Two days at "Big Hayes"

Banana Steve · #1 05-09-2008, 04:21 PM

With this week off, I managed to book two days at Todber Manor on their specimen lake “Big Hayes” I set off to the lake on the Wednesday morning at 6:45 and arrived at the lake at 7:20. I arrived to a beautiful sunny looking lake with a few anglers on the South bank. I choose the North bank just off the bottom Island.

1, 2 and 3 are the areas I fed.

So my plan was fish hard against the Island with their own made boilies. Fish the open water and finally one rod in the margins.

My first task was to see what features were under the water. What I found was a weed bed in every direction. The weed was quite soft so the hook and weights pulled out quite easily. So it was a cast and leave it alone, no moving of the bait.

The island peg I used their boilies tipped with a piece of floating corn, which helped bring the bait just above the weed. In the open water I used a 2ft Zig rig with a Strawberry pop-up also tip with fake corn, and finally the third rod I decided I would try something out of the ordinary, I had brought some frozen liver that had thawed out nicely on my arrival; a few pieces cut up and put into the lake and short swing out of the baited hook I was ready to enjoy the next two days.

Within the hour I had hooked and lost two fish

I didn’t let this deter me, I told myself I was here to relax and enjoy the peace and quiet. During the day I saw some sights of nature that made me smile

Duck and her Young

A Family of geese, Dad telling his kids to get a move on

As the day moved on, it was just before 12:00pm when my island rod screamed of. After what I thought was lost and weeded up the lead pop free from the weed and I was still attached to the fish, a nice mirror of 14lb.

{Sorry about the photo tried to be clever and use the self timer and forget to get myself in the picture, DOH}

I was well made up with the fish. No more than 10 minutes had past and the inside rod screamed of with line tearing of the reel, the fish had taken the liver bait.

11lb Common

As the day wore on I lost another two fish who had managed to weed me up.

To top it all the 3 rods were constantly getting line bites and small runs but every time i struck there was nothing there. At around 4pm I had my last fish of the day, a huge drop back bite, by the time I stuck I thought that I had another false run but as I wound in the line became tight and started to fight back.

14lb 4ozs Mirror the best fish of the day

As the evening wore on I started to feel a bit ill, I don’t know whether it was the fact I had caught to much sun or I had eaten something, but I was not to well, and by 10pm I was in bed trying to get some sleep, but with rods producing the false runs I decided to bring them in and get some sleep.

The following morning I awoke feeling a lot better not 100% but well enough to carry on fishing. But this morning I covered my self in sun factor 50, no burning for me today. The wind had increased overnight and by the morning it was blowing straight in my face and it must have been at least 100mph, well that’s what it felt like, and it was most properly 20mph or so.

The Morning did not produce any fish, mainly because I think Prince William was out playing with his chopper again{oh ere missus}

That Helicopter spent over two hours playing war games with a jet fighter over the area Dorset; the annoying thing was that the Helicopter spent 80% of his time over the lake area. Mind it was nice to have a private air show, just needed more verities of aircraft.

By 1pm the aircraft had gone and the false bites started again, at this point I noticed a lot of fish thrashing around the Island and with reports of the other lakes starting to spawn I assumed that “Big Hayes” was spawning to.
However, I still kept my hopes up high and 2:15pm I hooked into another good fish and landed my 3 14lb fish of the session.

By 4pm I had lost another 3 fish that weeded me again. So I decided to change my plan of attack on the open and island peg I came off the island about 13ft which seem to be a little thinner weed. And I came off the liver and I pre-baited my peg with sweet corn, two tins worth. That seemed to do the trick with the hour I caught of the re-positioned Island rod, a Cracking fish that tipped the scales at seventeen pounds; a new personnel best for the UK. The photo does not give the fish justices, it was very thick across its back.

The peg I fed with corn I put a pineapple pop-up on the rod and it must off been no more that 10mins from the last fish going back that my rod screamed of to produce a fantastic common, this fish gave me the best fight off all. I must have played this fish for at least 10-15mins before I landed her. A Long and lean fish of 16.10oz, I was well chuffed.

As the late evening came I was getting loads of liners but the fish were defiantly spawning and they were just hitting the line. As darkness feel I was still feeling a bit ill, so I decided to bring in 1 rod and just leave the 2 out. However, the night didn’t produce anything, by the morning I had to be off the lake by 9am so as I awoke it was pack everything up and leave. However I left my rods out and as I was about the take down the last the reel screamed off and I struck into thin air

I had a fantastic 2 days fishing, just annoyed at myself for feeling ill on the Wednesday.

Only a week and a bit and it’s the pre-france shakedown at Linear

Here looking forward to that