I finished the last piece by mentioning that I’d finally had a bite on the huge gravel pit that I’ve been bream fishing, but then ran out of space to add any detail; as it was a pretty major event, I’d better tell the entire story now…
As regular readers of my monthly ‘Specialist Scene’ feature will already know, Ferry Lagoon is the venue where I’ve been conducting a major campaign over the last five years to try and capture one of the handful of massive bream that, hopefully, still reside in the enormous, near 200 acre gravel pit.
It’s the hardest water I’ve ever fished and any opportunity, whatever the species, is often the result of months or years of hard work and dedication. My particular target is the biggest bream that Ferry has ever produced, and it’s a fish that has broken the UK bream record on each of the three separate occasions it’s ever been caught. The first time was back in 2005 at a weight of 19lb 10oz, the second in 2009 when it weighed 22lb 9oz and finally in April of last year when its official record breaking weight was 22lb 12oz.
Despite all the time I’ve invested in fishing the venue, and despite the occasional ‘accidental’ capture of a fish of a different species, I’ve yet to catch a bream from there. I tend to concentrate my efforts on the pit during the spring and autumn, when I feel the chances of a bream bite are at their best. I fished the pit a lot last spring, but for no reward other than a modest tench and I had decided to try just a few sessions this autumn as I had plenty of other fishing that I wanted to try to fit in as well.
It was my second session of the mini autumn campaign when it happened.
I’d managed to juggle my various commitments around to give me a period where I could have four nights’ fishing on the trot. My original plan was to split my time by having a two night session targeting the bream on Ferry Lagoon, followed by two nights’ carp fishing on another venue a relatively short drive away. However, after the first two nights uneventful bream fishing and just before I was due to pack up and switch to the other water, I did a last minute check on the weather forecast. The forecast had changed since I’d last looked and was now predicting a more generally overcast outlook and a swing in the wind, which would mean that it would be pushing perfectly into the area that I’d been targeting for the bream.
It now seemed crazy to be packing up and moving to another water just as conditions were about to change, especially as they were forecasting conditions that were going to be just about as perfect for bream as they could be. Therefore I quickly revised my plans and decided to stay on at the big pit for at least one more night.
It looked to be the right decision as later that afternoon, while I was putting out new hook baits, the wind did indeed swing around and the cloud cover started to increase, which helped increase my confidence levels no end! By early evening things were looking as good as they had done all season and I was starting to get that feeling, where some in-built instinct puts you on full alert, and I was sure that something was due to happen.
As it got dark I spent quite a bit of time sitting out in my chair by the rods but as the evening wore on without any kind of indication whatsoever I decided it would be a good idea to retire to the sleeping bag to keep warm. I couldn’t shake the feeling of anticipation off however and I was still wide awake when suddenly one of the alarms sounded and what looked to be a typical, slow bream-type liner took place on one of the rods!
Any sort of fish related activity is pretty rare on Ferry Lagoon, so this was incredibly exciting stuff indeed. However things got even more exciting a few minutes later as exactly the same thing happened on my left hand rod, as the bobbin slowly pulled up tight for a couple of seconds before the tension in the line relaxed and it dropped back down to its original position. My heart was already racing as I swung my legs out of the bag and started to wriggle my feet into my boots, but it was soon threatening to burst right out of my chest as a full-on and very typical bream bite developed on the same rod as the last liner!
I was out by the rod in an instant as the bobbin once again drew up tight to the rod for a few seconds, but then slowly dropped all the way to the floor as the lead was dislodged and the bobbin tried to take up the slack that had developed in the main line. Trying to remain calm I carefully wound the spool of the reel to retighten the line and bring the bobbin back up towards the rod, but it became obvious that a definite bite was occurring as the fish continued to gradually drag the lead back towards me as the bobbin slowly dropped back down to the grass for a second time. With a bite confirmed, I unclipped the bobbin, took up the rod and wound up the slack with a quick turn of the reel handle before sweeping the rod back and pulling firmly, but carefully, into the fish.
I’d imagined what hooking a potential record bream at Ferry Lagoon might feel like dozens, if not hundreds of times over the last few years, but here I was stood in the dark by the water’s edge experiencing the feeling for real! I’ve hooked a fair number of big bream over the years and this felt like a typical example… but heavier than any bream that I’d ever hooked before. There were a couple of slow, deliberate head thumps, before the fish begrudgingly gave a yard or so and I was able to perform a short pump with the rod to take up the line and bring a steady, firm pressure onto the fish to try and bring it further towards me. The head thumps and gradual giving in of a yard or two of line happened a couple more times and I was able to wind a couple of yards of line back onto the reel before disaster struck!
As I pulled back with the rod to try and persuade the fish to continue its slow progress towards me, the weight began to increase and any forward momentum came to a halt. I thought at first that I’d perhaps been fooled into thinking it was a huge bream and that it had now turned out to be an even heavier carp that I’d actually hooked, but after a few seconds it became obvious that the progress had come to a stop as the fish had somehow found a snag!
