At last, myself and Jack have got ourselves back on the Top Lake at Whites Lakes! We booked ourselves on for a 48-hour session over the bank holiday weekend and have been looking forward to this one for a few weeks now. We haven’t had any luck on the Top Lake on our previous trips but with some more knowledge from the current members and from Mike himself we arrived with a slight spring in our step and some confidence within us.
The Weather leading up to the weekend wasn’t great but it was set to be somewhat of a scorcher whilst we were there, once again the Weather doesn’t give us a break, we always book our sessions a few weeks in advance due to family and work commitments so we are forever relying on the weather being nice to us rather than being able to fish on a whim.
Upon arriving to the lake, we were met with a bit of a knock in our confidence with Mike saying the fish are set to start spawning any day now, whilst they hadn’t started yet Mike did say that if they did start then unfortunately, we would be asked to leave as when the fish start spawning, he closes the lakes to let the fish get on with it, this is once again another sign of how much of an awesome fishery Mike runs and he is not in it for the money but for the love of the sport and the welfare of his fish.
With only 2 swims available on the lake, I decided to be the best friend a man could ask for and let Jack fish in his favoured swim (I know honestly, I’m just too nice for my own good.)
After selecting our sports and putting our new approach into place we stumbled across some eggs they were laid randomly on the path between mine and Jack’s swim, although I’m no twitcher, I do really love being amongst the wildlife around me when fishing and so my interests were intrigued and I decided to try and determine which bird these eggs belonged too.
Upon extensive research (Seeing the bird return to the eggs and googling ‘Black and White bird with long Orange beak) it was revealed the eggs belonged to a fascinating bird called an Oystercatcher.
A few hours into our trip Jack had a few single bleeps on one of his rods, whilst standing at his rods waiting for another indication, we saw the line moving but not enough for the bite alarm to detect it, Jack decided to pick up the rod and see what was going on, hey presto he was in! Result! Our first fish/take on the Top Lake, a short battle later he was graced with this chunky Common, all 25lb of it!
With the rest of the day passing uneventfully, we tucked up into our beds and was excited for the night ahead, at 12am I was greeted with a screamer of a run and just likes Jack fish I had a short battle ahead before being greeted with this awesome 23lb Common, my new Common PB! YIIPEEE!
(We do need to work on our night time shots)
With the rest of the night passing with no further fish we were greeted with our worst nightmare, the fish were getting jiggy with it, so we decided to wind the rods in and head off to the shops to contemplate our next move.
Upon returning it didn’t look good at all with the fish seemingly turning up their Barry White music and giving it a right good go.
With our session seemingly over, we had a very hard decision to make…… Come back for our next blog in 2 weeks to see what we done and how/where we ended up!
On a last note, the eggs seemed to start to hatch whilst we were there too! Love all around us!
As always,
Tight Lines & Wet Nets,
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