Dave Spence Banks Belvoir Lakes Beauties!

The catch report behind our Operations Manager’s latest overnight session at Belvoir Lakes…

Dave says:

On Bank holiday Monday I decided it might be a decent idea to spend a night at the lake before work the next day, as it had been fishing pretty well judging by the reports on the Whatsapp group.

The fish are coming along really well with some really good weight gains, but up to now this year I’d struggled to get amongst any of the better fish, and my biggest was in the low 20s. Still very welcome, but its nice to cuddle a chunk every so often!

Turned up to the lake at just before 7pm and as far as I could make out there was only one other person on.

I dropped in the same area as my last session but positioned myself so I could fish the same areas but with a slightly different line angle.

Two rods out long on stiff combi rigs and Pink Crave Pop-ups soaked in Shrimp Extract and a solid bag with a Complex- T wafter dropped short where I’d spotted something subtly break the surface amongst the ripple. I pinged a few half baits of Complex-T and Hot Crab soaked in Shrimp Extract around the solid bag zone and sat back with the kettle on.

Crave dumbell pop-ups ready to be launched!

After my second tea I was beginning to question my positioning. I re-did the two long rods but ended up just refreshing them (Probably unnecessarily) and repositioning them where they had been previously. In the short space of time I had at my disposal, I decided that to do anymore would probably do more harm than good!

I had exchanged a few text messages with Ant who runs the syndicate and his parting text said “good luck tonight, Mary and Big Fin are due out!”

…

All was calm until just after midnight, I’d just got settled on the bed when the middle rod out long pulled up tight and then dropped back. ‘Bloody bream’ I thought as I wound down like a man possessed. I was met with a little resistance that then came all the way in very easily and up popped an ancient looking battle scarred mirror with a bit of ghostie in it! At 21-14 it wasn’t a bad start, but I did mutter to myself questioning what I had to do to catch a bigger one!

21lb 14oz. A great start.

I took some snaps and put the rod back out.

At 1.30am and the same rod pulls up tight, out the clip and starts to trickle off against a tight clutch. Game on and this one felt bigger!

Once in close it royally beat me up ripping line of the Okuma T-Rex’s clutch and flat rodding me several times. I finally had it beat and up on the scales this one went 32-8. Buzzing!! This was a common with huge fins that I was later told is called the Brute (very appropriate with the amount of power it had!)

That’ll do. The Brute at 32lb 8oz

Self take done and rod back out. An hour and a half later the dormant solid bag rod burst into life with a plump mirror of 21-8 being the culprit.

The next to take the bait was this beauty at 21lb 8oz.

I was actually considering reeling in at this point as I was tired and had work in the morning and needed some sleep, but with Ants text message fresh in my mind I left them out and redid the solid bag.

I was once again very close to being well asleep when at 4am the middle rod cracked up tight and the clutch slowly began to tick. As I lifted the rod it felt like I’d hit a wall and it began to slowly plod right. I knew this was a different animal.

After 10 minutes of cranking and being taken for a walk under the rod tip I finally caught site of the absolute lump of a common on the end. Thankfully everything went pretty smoothly from then and the hook hold was absolutely solid. As I rolled the fish over in the net I knew it was one of the real big ones.

I scrolled back through my phone and found a picture of her last capture at a shade under 38 (which I think is either the lake record or very close) at the tail end of last year and with this, confirmation that I actually had “Mary” resting in my net. I had to laugh to myself!.

She went 37-1 and after the pics that rod remained firmly propped against my brolly!