Monster from Mangrove

Jim has been a member of the Mangrove for the last eight seasons, but he needed to drop out to fish other waters.

“If I am a member of the Mangrove I just wouldn’t go anywhere else. I was down for my very last four nighter on this wonderful water.”

Jim changed swim three times during the four nights to follow the wind, and it would have been four times if the wind hadn’t been just too rough on one of the days as everything had to be moved by boat.

Jim Kelly with his Mangrove PB common at 36lb 1oz

He started in the stream mouth, but blanked. Then he moved to the Lightening Tree for two nights but still with no action. So he decided to move back to the stream mouth. There were four reasons for this decision:

a)For nostalgia, as he caught his first Mangrove carp from the swim.b)He caught a 30lb common from it a couple of weeks before.c)He had baited it up the first night he fished and thought fish may have moved onto the bait.d)The wind was hacking into it.

Jim takes up the story:

“There was no action during the night and the Mangrove does not fish in the daytime except in the winter, so come 8:30 am I started to pack up. At 8:40 I had a couple of beeps on my right hand rod and I was into a fish. I knew straight away that it was a good fish by the way it was fighting. After visiting a couple of beds of rushes I managed to slip the net under a good common. My last ever fish on the Mangrove and it was a common of 36lb 1oz, a PB common for me. What a way to finish, a half hour later I would have been packed up. Thank you Mangrove, Quest Bait and all the carp gods.”

Jim used four rods cast to a single marker float 50 yards straight out. Approximately 2lb each of hemp and pigeon mix plus 120 Quest Rahja Spice boilies baited close to marker float, all four rods fished in the slightly harder silt of the baited area.