The London Winter League was finely poised going into the final round, with 3 teams all in with a shout of achieving 1st or 2nd and clinching one of the two semi final spots. After 5 rounds the league table had Browning Wickford (my team) and Oakwood Eurobait as joint leaders on 11 points. With our rivals Image Van Den Eyne a point further adrift on 12. It was now crunch time and unlike "Strictly Come Dancing" someone had to go. We knew that a first or a second in this final match should ensure us a semi final spot, although there were many permutations which could unravel which we didn't want to think about at this stage.
The London Winter League is based entirely on natural venues (5 rounds on canals and 1 on a river). It may only be a small league (5 teams, 50 pegs) but is very competitive as most of the anglers are "cut heads" and as this years points show there is now no stand out team after the demise of Essex County. This competitiveness is unfortunately the leagues downfall as it appears unable to attract new teams.
The Slough Arm is normally ultra reliable and is a perfect team match venue in which a team plan can be formulated for the whole venue. In short it is a method water with few bonus fish and one in which the draw plays little part, exactly how match fishing should be. This can be illustrated by Essex County always winning this round when they were in the league because they were the best team. The Slough Arm is an offshoot of the Grand Union Canal and the area we were fishing was on the boats at Langley Bridge to the Gypsy camp. The canal here varies in width depending on the number of boats moored up on the far bank, yes you can get a single boat, a double boat or even a treble boat, most of which are inhabited! Therefore, pegs vary between 8 and 13 metres in width depending on the number of boats moored up.
The practice match had shown the Slough Arm to be decidedly off colour. It had been frozen solid and everyone was caught out by how patchy it had fished. Also the winning weight had consisted of skimmers which was unheard of in recent times on the Slough Arm. Unfortunately not all the boat owners seemed pleased with our presence in the practice and there was a slanging match between an angler and a boat owner over the use of an ice breaker so close to his pride and joy, which came close to blows being exchanged! I made a mental note of the white boat this nutter resided on and hoped to avoid it the next week. My practice match had been devoid of lunatic boat owners but also of fish by only weighing in a pathetic 1lb 8ounces. Nothing I had tried had worked and I was more than a bit concerned about the real match.
Back to the match proper and the draw was actually quite a laid back affair as no one was overly fussed whether they pulled peg 1,2,3,4,5 out of the hat. I had been doing the team draw for the past few rounds as apparently I am a total drawbag? Anyway, I pulled out peg 3 and my draw put me in F section which was right in the middle of the match length. I was quite happy with this draw as their had been a few 4-6 pound weights in the area the week before and I hoped for a few fish. When I reached the canal I instantly noticed it was absolutely different from the previous week. Firstly, it wasn't frozen and secondly it seemed to be holding lots more colour as well. The team had discussed our approach to the match and we felt the fishing could be worse than the practice match due to ice water melting into the venue and torrential rain the day before pushing water temperatures really low. This was to be reflected in our feeding approaches as well.
Bait for the Day
1 Kilo of joker.
small English bloodworm.
loaf of finely sieved liquidised bread.
hooker bread.
Sensas Joker Fix.
Soil.
Aquarium Gravel.
As I progressed towards my peg I could see a white boat looming in the distance and remembered this was the peg I wanted to avoid .... and to my relief my peg was one peg past it! My peg looked a fairly typical Slough Arm Peg with a double boat opposite at about 10.5 metres . Obviously my aim was to win the section and the anglers in my section from the other competing teams were Oakwoods big John Davis and Images Steve Tyler. JD was next to me on peg 4 with Steve on peg 5.
Rigs and Tactics
Several lines are usually required on the Slough Arm in order to keep the fish coming as they tend to spook after a few have been caught down one hole, therefore I plumbed up 5 lines but only fed 4 at the start. Line 1 was to be 6 joints on bread punch straight out in front of me in the deepest water (about 4 foot). Here I would feed about 200 mls of liquidised bread. Line 2 was to be at about 10 o' clock at 7 joints again in the deepest water. This would be my soil and joker line. I would feed this with 4 orange size balls of soil with 25 mls of joker in at the start. I would be primarily targeting perch on this line and this could come into its own if the canal was rock hard. My theory of feeding lots of soil but hardly any joker revolved around trying to keep Perch foraging in the soil for every last joker, the 25mls would not overfeed them and the soil would hold them. There is definitely something about soil that attracts Perch.
