Fishing report from: Phillip & Emma

An action packed week with plenty of excitement and carp to 43lbs!

This week we welcomed Phillip and Emma for their 2nd trip to the venue. Despite a tricky first session on the fishing front last year, the guys loved the place and couldn’t wait to return. I spent a tuition day with Phillip last year, sharing my knowledge and he’s an avid fan of our YouTube channel. Just to make sure Phillip was on track, we did make a few tweaks before he started. As I often say, every tiny detail matters here and if it’s not 100%, your results can suffer. Phillip isn’t into the catfish so he opted for my “veggie” approach based on the Nash particles range, bulked out with a large sack of our veggie carp pellets.

It just keeps getting better!! We couldn’t have asked for better hosts… fishing… accommodation. An overall fantastic experience. We look forward to seeing you again.

The start of something special

Early on Sunday morning, I knew that Philip was on the right track as he’d had one the first night. Only a low twenty but it was a start. It was great to see him off the mark on the first night because he was a little nervous about the session and really wanted it to go well. Little did we know that the low twenty was the start of something special.

Summer oxygen levels

The oxygen had dipped a little over the weekend due to the weather, so I really wasn’t expecting much on the fishing front for a few days. The readings weren’t bad as such, just a little lower than I’d like to see. We are running both aeration systems 24rs/day and that’s helping to balance things out.

Where’s the aerator?

Early Monday I got a call from Phillip. It’s never usually a good sign when guests call me at 7:30am. Phillip had had a couple during the night and while he was playing the fish, he noticed that the aerator had disappeared. He even woke up Emma who was heroically (foolishly!) volunteering for  photo duty day or night. Now normally when someone comes out with a statement that makes little sense, there’d probably be some reference to the amount of alcohol consumed the night before, but as Phillip doesn’t drink and is of sound mind, this needed investigating 😂

With the carp safely landed, he was able to identify the problem: we’d lost two massive trees from the right of point ‘A’ and they’d fallen in front of the aerator, shielding it from view. And the mystery is solv-ed.

Although we work all winter to do what we can to prevent such accidents, they can occur. Ren and I donned our grubbies and headed to the lake with all the necessary tools. 

With the trees where they were, it was going to impact Phillip’s fishing in that area until they could be removed. It turns out Phillip is a groundworker by trade. He’s about twice the size of me and insisted on helping us. It didn’t take us long to accept his incredibly kind (and mad) offer! We’ve dealt with a few trees like this in the past so Ren and I know exactly how we need to tackle the problem.

Luckily these had come down in the shallows which meant they could be accessed in chest waders. That was only going to get us so far though as most of the trees were above the water a few metres in the air so it was time to put my tree climbing skills to the test. Standing on a fallen tree, without a harness or ropes, above water, while wielding a chainsaw is probably not on page one of any health and safety manual but without an excavator to hand, it was the only way this was going to happen. 

While we splashed around making a terrific noise, Emma was on rod monitoring duty. Unbelievably, Phillip caught two while we worked! I know many anglers would never believe that carp would happily feed while less than 50m from such disturbance but feed they did! I’ll never forget looking up, while balanced on the end of the trees, chainsaw running and seeing Phillip lift into a carp while still wearing ear defenders and waders. Bloody Brilliant!

In just 3hrs, we had the whole lot done and cleared and a massive pile of branches await bonfire season. I’d just like to say a massive thank you to Phillip and Ren for working like dogs with me and getting the job done.

Midweek visit

My normal midweek visit didn’t happen until Thursday. No that that was a problem because Phillip was hauling! He wanted to pick my brains on a few things so we spent a bit of time together. I also tied him a rig that I’ve been using for the last couple of years that hasn’t made it to YouTube (yet!). It was similar to what he was using but uses mono rather than fluoro and is simpler and quicker to tie. There was nothing wrong with the rig he was using (obviously) but he loved it and put it into play.

He caught how many?

Philip caught 17 fish: one 40, loads of 30s and a few of our home growns in their 20s. And Sammy put in an appearance as well. What a fantastic scoresheet 👊 The current record for one week’s fishing is 18 specimens (carp, catfish or sturgeon) for one angler so he came very close! Phillip stuck with the veggie approach religiously (no small cats at all this week), found three productive spots and milked them for every bite they had! 

Philip wasn’t targeting them but he got smashed up by a couple of massive catfish. Despite his excellent prep, knot testing and using the right materials in the right way, there was simply nothing he could do with these fish. 

Typically it was the mainline that went. The 20lb Nash Bullet is very strong and very abrasion resistant and will easily enable you to max out any heavy duty 3.5lbs TC carp setup for a good amount of time. If you want to target the catfish, you really need to be using 30lb Big Game, 4.5lbs rods coupled with very strong reels. It’s another reason why we went barbless as the catfish will shed a barbless hook in seconds. This is better than having a massive catfish towing the mainline and wiping out anglers’ lines.

Baits & Rigs

A single tiger nut with a dumbbell wafter mounted on a German rig accounted for most of Phillip’s fish although swapping to my D-rig and a single tiger nut didn’t affect the catch rate in any way. All fish were caught on a running inline lead. Phillip didn’t use any boilies at all but he did get through 5 big jars of the Nash particles and 25kg of cereal pellets. Each carp was caught using a double handful of this mix that was very accurately dropped from a bait boat driven out to a marker float that was cast into position at every reset.

This is absolutely spot on, simple and very successful. During the summer, you really don’t need anything else to catch carp.

Unsung hero

This story wouldn’t be complete without a massive shout out to Emma. Not only did she make sure that Phillip was well fed and watered, she also got involved with the fishing. She didn’t hesitate to lift into a carp while Phillip was helping us out. She also did a fantastic job with the photos, day and night! Emma had a lovely time relaxing in the point swims while Phillip chased the next bite. It was very much a team effort.

From hero to legend

This year couldn’t have been more different than Philip’s first trip when he had to wait until Thursday before the first fish. This year, he smashed it. Results like these are no accident. Phillip worked hard for his bites, and did everything right. Big congratulations mate, you went from being our hero on Monday to an absolute legend! Big thanks to both of you, it was really special.