This week I was joined by Spotted Fin teammate and good friend Dave Williams for a few days fishing on the lower Winsford Flash, a large natural water which is fed by the river Weaver. A notoriously hard venue, where bites can be at a premium, the challenge, as it was Dave’s first visit to the venue, was to catch a few of the resident bream.
The plan of action for myself was to fish two lines, one at 60m and one at 35m. Tactics for my 60m line consisted of a 40gm cage feeder, twizzle boom and 1m fluro carbon hook length to a size 14 hook, this was going to be my natural bait line, for this I fished worm/maggot and worm/caster and my groundbait mix consisted of 50/50 Spotted Fin GO2 Skimmer Super Blend and GO2 Dark Lake Super Blend. To this I added some Sweet Fishmeal, micros, Spotted Fin crushed hemp and a few maggots. I find this mix works fantastic as it’s a dark mix and due to the natural predators residing in the flash, I feel the colour gives the bream and roach confidence to feed.
On the 35m line, I fished a simple hybrid feeder with a 6mm Spotted Fin Classic Corn pellet on a 4” hook length over the Spotted Fin ready made 2mm catalyst micros, I love these pellets, as there’s no preparation needed, and they can be used for all the methods I fish from loose feeding over a pole line to fishing the method at distance. I started the session by putting 10 feeders full in on the further line, and 5 feeders full on the shorter line. I didn’t have to wait long for my first fish, a skimmer, followed by a perch and skimmer, then a nice bream of around 3lb.
The lake often has periods where it completely dies. This is when I decided to give the method a go on the 35m line. The bream were soon onto the micros and the tip wrapped round and I was into another lovely bream, this was the theme for the next hour, until the tip shot round and my rod nearly went into the lake,
I initially thought that a pike had hit my bait, but this was no pike, the line continued to strip from my reel until it was literally empty, at that point I had to force the issue a little, gaining back a couple of feet at a time, bearing in mind I was on a size 16 barbless hook, I carefully played it for over 20 minutes, both myself and Dave were in shock when a stunning mirror carp emerged, weighing over 20lb. A personal best UK fish for myself, I felt truly honoured to have caught it from a natural water.
According to one resident who runs the matches on the caravan site we were fishing at, it was the biggest fish he had seen in the 13 years he had lived there. After a few photos, and taking a few minutes to calm myself down it was back to the fishing and more skimmers and bream were added, along with a surprise 2lb+ perch on a pellet.
Considering I was plagued by pike and cormorants, it was an unbelievable day, which in all honesty I will probably never repeat.
Over the course of the week, the key to keeping the fish coming was to alternate between methods and not sticking to just one.
Traditional baits worked well, but the pellet line was a game changer. I caught a lot more on this line than the natural baits and it was more selective.
On another day it could have been the other way around, but if you don’t try, you’ll never know.
