gum and ESP Syncro mainline 18lb