Farriers giant tempted from hole in weed for Lee Collings

An hour spent searching for spots with his marker rod proved worthwhile for Lee Collings who caught this 39lb 1oz common from the Carp Society’s Farriers Lake in the Cotswold.

With the venue fishing hard and very few carp being caught the midlands-based Century consultant decided to go back to the drawing board and try and find some new areas to target.

“The lake is still very weedy and not showing any signs of dying back yet so after an hour casting a bare lead about with my marker rod I found a small clear spot which looked quite promising next to a thick weed bed,” Lee told Angling Times.

“The area I was fishing is a passing point which the fish use to move to the different parts of the lake. It seems to have a window of opportunity of about 3-4 hours to catch then it seems to be it for the day.”

After baiting his new found spot with 30 broken Mainline Baits Cell boilies he cast a 15mm hookbait tipped with a piece of big buoyant plastic corn on a blow-back rig tied with  25lb ESP Strip Teaze attached to a size 6 ESP Curve Shanx hook.

“The take was really slow and didn’t even pull the line out of the clip and my Stow bobbin didn’t come off either. The fish had weeded me up solid but after walking backwards I managed to get it moving again.

“I knew it was a good fish and the fight seemed to last for an eternity – in reality it was probably no more than five minutes before it rolled in the net.”