Top German angler Mario Winnikes got off to a great start on a new venue recently, after battling through lots of bream a change of approach paid dividends. Here’s Mario’s story:
The first session at my new club water took place the weekend before easter. As it was very hot and sunny for that time of the year, I decided to fish the shallow end of the lake. The lake’s size is about 10 acres and its depth goes down to nearly 20 yards! The shallow end is a reedlined margin with 3ft to 5ft of water. I pre-baited twice with boilies and maize.
I started fishing on friday afternoon, one rod with a pop up presented on a chod rig, the other rod was fishend with a snowman set up, 20mm bottom bait + 16mm pop up. The chod rid was tied using a size 4 Stiff Rigger and 15lbs Ghost (my favourite stuff for pop up fishing). For the snowman rig I used a Raptor size 4 Long Shanx and Two Tone Stripteaze 25lbs. And I always use 4ft of ESP Leadcore as a leader for all my fishing.
My tactics worked… I caught right from the start… BREAM… huge BREAM and LOTS of them! As I was told later, that the lake is heavily stocked with bream, and one week before the club management stocked the lake with about 1500 crucian carp!!! So my particle approach was definitely a mistake. I had bites or linebites every 5 minutes! To get some sleep I reeled in for the night and baited up with 4kg of boilies, no more particles anymore!
Next morning at 7 a.m. I cast out my rods again and caught three commons of 1 x 22lbs and 2 x 29lbs within two hours of casting out. Next bites came from dusk till dawn and I landed three more commons with two of them going exactly 29lbs and one of 27lbs. That’s why I call the lake “29lbs Lake”. I also kept on catching some bream in between, but in a bearable number. During the following week I baited the swim twice with about 4kg of boilies each time, NO MORE particles for sure!
When I arrived for the Easter weekend the swim was unfortunately taken by two other carp anglers so I had to choose another one. My no. 2 choice of swim was free, so I set up there. It was a small shallow bay, lined with some sunken trees and it looked very carpy. But the fishing there was slow compared to the other swim. Maybe the change of weather and a massive drop of temperature was responsible.
During the first 24hours I caught some bream, but no carp showed near my swim. I kept the bait going in at a “little but often” manner. At 2am in the second night I was rewarded with a one noter. After 15 minutes of epic battle the first mirror from my new water was pulled into my net. It was a beautiful immaculate fish of 45lbs!
The bite came to two 20mm bottom baits on a very long hair (to avoid hooking bream). The size 4 Raptor Long Shanx hook and Two Tone 25lbs hooklink did a pukka job!
…weil’s fängt, Mario Winnikes.