A guest session and The Trent By Tommi Jackson

Luckily, I had managed to get a guest session on a local syndicate so made my way down to the lake with my friend who had got me the session. The lake is 4 acres in size and contains around 80 fish; the biggest being around 32lb. The lake is mainly clear but has a good number of silty pockets and weedy spots dotted around it, with depths averaging around 10ft. Its shape is hard to describe but it is quite long and about 70 yards wide at the widest point, with most of the fishing being done from one bank as you normally cast over to the other side to a reed and tree lined margin.

I had a walk around the lake a couple of times and saw a few fish. A guy known as "Chops" was fishing in the drink after talking to him his left rod which was in the bay he had a run on which resulted in a 19lb 14oz common, he was packing up then packed a couple of his rods away and put his 3rd rod on the floor he just was going to start reeling when the tip went around this then resulted in a 15lb mirror. So I had decided to fish a swim called the drink which had a nice little bay opposite and to the left hand side which was tree lined and had a few big beds of lily’s, I had decided to fish this swim as you can walk around and lower your rigs in to make sure they are laid out and presented correctly, also I could go and check on the spots to see if fish was feeding or if there was any signs of fish going into the area.

A stunning sunset down on the trent
After setting up in the swim I cast a rod to the far side I then went up the tree with the rig in my hand, I let the bait runner be loose so I could pull some line of when I needed to, the spot was a couple of feet deep and I had put some cc moore pellets and some groundbait onto the spot which I also added some corn. The rig was 6 inches of fluorocarbon with a couple of bits of putty on just to nail it down, I then had a short supple section which was tied KD style to a Nash size 8 fang x hook, hook bait was a cc moore hell raiser chopped down with a little bit of fake corn on top of. It had taken me a couple of tries until I was happy with it after pulling it back on the clear spot the bait was sinking nice and slow only just sitting on the bottom, the lead was a 4oz flat pear on a simple lead clip as there was a couple of cabbages behind the spot and a post a little further up that margin, if the fish was big enough the lead would drop of if it was a stockie then it would not drop.

After putting the first rod out I had decided to cast on a hump in the left bay after a couple of tries with different rigs I got the rig on top of it I had put the naked chod on with the slow sinking corn again this just sat on top of the weed and would not look to obvious on the hump, corn, pellets and groundbait was placed on and around the hump. I had decided to put the final rod over to some reeds on a chod rig with a pink pop up from cc moore this was fished as a single hook bait, I was hoping that the fish might just go for it as it was a warm muggy day and fish was clearly patrolling the reeds going in and out of them.

At around 5pm I had a take of the spot with the corn and cc moore pop up it was only a stockie weighing 5lb 8oz guess it had just saved me a blank though ! I had got the rod straight back out onto the spot and went to see Mike and Paul (my friend) who was just up the bank I ended up staying up there as we was all sat with Mike who was in the middle of us so we was not too far from the rods. I went to bed and got woken up by Paul who had told me that someone further up had caught a 26lb common known as "No Pecs", we was packed up for around 9am when Paul suggested we go to the river Trent I thought it was a good idea as I have only fished it once and not done any good. Paul dropped me of at home for a couple of hours so we could both get refreshed.

We called at the local pet store at around 12pm and got some pellets some 10mm standard pellets and 6mm high oil pellets which I could also mix into the cc moore pellets and put in the pva bags. We got there after getting lost thanks to Paul’s great driving skills which took us to Lincoln and it was quite busy the weir was 200yards up the river and there was a lot of people in front of the car park so we both decided to barrow further up to peg 15 which gave us a lot of water up and down the stretch. I took the left side of the swim and Paul took the right side. I made a couple of rigs up with simple coated braid size 7 Nash fang twister hooks which was about 12 inch long attached to a 10oz gripper I wanted the rig to be on the bottom and not to be moving anywhere the bait was a standard bottom bait tipped with a CC Moore baits hellraiser pop up boilies.. I had not noticed but there was a little island about 15 yards from Paul’s swim I had decided to put another rod down there, I had changed the rig a little putting a size 10 fang x hook with a cc moore hellraiser chopped down tipped with a little bit of corn I also was adding a bag of pellets to the rods when casting out also. I then had a take around 6pm on the rod near the little island this turned out to be a bream about 7lb, I was putting pellets in upstream and groundbait every 30 mins until about 11pm when I got my head down.

My First Trent Barbel
At 3am I had a ripper on the baited area rod after a couple of mins me and Paul both saw it was a barbel I was quite nervous as this is my first river Trent barbel, we got it in the net and it weighed in at just over 6lb not the biggest but my first barbel from the river Trent after a couple of photos where I looked dead, Paul reminded me of the Youtube carper Gollum (personal joke) where I managed to crack a smile. I tied a new rig and got the rod back out onto the spot and put my head down again where I woke up at 7am and we both decided to put some fresh bait on, after talking to a couple of lads there was only a couple of rudd caught so I thought I had done well getting a bream and a barbel.

That was the end of my weekend landing a stunning little stockie on a guest session, and my first every river Trent barbel.


Tommi Jackson