I felt sick and fearful, as all of a sudden the excitement of finally hooking the bream that I’d obsessed about for so long was replaced with an awful dread, with the possibility that I was now going to lose it. After keeping the pressure on the snagged fish firm but steady for a couple of minutes without any apparent effect I tried to vary the pressure to see if it made any difference; easing off the pressure somewhat would see the fish take a couple of feet of line, sometimes accompanied by the feeling of a head shake or two coming down the line, but that was all.
Increasing the pressure again would enable me to wind the line back onto the reel, but the fish remained wedged up against something that clearly wasn’t moving at all. After spending some time trying to vary the pressure a bit in an effort to get things moving without any success, I decided to pop the rod back on the rests and to provide the snagged fish with plenty of slack line. I was fishing the end tackle with a lead release system, which should enable a decent fish to easily pull the lead free and release the rig from the snag if it was the lead that had become stuck.
Providing lots of slack line again saw a couple of feet of line being taken by the fish, but then things would come to a halt again and picking the rod back up and pulling into everything again just got me back to ‘square one’ with the end tackle and fish still firmly stuck on something.
With no further practical options open to me, as there were no boats on the water and with trees totally surrounding my swim and deep drop offs just by the margins, I couldn’t even try to alter the angle of pull and had no choice but to keep doing what I was doing and hope that somehow the fish would manage to free itself. However, about an hour and a half after first hooking the fish, any movement from the fish stopped altogether and I was pretty sure that it had made its escape.
I couldn’t give up all hope and continued varying the pressure and giving slack, but by first light the following morning nothing had changed and I was convinced that the fish was long gone. With nothing left to lose I eventually decided to pull much harder and suddenly everything came free and I was gaining line! Unfortunately, within a second or two it became obvious that there wasn’t a fish attached as I wound the end tackle back to the bank. With the rig in my hand there was no indication, or clue, as to what had happened, or what I’d been snagged up on. In fact everything looked perfect; there was nothing on the hook at all and no weed or detritus of any sort on the rig anywhere.
Whatever the fish had been snagged up on and when exactly it made good its escape will have to remain a mystery forever. I suppose that the exact identification of the fish itself cannot be guaranteed either, as obviously I’d not seen it, but I felt sure that I’d hooked the big bream that I’d been hoping for. Losing it in such an unexpected and cruel way after a five year campaign was a major blow that felt quite physical and certainly knocked the stuffing out of me for quite a while.
I’m not totally devastated by the loss, or at least I’m no longer totally devastated by it, but it has certainly left a mental scar and there hasn’t been a day since that I haven’t thought about the events of that night and obviously wishing that it had all turned out very differently…
Catching a massive pike would certainly help to ease the pain of losing the big bream and a couple of days bank fishing on Chew Valley would be the ideal place to try and do it.
Back in January I’d managed to secure a couple of sessions on this amazing trout water that has thrown up so many big pike over the last few years and as my mate Ian had invited me to join him on a session back in February when I’d had my PB of 30lb 14oz – recounted HERE on FM – it was only fair that I invited him as my partner on both of the two day sessions that I’d been able to book in October.
Our first session was over the first two days that Chew would open for pike fishing since the previous winter, so the best areas to try would have to be worked out based on past results and gut instinct rather than any up-to-date information or catch reports.
We set off from Northamptonshire at ‘stupid o’clock’ in the morning to arrive nice and early on the first day to hopefully get a stretch of bank in an area that we fancied. Obviously a few others had the same idea and we weren’t the first to arrive, but we gave the early arrivals plenty of room and were happy enough with our self-allocated swims. I was still getting myself organized and hadn’t quite managed to get a bait in the water when the bloke to my left had a run. It turned out not to be a big fish at all, but certainly served to provide a bit of extra incentive to get myself sorted and before long I’d got two deadbaits out and was sitting there full of expectation.
Fortunately it wasn’t too long a wait before something picked up the bluey that was attached to my right-hand rod and after a quick strike I was in! Unfortunately it was only a jack, which was followed an hour or two later by another small pike on another deadbait that had been put out on the same rod. There were a few small fish caught along our stretch of bank, but most of the time was spent sunbathing under an almost cloudless blue sky.
After a good meal, a few beers and some well needed sleep in one of the local inns, we decided to try a different area on the second day to see if we could find some bigger fish. We were beaten to our first choice of swims by another pair of keen pikers, so we headed off to another area on the other side of the reservoir. The conditions were very different from the day before and Ian and I were both soaked by the time we’d got our swims sorted and umbrellas staked out against the squally wind and heavy showers.
Unfortunately our efforts went unrewarded and we were both fishless on the second day and hadn’t seen a single pike landed at all along our stretch of bank. In fact the two guys to our right had packed in by mid-afternoon, having had enough after getting one of their umbrellas blown inside out by the very troublesome wind and also suffering, as we had, with loads of drifting weed dislodging the leads and baits on an annoyingly frequent basis. We stuck it out until dusk however and on the journey home were already trying to work out where we should target on out return visit in a couple of weeks’ time.
I’ll let you know how we got on in next month’s piece.
Until then…happy fishing!
