Bailiff Comments

Week Commencing: Sat 27/05/2023

It all came good in the end.

With the weather here at Gigantica starting to feel more summer like with the day and night time temperatures rising compared to recent weeks the carp are looking and behaving more and more like they have spawning on their minds, and this could not be truer of the Road Lake carp’s behaviour last week.

With a lake full of new anglers all eager to get the walk around done and the dreaded ‘draw’ out of the way, they were all shortly off to their chosen swims for the week ahead.

Matt Pole was the lucky angler to get his hands on ball number one and having the whole lake to choose from opted to fish in the Beach swim.  

This swim has been holding the bulk of the fish in front of it for a few weeks now, as it generally does at this time of the year and having fish showing in this area on the walk around it was no surprise this peg went first.

It wasn’t until the early hours of Monday that Matt landed his first fish of the trip, a nice scaley mirror named ‘The BP’ weighing 28lb.  A real stunning looking fish to open your account with that one.  After this he managed to lose a couple of fish near the net sadly.

Things then went quiet for Matt, despite his best efforts and trying multiple different approaches it was not then until the early hours of Saturday that it all came good in the end.

The last morning Matt managed to land three carp; these being a common weighing 23lb 12, a mirror named ‘E.T.’ at 23lb 2oz and lastly his biggest of the trip ‘Raspberry’ weighing 40lb 2oz.

All of Matt’s fish came to adjustable zig rigs finished off the black foam as hook baits and cast 21 wraps towards the bund.  Well done Matt you kept plugging away and great company too.

Second out of the hat we had young Aiden Haggarand he chose to go for ‘Decoy’, which I don’t blame him for being as it is the only other swim nearest the bulk of the carp stock at the moment.

Aiden managed to land a total of three carp during the week, two commons weighing 21lb 12oz and 21lb 4oz respectively.  He also managed one of the smallest residences of the Road Lake a swell for his efforts.

Aiden’s first common was caught using a zig with a piece of black foam cast 16 wraps towards the bund and fished 9ft off the lakebed.  His other two captures we caught using a Mainline Link Quad hook bait soaked in Squid Goo with a corn topper.  These were fished on simple hair rigs constructed of monofilament hook links approx. 6” long tied to a size 4 hook, with his lead set up being running rigs.

Aiden baited with a mixture of whole, chopped and crushed boilies mixed with maize and a good coating of the Mainline Link stick mix liquid.

Jonathan Fury was probably the most excitable character I have met about fishing at the Gigantica Lake complex, and he was buzzing when he drew ball number three and opted to fish in Turtles Corner. 

Despite the fish spending most of the week at the opposite end of the lake to him at the bund, he never let his head go down and kept plugging away with his swim choice and he was an even more excitable man when on the last night he called me telling me he had caught one at last.  This didn’t stop there either as Johnny went on to land another two in the night ending up with three fish in the slings awaiting their pictures on Saturday morning.

His smallest capture was a 27lb common followed by a 30lb mirror known as ‘Dash’ and then lastly, he had managed a new PB by catching Jeff’s Mirror at 42lb.  Well done, again you kept plugging away and kept your head in the game.

Johnny’s fish were all caught on spinner rigs using slow sinking maize as his hook baits on a lead clip system.  These were deployed at various ranges close to the left-hand margin as this is where he had seen most of the fish activity on the last couple of days.

Keeping with the Gigantica tradition, Johnny got a good soaking from the water buckets by his friends on his trip before they headed off for home.

Carl Budworth coming out in the middle of the draw opted for the swim Bacheliers.  Carl kept in good spirit for the whole of the week and his patience paid off out of the blue in the early hours of Friday morning when he netted a rather large common.

This one turned out to be known as ‘Miss Dasiy’ and a fine specimen of a common carp it was too.

This was Carl’s only bite of the session, and he managed to catch this one using a combi rig comprising of the Boom material with a braided end section tied to a size 4 Klor hook.  This was all connected to a lead clip set up and cast out in front of him 29 wraps towards the corner of the lake.

Hook bait that tempted this fish was a Lobster Spice wafter fished over a bed of a mixture comprising of matching boilie crumb, maize and hemp finished off with some liquid liver and chilli sauce.

Next up we have father and son duo of Mark Traynierand his son Jordan.

Mark came out earlier in the draw to Jordan and with a gentleman’s agreement the set up next to each other with Mark being in Birches and Jordan in Brambles.

Mark was first to manage a fish between them, and despite it being his only fish if the trip, it was also the largest of the week weighing in at 46lb 2oz and goes by the name of ‘The Submarine’.  This was caught fishing at 18 wraps straight out in front of him at the bar.

Mark tempted this fish using a heli lead set up with a spinner rig made from the Boom material at 7” long and finished off with a size 4 Kurv hook.  Hook bait was a Bug wafter dumbbell trimmed down with a yellow corn topper.  Mark baited with a mixture of hemp, maize, crushed, chopped and whole boilie that was glazed with a good helping of the Mainline Cell Smart Liquid.

Jordan came out last in the draw and with the agreement in place descended upon Brambles as his choice of swim next to his Dad.

Jordan fished all week at 18 wraps straight out to the bar in front of him, baiting with hemp, maize, Cell and Bug boilies.  Both types of boilie were used crushed, chopped and whole and again glazed with the Cell Smart Liquid.  Jordan managed two fish during the early hours of Friday.  Firstly a 21lb 10oz mirror named ‘Pac Man’ and also a 35lb 12oz common called ‘Ron’s Common’.

Both fish had been caught using heli lead leaders with spinner rigs made from 6” of Hybrid finished off with the new size 4 Spinner hooks from Korda.

Both guys headed home in the early hours to get home to watch there beloved Manchester United play in the final, sadly that didn’t end up the result that they wanted but I hope that they both had a great time here at Giganitca beforehand.

Also, on the final morning Baz Walters fishing from Tea Party 1 finally managed to catch one.  Only small but he was over the moon with finally managing one.  It weighed in at 17lb’s but size didn’t matter when you have a smile on an anglers face.

Baz managed this one fishing 19 wraps towards the corner of Turtles Corner and caught it using a D rig fished with a Trap bottom bait topped off with a yellow sighter.

Baz baited with a mixture of hemp, maize, corn, pellet and boilie finished off with matching Trap liquid over the top.

A small mirror a piece was caught between Paul Kennedy fishing in the margins of The Cage and for Terry in Tea Party 2 fishing the far margin in front of him.

A very tough and challenging week with the carp looking more and more like they either were or will be very soon spawning.  And they all managed to keep me a very busy person on departure day on the buttons of the camera.

Well done all.