Ted tells the story in his own words:
I had to go to work very early on the morning I was planning to start my session and as I was working in the City I had to be there at 4am, so it was going to be a long day. I didn’t get back home until 2pm and then had to go and get some shopping for my sister who suffers ill health, so I didn’t get to the lake until 4.30pm by which time it was getting dark. Given the time there was no point in rushing to get set up so I had a good look around as I normally do; there was only one other guy fishing the lake and he had not seen any fish so I decided not to bother getting set up until I saw something.
I ended up walking up and down the lake until 8pm when I finally saw a fish in the margins. I got set up and put all three rods out to somewhere between 20 and 40 yards. By this time I was knackered, I had been up for 18 hours and needed some sleep so I had some food, a cup of tea and went to bed, thinking that if I had a take in the night that I would have to be careful as the ground was very wet and there was a steep bank where I was fishing.
I had a good night’s sleep and at 6am was woken by my buzzer going off. I was out of bed and on my way down the bank when I slipped over and landed on my back between my rods. The buzzer was still going off so I picked up the rod and, still lying on the ground got the fish under control and played it for about ten minutes before netting it. It looked like a big fish.
I then had to get back up the bank to weigh the fish and it went 40lb 10oz on the scales, which I was very pleased with. It seemed all of my hard work had paid off, as the saying goes: you only get out what you put in!
I didn’t have my next fish until two days later: a lovely looking 28lb 12oz mirror. I then moved swims for my last night, moving up to the other end of the lake. I put my rods out using the same baits from the night before and 20 minutes later I was into a lovely 27lb 12oz fish and that night I had a 20lb Mirror, so all in all, I had a good four days!
The bait and tackle I used were: three, 3lb rods, Entoh reels loaded with 12lb Nash Bullet line, 2oz Nash in-line leads, Bullet mono hook link, size 8 Nash Fang X hooks baited with 15mm Amber Strawberry pop-ups, and I put 20 freebees around each hook bait.
