One Month 4 Forties Part 2

In the second instalment, JIM SHELLEY continues his incredible run of form, catching two of the biggest fish from a tricky big pit.

- Jim Shelley

As you can imagine, I was buzzing after catching The Coconut Common, it was something I was beginning to think was never going to happen.

With Bayeswater now completely off my mind, it would have been silly not to go back to that big pit with all those old ones in, so I got back in the van to make the 150-mile journey.

I knew exactly where I wanted to be. Now I’m not normally one to go in with preconceived ideas, but with the confidence I had in that area after my success on the last session, it would be foolish to ignore it. All the way down I was anxious that someone might be camped in the swim and I rolled along the track hoping there was no-one there. I got right up to it and could now see that it was vacant – thank God!

The swim was secured but I was running out of daylight hours. I quickly smashed out a bare lead beyond my line marker at about 80 yards and it cracked down on the bottom. It was like the area had been scoured out since my last visit. Like before, I was looking for nice smooth silt but this had been absolutely smashed, perhaps too much. Instead, I whacked the marker around a couple of times and found exactly what I was looking for.

It took a bit of work but I finally got the rods out bang on the spots just before dark.The rigs were perfect and the lead went down with a firm thud; I knew everything had gone out 100 per cent.

Again I was using my dark-side snowman setup with big 5oz leads. A couple of times recently I’ve had really twitchy takes, including the Coconut Common, which only gave a little knock on the rod tip, not even a single bleep. For a long while I’ve used 20lb X Line and typically fish it mega-slack. It has a lot less stretch than regular mono but I still wasn’t getting much indication, so I’ve started to fish with slightly tighter lines. I only peel off a couple of feet and let it tighten naturally to that before putting the bobbins on.