HAULING IN THE CAPITAL
14th July 2020
The long drive down to the capital was made all the worth while for Dan Sibley, with several thirties coming to his rods using a range of Manilla products.
Fishing day only waters isn’t for the faint hearted, especially when the waters in question are a long drive from your home. Thankfully Dan Sibley’s recent efforts were duly rewarded, with some cracking fish from the Capital!
He revealed:
“With the weather staying fairly consistent from my last session, I managed to free up two days away from home duties to try and capitalise on this mega weather.
“The alarm was set for 3 in the morning to make the lengthy trip down to the Capital, with the weather more or less identical to the last session I had a good idea of the area I needed to be. Once the day ticket was purchased, I shot off down to the shallow end of the res and it wasn’t long before my thoughts were proved right and I saw a few fish give themselves away. To begin with to try and nick a quick bite, I casted out three singles into the area where the carp were showing and fizzing. They were clearly still on the naturals as an hour or so passed and the fish seemed to lose interest in feeding. I scattered half a kilo of Manilla over the rigs which worked beautifully, because no less than five minutes of the bait being introduced, I had a chunky 32lb 4oz common in the net. A real character with a strange midget tail!
A range of bait from the Sticky Manilla range was a great success for Dan as he bagged several lovely looking thirties
“After such quick success from applying bait, I went against the grain and decided to fill it in! I spodded out a big bed of Manilla, along with some Cloudy Liquid and Active Mix. Over the top, I fished all three rods on match-the-hatch Manilla pop-ups with long supple hinge rigs. Understandably, after all the disturbance it took the fish a while to respond to the bait but after a few hours they got on it big time! By that point I had up to four fish showing at any one time and so it wasn’t long before the Neville screamed into life.This time it resulted in a long, hard-fighting mirror pulling the scales around to just a nudge over the 30-pound mark , The fish carried on feeding and I managed to trip up two low 20 commons.
“After the capture of the two 20s, I felt the fish had cleared me out so I topped the area up with a further kilo of Manilla and again an hour or so later, massive plumes of fizz came up off the bottom as the fish were ripping into the boilies. The day seemed to fly by, but at around five o’clock in the evening my middle rod pulled up tight and I was in again! At first I thought I had a bream, I practically reeled the fish in until it got right under the rod tip. The fish broke the surface giving me sight of its scale perfect linear scaling before taking off like a marlin, stripping 60 odd yards of line from me. But thankfully after a nervy battle, because I knew what I had hooked, I had undoubtedly one of the best looking fish I will catch in my angling life! A jet-black, absolutely scale perfect linear, I was over the moon.
“The rest of the evening went quiet and with me coming back the next day, I put out a further 25 spombs of Manilla Active Mix and Cloudy Liquid, along with 2kg of boilies to hopefully keep the fish busy until my return in the morning.
“Getting back into the swim the next morning it looked dead with a strong westerly wind pumping down the res away from my baited area. I couldn’t ignore the new fresh wind so I went in search of them. After a few hours, I found nothing and was back in the shallow swim, but this time the fish were back and ripping into the spot again. I cast out and barley had time to take my line out of the clip, before I was away again. After a short spirited fight, I had another chucky 31lb mirror sat in the bottom of the net, I was buzzing that my heavily baiting approach paid off.”
