John’s Start Ain’t Arf Bad!

The last time we heard from John Elmer he was just about to start the new season on the notoriously tricky Yateley Car Park lake, continuing his quest for the elusive ‘Arfur Tail’ the lakes biggest and oldest mirror. After lots of close season observation John lost a fish early into the new campaign but got off the mark shortly afterwards….

Well things are slowly starting to fall in place on The Car Park if that’s possible? I finally got off the mark with a stunning 31lb Common, one of the old one’s. I arrived at the lake on Friday morning at 4 am and took a slow walk around the lake. Now I had seen a couple of shows the week before in a certain area of the lake, and it was no surprise to see another 2 shows in this area.

I had watched the exact area where they had shown. It wasn’t long before I had a rig bang on the spot with a few Aquatix Anchovy chops from the Scattered Baits Range fired around the hook bait. The rig was made up helicopter style with ESP Leadcore, size 10 Uni-Link Swivel, 6 inches of Striptease in 15lb and a D7 size 7 completed the rig. The Leadcore was attached to the new line that I’m testing from ESP and this stuff hasn’t let me down at all since switching from GR60 doing everything I could ask of it! Well early on Saturday morning I had a flying take which ended up being this lovely 31lb Common, so let’s hope there is more to come.

John's lovely 31lb Common