Line 3 would be at 2 o'clock again at seven sections, here I fed 75 mls of joker in a bit of grey leam and gravel to get it down to the bottom quickly in the realitively deep water. Line 4 was tight to the boat opposite me in about 2.5 foot of water at 10.5 metres, here I fed 100mls of raw joker and this would be left as long as possible before fishing. I also plumbed up a reserve line at 2 oclock against the boat again in 2.5 foot. If things were going badly on the other lines I could feed here accordingly, however this was un fed at the start. One thing to mention is when plumbing up against the boat I made sure I avoided the holes in the side of it, as the last thing you want is the contents of the boats bog/sink gushing into your peg!
Rig 1 was a 0.2 Browning Versuvius for the punch with a spread bulk of 11's and 4 11's droppers. Line was 0.08 to 0.06 Browning Cenitan to a size 22 B511. Elastic number 3.
Rig 2 was the same float but in 0.4 with an olivette and 2 no 10 droppers, on the same line, hook and elastic. This was in case I was bagging on the punch.
Rig 3 was an old wire stem Milo float (don't know the name) in 4x12 with a fine fibre bristle. This float was shotted with 12s in the bulk and 4 number 12 droppers. Line was again 0.08 to 0.06 and the hook was an original Image IM1. Elastic number 2. This would be used on either of my down the middle joker lines.
Rig 4 was the same float but in 4X14, should I be bagging.
Rig 5 was a Browning Esmeralda in 0.1 for fishing to the boat and was shotted with a small bulk of 12s and three droppers. Line, elastics and hooks were the same as on the other joker rigs.
After feeding my lines, as always on canals the breads the one to start on and depending upon the response you get it can be an indicator of what might lay ahead. JD next to me also started on the bread and had an ounce roach first put in and I soon followed suit seconds later. An encouraging start and I felt optimistic. 7 roach in 7 put ins gave me some grounds for optimism, however 5 minutes without a bite had me moving lines onto the soil line. This soon bought me a couple of small perch, before dying. In the first hour I had 25 fish a mixture of roach and perch by switching between the bread and the soil lines. More importantly I was up with the other anglers in my section and I was not playing catch up.
On the hour I decided it was time to refeed the bread and in went 125 mls of loose liquidised. The response was instant and dramatic, as I put together a run of mixed sized roach including several netters. Nearly all of my bites were coming on the drop to a 4mm piece of punch and my catch rate really began to accelerate. Even better was the fact that no-one in my section seemed to be catching at the rate I was and I was sure I now had a lead. At the end of hour 2 I had 65 fish in the net for about 4.5 lbs. At this rate I felt I may be able to get close to 200 fish. However the punch line began to slow so I topped it up with a further 125mls and went on my 7metre grey leam and gravel joker line at 2 o'clock.
A small single bloodworm was the hookbait and the float buried just as the bait was falling through the final few inches and I caught a 4 ounce roach. This was the sign to bust off the size 26 IM1 and I replaced it with a 24 B5ll which would hold onto these better stamp fish better. Incidentally most people would have changed to a green gama at this point, however I don't use these as I have had some shit batches in the past with short points and have had terrible trouble with fish dropping off the hook. Anyway I had a short burst of decent fish on this line with double joker being the best bait before this died and I looked on the long line at 10.5 metres in 2.5 foot. Again I caught instantly and I soon appreciated how clear the canal was as the fish flashed as soon as I hooked it. A similar pattern emerged to the short joker line in that bites soon stopped after a short burst. It was obvious the canal was fishing way above my expectations and I knew I should have fed my joker lines more positively as this would have held fish for longer before topping up. I topped up both lines with a "walnut" of greyed joker and went back to the punch line.
