New pb caught in manic five hour spell at Richworth Linear Fisheries

During a manic five hour spell Steve Nickson had four takes and landed three fish from St John’s Lake on the Richworth Linear Fisheries complex with the highlight being this pb 31lb 12oz linear.

The York-based rod told Angling Times: “I was set-up on the Point Swim which is a peg I was hoping to get. I chose to fish two rods tight to the no fishing bank on gravel areas, with one long and one closer in. The third was fished with a chod rig in a silty area around 100 yards out.

“Throughout the week I used 8kg of top quality baits from Frank Warwick, the Fruit Smoothy in different sizes of 12mm, 16mm and 16mm dumbells. I also used 15kg of aniseed particle with a couple of kilos of sweetcorn added to the mix with 2 gallon of red and white maggots and a good helping of FW Salmon Amino acid. I baited the gravel spots 3 times a day at 10am, 4pm and 10pm. My rig set up on the gravel spots consisted of 4ins Nash Gravel Missing Link hooklinks, size 8 Nash Fang Twister hooks and free running 3oz flat pear leads.

“On the short rod I used a trimmed-down Fruit Smoothy dumbbell and half a FW Fruit Juice 12mm pop-up. This was cast tight to an overhanging tree. On the long rod I opted for a 12mm FW Fruit Juice pop-up with a fake red maggot hair stop. This was cast over to the bank where I made up a solid PVA bag and placed by hand onto a hard gravel patch. The third rod was set up with a naked choddy tied with 20lb Korda Mouth Trap and a size 8 Choddy hook with a 16mm Fruit Smoothy pop- up.

“The weather was absolutely scorching the first two days with highs of 29 degrees and I couldn’t even get a bit on zigs. On Tuesday evening I took a look over my short rod and saw six carp with their heads down feeding confidently, and a big common was among them. Unfortunately, the night passed without any action. Wednesday evening was a completely different story, however. The heavens opened and I’d just got in the sleeping bag at 11pm when my left hand rod ripped off. After a frantic battle, I landed my first carp of 26lb 10oz. I soon had the rod back out with a couple of kilos of particles and boilies. At 1am the same rod went off again and after a great fight I had a long 18lb common in the net. The next take came at 4am but the fish quickly weeded me up solid. I kept tension on the line just waiting for it to pull out of the weed. After five minutes it came out, kiting to the right and stripping around 20yds of line wiping out my right hand rod in the process. I finally got it over the net and scooped up a stunning full linear which tipped the scales at 31lb 12oz! Happy days! I was over the moon with this fish as it was a new pb.

“I had one more take after that, but unfortunately it came off. Looking back at the session and things I would have done differently, I would have kept the bait going in on the spots but not put the rods in until the evening to give them a free feed. Throughout the week the lake was fishing quite slow and to my knowledge only seven fish came out including mine. I definitely think the bait I was using was a big factor to my success, and I would recommend any of the two food baits to anyone. A truly memorable session.”