The first week of September I happily took up the invite from famous Belgium Carp supremo Geert Ooms to have a guest session on the his local syndicate. This venue was famous at the beginning of this millennium, but a fish kill in 2004 saw it go under the radar so to speak.

A recent stocking of Villedon mirrors has secured the future of this fantastic lake (some have grown from 4 kilo to 10 kilo in one year!) and a small syndicate has been formed a few years ago with only 20 members. Geert has been fishing the lake during this summer, and has been quite successful with some 50 fish under his belt up to lower 40’s. During this period Geert has been introducing the Solar Chinese Take-Away steadily with aforementioned results. As the lake doesn’t hold bream, I decided to start off with an introduction of a groundbait consisting of Chinese Up&Down, 365 Pellets and hemp, next to the Chinese boilies. Geert is looking forward to its results but is a bit scared that this will bring in the stockies big time. He turns out to be right as after the first 24 hours the score is 6 bites (4 landed) for me against 1 for Geert. I decide to stop with the groundbait but the damage has been done and the stockies keep coming, ending in 9 fish for me and the only 1 stockie for Geert. It has to be said that Geert gave me the chance to fish the hotspot with 2 of the 3 rods, which is an area with some humps that only comes up less than 1 foot with flat bottom all over the lake. This area(some 170 meters out) is only reachable with the aid of a remote boat equipped with an echosounder to find the spots again and again. The SONIK SK3 3lbs’ers performed well at this range and even at this extreme range, gave perfect control.  The 9 fish consisted of 7 stockies, one old common of 22lbs and a 39lbs old mirror.