Preparation pays with Medway Valley Fisheries forty

Careful preparation and a short daytime session between nightshifts resulted in John Waller bagging this Medway Valley Fisheries forty.

The 39-year-old saw one of the lake’s biggest residents roll as he was packing up at the end of one session and made sure he was ready to target the spot on his return.

The Kent angler explained: “I did the Sunday night, as my only night session of the week, and as I was sitting on the bedchair about to pack up I saw a fish known as the Big Mirror show.

“I put a jar of hemp on the spot and cast a rod to the spot and clipped up the rods and my spod rod to that spot, ready for when I could get down there the following day after my nightshift.”

Arriving at the lake at 7.15am, John put out half a kilogram of Dynamite Baits’ Monster Tiger Nut Red Amo boilies and got a take at 9.20am.

“As I was playing it, the middle rod rattled off as well,” said John. “As I thought I was playing the Big Mirror I just had to leave it. Luckily I managed to get the first fish in and I picked up the middle rod and that fish was still on, but it had stripped 200 yards of line and I got cut off on a bar in the middle of the lake.”

The fish in the net went 44lb 2oz and was in fact not the Big Mirror but another of the lake’s biggest residents that had topped 40lb last spring.

John, who was fishing to a silty area 90 yards out, used Ace CXS Razor Point hooks, Rigmarole Skinfull hooklinks and 15lb ESP Crsytal mainline.