With about 3 hours gone the bank runners were suggesting it was a two horse race between us and Image which was encouraging and the news I wanted to hear. I felt I was ahead in my section so it was a case of keeping concentration to make sure things remained that way. The good thing about the Slough Arm is you know that no one is likely to catch a large bonus fish, so unless you stop catching things should go your way.
I caught again instantly on the punch with decent fishing giving way to smaller samples after the more I caught. With the swim showing it would take a top up my match developed a pattern. I would catch as long as I could on the punch before it faded. At this point I topped up with 125mls of loose liquidised and rested for ten minutes whilst I caught a few on the joker lines before topping them up with a nugget. Although my punch swim was solid at times it was strange that I couldn't get my heavy bagging rig to work, the presentation was obviously wrong as I caught many of my fish on the drop.
Going into the last hour things were beginning to get harder on all lines with the fish also averaging about half an ounce. My 200 fish target was looking out of sight. However as is often the case in the last 20 minutes my catch rate accelerated as the light began to fade and I couldn't get in quick enough. My match was cut short though by a boat ploughing through my peg with 5 minutes left and that was that, I had ended up with 171 fish which were mainly roach. In all I had fed about 2/3's of a loaf of liquidised and a third of a kilo of joker.
In hindsight I had been a bit caught out by how well the canal had fished and my joker lines were all too negative on the day. With heaps of roach in the peg I would have ditched the soil line and fed just 2 positive joker lines. Feeding 250 mls of joker on each at the start. I think this would have allowed me to catch for longer on each lines and would have prolonged the top up which is always risky.
The scales arrived and I put 8lb 13 ounces 8 drams on them which was good enough for a section win. Steve Tyler was 2nd with 5lb odd and John Davis 3rd with 4lb odd. I was pleased I had done my job and I walked up to see my team mate Danny Grimsey who had finished 2nd in his section so things were looking encouraging.
Back at the draw though things didn't appear so rosy as a sea of glum faces greeted me. Apparently, Image had annihilated the match with 7 section wins and 44 points, whilst us and Oakwood both had 35 points. This would mean a 3 way tie at the top with Image winning the league on the number of match wins. Apparently though Oakwood had a better count back record than us over the previous 5 matches. Things were getting complicated and as we racked our brains to compare results with Oakwood it actually transpired we had 3 2nds in matches to their 2 2nds in matches and this would be enough to sneak us through!! To say it had gone down to the wire would be an understatement and without the excitement team match fishing the fishing year would be much the poorer.
I actually felt sorry for the Oakwood lads at the end as they often seem to miss out by a small margin and hadn't deserved to go out in this manner. The semi is at Gold Valley and as we qualified from here 3 years ago (2nd behind Dorking), we have some experience of the venue. However I believe our semi final is the tougher of the two southern semis, so several teams have a good chance of qualifying. Mind you with the final still being on the Nene (with half the match on the dire North Bank) is there such a big incentive to qualify anyway? .....
Sunday, 14 December 2008
Tuesday, 14 October 2008
Whiteacres Preston Innovations Festival & Parkdean Masters Final. 6th - 11th October 2008. 180 Pegs.
The Parkdean Masters Final (alongside Fish O' Mania) is the most prestigious individual match in the UK match calendar and also carries a prize of £25,000 to the winner. I would say it is harder to win than Fish' O' Mania because you have to fish a number of matches to qualify for the final, all of which require consistent results to leave you in the running against the country's best anglers. It is fished to the same format as the other Whiteacres festivals, the only difference being the top 24 anglers qualify for a 4 hour shoot out on Jenny's Lake in front of the TV cameras for the big prize. I'd had the added luxury of fishing the Maver Festival the week before and had finished 27th with 30 points. This was not a result I was planning to replicate in the Parkdean week as only 26th and 25th places would be more agonizing! Steve Ringer had blitzed the Maver festival with a flawless 5 section wins!
Good news on the horizon was the weather forecast of light winds and temperatures in the low twenties for the week. This would be in stark contrast to the Maver where I was freezing cold and soaked everyday. Incidentally the fishing in the Maver had been harder than previous years obviously due to the KHV outbreak, however there are still stacks of fish in Whiteacres and fish can be caught from all pegs. The main difference being if you draw badly its time to scale down and to get out the worms and casters for silvers, rather than sitting it out for half a dozen carp.
