New PB's for Korda boys.
Fishing partners Oscar Thornton and Brad Greening enjoyed a week to remember in France lately, after both banking a new PB!

Brad explained: “After a hectic summer hampered by work, work and even more work, a week in France to unwind was exactly what was needed. I ventured off with a group of good friends, one of whom was Oscar Thornton. Having received some goodies from Korda the week before our departure, we were keen to put them to good use!

Upon arrival, our other friend immediately chose a swim that offered him access to the top bay of the lake, leaving Oscar and I to double up on a big point, which covered the rest of the entire lake – result! It was evident that the fish were in the far corner of the lake, meaning long-range fishing was on the cards, so we both spooled up with the new tapered SUBline and decided to spread our rods out on the far side where all the fish were showing. With leaders being banned, this enabled us to fish ranges in excess of 140 yards, which wouldn’t be achievable had we had to use straightforward main line. To achieve the distance with a 10 or 12lb mono, without a leader we would have simply just cracked off each time! This proved to be a massive edge, as it allowed us to fish to spots that probably normally don’t get fished due to the range.

The crayfish were an absolute nightmare and after being told that they would destroy meshed hook baits and even boilies that had been wrapped in shrink tube, we both opted to use the new Fake Food as a hook baits and alternating colours and flavours, over a bed of sweetcorn, Cell Response Pellet, tiger nuts, Mainline Essential Cell and of course the ever-faithful Cell.

The first couple of days were pretty slow. I had caught a couple of doubles and a low twenty and that was it between all of us. I wanted to try something different, and if possible try and use some form of actual food bait on the hair, which would be crayfish resistant. At the start of the week, I had completely removed the skin of some tiger nuts, and then left them soaking in a healthy dose of Almond Goo after recently chatting to Jake Wildbore, who’d had some recent success on that tactic. Within only a couple of days, the tiger nuts had completely soaked in the Goo all the way through to their core, oozing out so much attraction! I then balanced the tigernuts by boring out some of the core and inserting some cork, fished blowback style on a size-4 Wide Gape and combi-rig incorporating 20lb IQ2 and 25lb Supernatural.

Needless to say, it worked with almost immediate effect, leading me to catch a succession of fish, including commons of 39lb 14oz, 47lb 14oz and a new PB common of 51lb 8oz, followed along by a few other twenties.

Oscar remained fishless, so he decided to change to the Goo’ed tiger nuts. By the following morning, Oscar had landed a succession of fish, including a new PB mirror of 51lb 2oz. As the week came to an end, we ended up with 14 fish between us - not so bad considering the lake owner estimates a stock of only 100 fish or so! All in all, it was a fantastic trip, and a week of banter and chilling out behind the rods, which was exactly what we needed. Autumn is now approaching fast, so it’s now time to concentrate on my target water, and try and bag a couple of its elusive residents. Until next time – be lucky!”