Angler Name: James Daly

Hometown: Chelmsford

Fish Weight: 27lb 7oz

Bait: Mainline fruity squid pastel barrel wafter

Venue: Bayeswater dayticket lake

Rig: German rig

Tactics: Heavily baited spot of a spod mix full of loads of different small food items

Additional Info: So I arrived for my day session and managed to get in the peg that’s been kind to me before. With the lake not doing a fish for 12 days since reopening for days only fishing I was a bit hesitant to fish the way I had planned with 3 rods on a heavily baited spot until I’d seen how everyone else was going to approach the lake. As I thought they would everyone used little or no bait so I had a couple of casts to find a spot I’ve done well from before and then proceeded to put a nice bed of bait out fairly tight together at 10.5 wraps with a couple of spomb fulls scattered past and before the spot. I put three rods on the spot but with no bites and loads of liners all to show for my efforts by lunchtime I decided to re cast all three rods but stagger the distances over the spot. I put one rod back on the spot and then one before and one after as I knew the fish was there. Within an hour the bobbin on the rod I put a rod length past the spot slowly pulled up tight then dropped to the floor, I lifted into the fish and with the lake being netted two weeks previous I was 99% certain it would be a decent fish. After 15-20 mins of aching arms and heart palpitations from feeling the line ping off the dorsal it went in the net. I had a look and see it was a nice scaley one so set up the camera and sorted out the sling and cradle making sure everything was zeroed. As I had the fish in the cradle my middle rod pulled up tight but nothing came of that so I got on with weighing and photographing this wicked looking fish. The scales went to 27lb 7oz so I was over the moon after a long run of only picking out the smaller fish or blanking.