Team Kodex member Ulrich Zeller describes his capture of a 51lb beauty during terrible conditions – it’s his third fifty in the last twelve months!
At first it looked as if all odds were against me when I couldn’t leave work as early as planned, followed by horrible traffic on the way to the lake. I battled the heavy rain with only four hours fishing left on the days only water. I heard everybody else on the lake had blanked all day so my spirit was really low and I considered not even setting up in the adverse weather conditions. However, the good thing about fishing is; when it’s great, it’s great and when it’s bad, it’s still great. So I decided to set up even if a take felt really far away.
This turned out to be a very good decision, when out of the blue my left hand rod absolutely melted off, after around one and a half hours. In total disbelief I picked up the rod and felt that it was a good fish straight away. After a strong hard fight suddenly everything went solid, the fish was stuck in weed close to the margin. ’No pain no gain’ as they say and eventually I managed to free the fish. After seeing it for the first time I knew that it was worth the effort. The fish continued to fight hard and before eventually ending up in the folds of my net. On the mat it weighed in at 51lb (23.3 kilos) and turned out to be my third fifty in a twelve month period. Not bad for a guy who works fulltime and has a young family. The successful tactics were a white King Prawn 15mm pop-up over a small bed of King Prawn boilies and the lovely Munga Mix – all from Crafty Catcher. This was placed at the entrance of a small bay where a couple of fish could be seen milling around. As always I used the ever reliable Kodex end tackle range incorporating a Genomic MGP Wide Gape hook in size 6. It just goes to show, you should never be put off by the conditions and give it a go anyway – you never know what you might put on the bank!
