A WELLY HAT-TRICK

18th September 2019

Simon Kenny banks three fish for a total of 140lbs, including a double take, from Wellington Country park!

Although Wellington country park is renowned for its stock of huge carp, they aren’t easy to trip up nowadays, and although Simon Kenny has consistently caught most trips, he hadn’t managed to get amongst the big girls, until this one!

Simon tells us how the session panned out:

“As is my usual routine, I arrived at Welly on Sunday morning. Speaking to the weekend boys they hadn’t seen or caught much and after a few laps myself I was none the wiser to the carp’s location. The carp in Welly can be hard to track down; sometimes they follow the wind, other times they don’t and they definitely don’t always show where they are.

“So, for my first night I dropped in the little lake but by midday the follow day, I realised my mistake as I hadn’t heard or seen a thing, so the gear went back on the barrow. While looking around I stopped in to have a cuppa with another member called ‘The Doc’ and after about half an hour looking out from his swim I saw a monster common show, it was a long way away, probably 250 yards but I saw it plain as day as it glistened in the sun and sent up a big spray as it crashed back in! That was enough for me; it had showed in front of the boathouse swim where I caught the Chinese common from a few weeks ago, so I knew a couple of lovely gravel spots were present there. This ensured I could get my rods out with minimum disturbance.

Simon used his trusty tactics of 16mm Manilla boilies spread over an area with Signature Squids as hookbait choice.

“The rods were wrapped up and went out first time with his trusty bait of Manilla Freezer boilies and Signature Squids ready to go. That evening I started getting liners on one of my rods, proper big slow ones all the way up and down. The Welly carp may not show much but they give themselves away with the liners. Over the course of the evening I had 5 or 6 big liners; I was super confident.

“It was well into darkness and I was just thinking about turning in for the night when I had another series of bleeps but this time the line pulled up tight and it was game on! I lifted into the fish and instantly was met with solid resistance. The whole fight the fish just felt heavy and slow, plodding like a typical big fish and all the time I was thinking of that big common I saw show.

“As the bulk of a massive fish went over the cord in the moonlight, I knew it was a good fish but because I left my head torch in the bivvy I couldn’t see for sure just yet how big or what it was. Once I turned on my light, I couldn’t believe the size of it, it almost certainly was the fish I’d seen show, The Big Common as it’s known, and she went 55lb 8oz on the scales, setting a new pb. Understandably, I was over the moon already, but more was to come.

“I initially thought the fish had done the off after all the commotion because the liners had stopped. But, by late morning the following day the middle rod was away completely out of the blue and after another hard fight, I had a good mirror waddling in the margins. Then, the next thing I know, the other rod was melting off, a double take! Luckily another member was with me and he picked up the other rod and managed to slow the fish down before I could take over after slipping the net under the first fish. After a few hairy moments I managed to land the second fish without any problems. It was a crazy moment, I never expected to get a double take on somewhere like welly!

“The first fish was a short deep bodied mirror known as ‘The Thick Wristed’ at 45lb 9oz which is a beautiful chunky mirror and one I really wanted. The other was a 41lb 12oz ghostie.

“That was all the action I had for the trip, but I was really made up with three fish for over 140 pounds. I’ve worked really hard at welly since getting my ticket and it’s lovely when things all come good.”