After using a bait that was heavily used, I decided it was time for a change and I set out to find one that was seldom used in my area and one that had a proven track record. I decided to approach CC Moore after reading several articles in magazines and reviews on the internet, Odyssey XXX was to be my new bait from June 2012 onwards.
My first session was on a water owned and run by Hull & District A.A known as Brandesburton 3&4, a mature & picturesque gravel pit of around 7.5 acres and although the fish aren’t massive there are some total stunners which have been residents for over 25 years.
Brandesburton fish are fairly wary fish, and I had walked the lake a couple of times leading upto this 48 hour session and spotted a few fish in one of the lily fringed bays that are common on this pit. I had spoken to a few anglers including one in a swim ideal for the location of the fish I had seen.
A couple of days passed and I loaded the van after work on the Sunday evening and headed down to the lake. A quick walk round soon revealed that the fish were still in the area they had been for the last couple of days and I quietly got into position, I had 3 spots in mind and just confirmed these very quickly with a marker float. I always use a fairly long hair with a hard hook bait on this water due to the large amount of nuisance bream that have a tendency to wake you at 2am, a long hair seems to eradicate them.
Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.
I was aware that XXX was a fairly soft bait, so I had air dried a few kilos of bait in various sizes for a few days or so. I didn’t want them rock hard, just enough to use in the throwing stick for my longer line. I’m a big user of particle in quantity on this venue and I had around 15kg of freshly cooked hemp with me, along with 10kg of XXX pellet which normally I wouldn’t use with the bream problem but I was willing to risk it as the Carp do love the pellet as well.
2 rods were fished to my left and far tree line, and the right hand rod was fished tight to the edge of the lilies where the underwater ‘cabbages’ end and the gravel starts. My longer line to the far tree line would have a 18mm bait on as I didn’t want to be repositioning this regularly. A fairly heavy scattering of bait was spread across the 3 areas with the spomb, which is possibly one of the most used items in my bag! I love my fluoro pop ups, so I had a wide variety of Gaz Fareham’s northern specials, and a variety of other CC Moore pop ups, they smell awesome and they seem to be buoyant as long as you need them to be!
Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.
All 3 rods had odyssey XXX snowman set-ups on hooklinks of around 8” size 5 fox SSBPs & 20lb ESP Two-Tone. The hours of darkness were fairly quiet, with not even a bream to show for my efforts! At first light, things were going to change quite dramatically when my right hand rod ripped off. This fish put up a hell of a fight, eventually landed I thought I recognised it as a fish of approximately 24lb + however when weighed it was a fish I didn’t recognise and weighed in at 20lb 10oz – a good result for my first fish on the XXX! Rod repositioned and just a top up of bait for now!
I decided to chill in my bivvy for a while as rain clouds were starting to appear in the distance, so I watched a film on the iPad. A few hours later I started to get some subtle liners on the left hand rod, sat on the edge of my bed waiting for the rod to rip off and eventually it did rip off! Another spirited fight from a fish of 18lb 6oz, quickly photographed and returned so I could get the rod back in place.
Shortly after I had a take on my long line, which unfortunately resulted in a hook pull but then the right hand rod signalled a take and a fish I recognised ‘cut tail’ was shortly on the bank – one of the original wood carvings of 3&4 at 22lb 4oz. 4 runs in such a short period of time is just unheard of on Brandesburton 3&4, I had never had a result like this on the bait I was using previously, so you could say my first impressions of Odyssey XXX were good ones! Unfortunately I haven’t had much time to get back onto the water but Iintend to do a few sessions on there through the winter months as there are a few fish which I would dearly love to catch. Including this stunning linear, caught below by Craig Sett.