A New One!

Shane is one of my friends and he is usually the active guide on our charter coordinator, also acts as guide on some trips. Shane’s credentials in South Australian recreational fishing are second to none. He has years of experience guiding keen anglers in all parts of South Australia, interstate and even overseas.

Both of us planned to go out for roach fishing that day. Roach fishing is what tat I seldom do and cant really remember when I was out for one last. Shane told me about an article which was about the virtues of flavoring maggots with super-sweet flavors such as scopex, in helping to tempt winter roach to feed. So we got hold of some and trust me it smelled so good. I've decided to use the same 2lb 10oz hooklength and size 18 Kamasan B911 hooks which I’d been so pleased with recently when fishing for grayling.

I was so happy that it worked and I hooked a bream which took the bait as soon as my rod was in the rest. And sooner I've managed grab quite a few breams. But no roaches as of then. As the light began to give way to darkness, I caught a couple of roach of a respectable stamp, around the half-pound mark. Darkness was fast approaching and I realized I had isotopes in my bag, but no means of attaching them to the rod or sidewinder.

I quickly improvised some “brackets” using pellet bands and superglue, which gave me a set-up that was far from ideal, but perfectly useable. When it got dark, the bites became both more frequent and more ferocious. When the bite I was waiting for finally came and I hooked into something more substantial, which felt like a roach, I nervously reached for the landing net and said to myself, over and over again, “Please be a roach, please be a roach…” 

My pleadings were answered when a large silvery flank glistened as it entered the net. As I’ve said previously, I’m not well acquainted with big roach, and this was the largest I’d ever seen in real life; definitely a new PB. I was delighted when the scales needle swung well past 1lb and nestled at exactly 1lb 8oz. It was the fish I’d waited all day for, but eager to see if anything even bigger could be enticed from my swim, I fished on into the darkness. I did catch a few more fish, including another beauty at 1lb 6oz, but nothing topped the first “biggie”. I’m assured there are larger fish in the lake to be caught, so I’ll be returning soon to apply some of the lessons I learned from this session. And I told Shane, “We should have tried this earlier..!”