Field testing RSG at Fryerning Lake, Essex
12/10/2009
To give you all a bit of background on my current water, I have been fishing a lake in Ingatestone in Essex called Fryerning, there’s are a good number of 30+ fish residing the owner estimates 5 40s 70 odd different 30s and upwards of 200 20+ fish, the current lake record being 45lb 4oz, the lake itself is around 17 acres in size and was formed by flooding a valley. The lake is widest and deepest at the dam end as they usually are, the narrowest end forms a no fishing area of around 3 acres in size, which is one of the shallowest areas of the lake and is home to some of the densest weed I have ever encountered. One may think with this awesome head of fish the fishing would be quite easy but I can assure you this is not the case, there are literally thousands of Crayfish in this pond and the lake itself is a very busy one in terms of anglers.
Due to the crays and the high turnover of anglers it makes it very difficult if not impossible to prebait any chosen spots, so really you have to start fishing "blind" when your session begins and are unable to prime any spots, this was a big blow for me personally as I will usually take my time and really prime my chosen swim. So this season would be a real learning curve, I have to say I really struggled through spring and with many different bait and techniques exhausted I was left scratching my head. I need a bait that would last in the water i.e. resist the attention of the crays enough to give me a chance of a pickup, It's a horrible situation to be in when you don't know if you have any free bait in the swim due to the crays absolutely mullering everything you throw in!
After 15 nights of blanking, mainly short overnighters with a couple of weekends, I decided to give Leigh a call at Ocean Fresh and place an order for some RSG having used this bait in the past I was confident in it, and knowing the crays really don't like garlic too much my mind was made up! I fished the last swim on the far bank this was the closest you could get to the out of bounds area and was very weedy indeed, It took me 2 hours plus with a tarmac rake to clean off a small clay patch at 10 yards range, I then cleared a small alley in the weed to sink my mainlines and baited with two kilos of RSG together with 5 kilos of hemp and pellet. My rigs consisted of 6" Korda hybrid soft coated braid and Korda clips which were cut right down to bin the 3oz lead on the take, 4ft of leadcore, very slack lines and light bobbins completed the setup.
The night passed without any major occurrences the odd couple of beeps here and there, I received a flurry of beeps at 5.30am just I was turning around to curse the swan for swimming through my lines I realised there was no swan and my left-hand rod was nearly in the lake! I picked up the rod and was in! After a good deal of bullying I got the fish to within a rod length of the bank and it weeded me solid, without hesitation my slacks were off and I was in, I waded out a few paces and netted a huge ball of weed and hopefully a carp! I got back to the bank turfed the weed out of the net and found a lovely near leather looking back at me, Yes, first one in the bag! On the scales she went 27.04lb.
I fished on for the remainder of the morning and returned home a happy man.
I returned the next week for more of the same, I had to tidy up with the rake a bit my blisters from the week before were still giving me grief (Office boy) after 20 minutes I was happy and the swim was ready, I introduced the same amount of bait onto the clay patch and come 6pm I was sorted, had some dinner and a couple of brews then settled down for the night ahead.
As before the night passed without any drama then at 6am I received a violent take again on the left-hand rod, I was fishing "locked up" due to weed so was on the rod pretty quickly, this fish went bananas and seeing as there is a barbless hooks only rule on Fryerning I really thought it was going to drop off, I managed to get her under control and five minutes later had her in the net, I was quite pleased I didn't have to go for a early morning dip this time and even more pleased when I looked in the net! The fish was a real peach, a half Linear with the most classic colours, she went 32.09lb as I returned her after the shots I was grinning ear to ear and was extremely happy with the way the bait and the swim was working out for me.
The weed was getting to be a real problem and the owner was forced to take action, unfortunately my little swim was the first to get cleared and shortly after the fish have started being caught at range in the open water swims! I have managed a 16lb common since which was hooked at around 90 yards just when I was packing up to go to work, very few fish have been caught in recent weeks so I'm hoping September will hold some surprises!
That's it from me for this month, be lucky and I'll speak to you all next month!
Matt Berale