Chris Emerton’s Fishing Diary - Common Fishing at Beacon, Milton Kyens

Captor’s Comments:

I got down to Beacon on 15th June at about 11.30am eagerly waiting for the start of the season on the particular area of the lake. We set up on the "triples" which is the area on the lake where there are 3 swims all looking out onto the lake at different angles. I was going to set up in the middle peg, peg 17 (new numbers I think) it has one of the chained islands in front of it about 40 yards out, this is what I was using as a marker to cast to. I took my time to set up as I had 12hrs of waiting to do.

I thought as I was waiting for time to pass I would get the marker out to see what I would be fishing too. I could not find a clear spot all I could find was weed weed and more weed so I made up some rigs to try and combat the situation! Long hook links and light leads so it wouldn't sink into the weed too much. I also made up some PVA bags with only 10mm boilies in it, along with PVA foam, again to try and make sure my hook link didn't sink to much. I thought as fishing in weed I would also try my luck with a Chod rig on lead core. The lead core leader was about 8ft long to combat the weed as best as I could.

I put out quite a bit of free bait, hoping to get the fish looking for it in the weed.

When it got to 10.30pm I thought I would have a little nap, as I was really tired, so I set my alarm for 11.50pm so I could be up and ready for the start. I woke up at 1.30am missing the 12.00am start because I slept through the alarm.....duh!!! Then once all 3 rods were out I went back to sleep.

I was woken at around 4.30am to Sam playing a fish which turned out to be a beautiful 15lb Mirror. Then went back to bed still nothing on my rods yet...

At around 10.00am we were sitting in front of Sam's rods, with not much happening, Sam said come on fish, then all of a sudden he had a screaming run. He lifted into another fish, after about 10-15 mins of playing the fish he landed another stunning looking fish this time a Common (I think) which came in at 21lb!

With me starting to get fed up with Sam getting all the action from his peg I decided to change things. When Sam had his 21lb Common I noticed he had tipped his hook bait with a fluro yellow fake corn. So I thought I would do the same on my bottom bait rigs and with the Chod I used a Hi-viz Pineapple Mainline pop up.

Only 10 mins had passed until I had a screaming run, it was belting off I didn't think I would be able to stop it and was worried about it going behind the island. So I bullied it a little to make sure it didn't get caught up, also to keep the fish out of the weed, which luckily didn't become a problem. As I was playing the fish I was also looking ahead of me out into the water and I noticed the fish jump out of the water and do a little tail walk (this had never happened to me before) it was amazing to see. Once the fish had tired (not that it put up much of a fight) it surfaced and Sam got it in the net. As he pulled it towards him he took a look at the fish and said what is my PB so I said 24lb 8oz, he then said not anymore.

I looked into the net and could not believe what I was seeing, this fish was massive! I lifted it out of the water (which wasn't easy) and took it to the unhooking mat, where I laid it to unhook it. Once I had done this and removed the net from underneath the fish Sam said to me that I have just caught Two Tone!! I couldn't believe it. We got the fish into the weigh sling. Lifted Two Tone onto the scales they went round to 37lb 8oz!! I was amazed and thought that I had just broke the lake record with the first fish I have had out of the lake. Then Sam reminded me that we hadn't zeroed the scales to take the weight of the sling off, but still this made Two Tone 35lb!! My new PB.

After struggling to pick Two Tone up, I finally managed to get the right hold so that Sam could take some trophy shots for me. This fish was perfect not a mark on her but so so heavy.

It got to about 5.30pm and the weed had made it practically impossible for Sam to carry on fishing where he was, the sun had made the weed rise higher in the water and the wind was blowing into the bay he was in bringing all the weed with it. So we decided to move to the other side of the lake where the weed wouldn't be a problem.

I didn't catch anything from there and Sam had a Bream during the night. We packed up and was off the water by 2.00pm.

So all in all a great session for me and my first fish out of the lake will take sometime to beat I'm sure.

Conditions:

• air temp
  
  19°C
• water temp
  
  Unknown
• water depth
  
  2ft
• water clarity
  
  Very high clarity
• wind speed
  
  Unknown
• wind dir
  
  Unknown
• weather
  
  Sunny
• air pressure
  
  1016 mbar Steady
• moon phase
  
  Waxing Crescent Moon