Leigh Maitland was fishing at Lanesborough earlier this week. Having read Paul Waghorn’s reports that there were lots of smaller roach with some more about the 200g mark Leigh decided to try his luck and see if he could build a decent catch by feeding heavily with a sticky groundbait. Leigh fed his swim with a mix of hemp and caster in the hope that the bigger fish would move in…
On Sunday water levels were low and Leigh fished the pole at 11m over around 1m of water. Friends fising with him were catching from the off so morale was good on the river bank. Having set up Leigh fed a nugget with each run of the float and picked up a lot of fish. So much so that he wondered if he had enough bait for the day! In the end he finished with 9.1kg of roach.
On Tuesday Leigh was back at Lanesboroughwith rather more bait:
Again Leigh was on the pole and fed the swim with one handed balls of groundbait laced heavily with casters, some hemp and a few grains of corn every put in. The groundbait was introduced slightly down stream of his pole tip and lowering the rig in on the same line every time in line with a far bank marker, give total control over the rig.
There was no initial balls introduced this time, just a nugget then a run through. From the second put it produced a fish, and so on, after probably 10 minutess and constant feeding the stamp of Roach started to get a bit bigger and as time went on bigger fish started to make an appearance. Leigh had a few Roach to 700g and 2 Bream to 1.8kg amongst a 32.5kg final weight.
Other anglers fishing the same day had hybrids to 1.5kg and bags of 14kg and 17kg.
Leigh Maitland
Browning Anlger
For a full run down on the tackle, rigs, baiting and tactics see Leigh’s blog.