I managed to avoid the Whiteacres "big 3" of Steve Ringer, William Raison and Des Ship in my section draw, so I was reasonably happy, however there are loads of top notch anglers in every section so no easy points are on offer. I was in "C" Section which put me on Trewaters first day. These are Clints new lakes and are predominantly stocked with fish under a pound, such as tench, F1's, skimmers and small carp. However there are a good sprinkling of bonus carp up to 4lb as well. I had fished here on the bottom lake on the last day of the previous weeks festival and finished 2nd in my section so felt I had some idea of what to expect.
Day 1. Trewaters. Peg 28
My draw of peg 28 put me on the top lake, which was a bit annoying as I had fished the bottom lake on Friday, however it sounded like both lakes were very similar anyway. My peg put me three quarters of the way down the far bank and with all pegs looking the same with just grass on the far bank there were no obvious features. There is a 13 metre pole limit at Trewaters, this is supposed to test the skills of anglers on varying methods and something I agree with. I believe a 16 metre limit would be good on all venues and would bring us more in line with the rest of Europe.
There was no easing into the festival as I had drawn Kieron Rich, Lee Kerry (who felt terrible with a heavy cold)and Simon Gould all in my 9 pegs, it was sure to be a tough battle to get a good start. The island was about 18 metres away and would be the place to focus my attentions to start with. I set up a Drennan Micro open end wire cage feeder on a running paternoster, which would be plugged with groundbait, micros and a few maggots. Single or double maggot on an 18 B611 tied to 0.10 Browning Cenitan comprised my terminal tackle. Due to the lack of wind I also assembled a waggler rod, which comprised 2.5lb Maxima line tied to the same terminal tackle as the feeder. The waggler was a 2.5AAA Drennan Peacock waggler set at about 2.5 feet. Both rods were clipped up tight to the far bank.
Three pole lines were fed and these comprised of two 13 metre swims at 10 o' clock and 2 o' clock and one at 5 metres. Floats on all of these lines were 4x12 KC Carpa Chimps on 0.12 to 0.10 Cenitan again with a Kamasan B611 hook. I also set up a 4X10 Chimp set to fish a few inches off the bottom. On all 3 lines I fed a golf ball of groundbait with a few micros, a few 4mms and a few maggots. Elastic was a 6 through 3 sections. It was a softly, softly approach as I'd learnt from the Maver Festival that you simply couldn't feed too much bait and had to build up your peg slowly.
My match was a busy affair and went reasonably well. I started off on the feeder and had indications immediately and caught a couple of tiny (2-3 ounce) F1's in the first 10 minutes. However I felt the waggler would provide better presentation and as I had been pinging half a dozen maggots across from the start went straight on it. This was miles better than the feeder and I caught another 10 fish fairly quickly on this before things went quiet. Most of my fish came quickly after casting, it was important to feather the float in so the bait landed tight to the far bank past the waggler. Kieron and Lee Kerry were also catching well though, Lee catching on the pole and Kieron on the waggler. Kieron is class on the wagg and had a definite better stamp of fish than me, as he netted several over a pound early on whilst all mine were smaller than a pound! I switched to the short pole and only had a couple of 1 ounce crucians which were useless, so I went out to 13 metres where I caught odd F1's, small carp and skimmers on pellet, which I kindered after every fish. It was noticeable though that a flurry of fish would be met with a quiet spell. I soon got into the rhythm of catching a few on the wagg before resting it and switching back to the long pole.
As the match progressed it was obviously becoming harder for everyone. As the last couple of hours approached Simon Gould began to latch in to some better stamp fish on the corner peg and even had something looking about 4lb, which was a massive bonus. I knew I could do with something of that ilk to boost my small fish net. Unfortunately it didn't come and I ended up with about 50 fish. I knew I had caught more fish than Kieron and Simon but they had bigger fish. Lee had also caught small fish like me and had a similar amount. I felt I could win the section or finish 4th it was impossible to predict. When the scales arrived Lee had weighed 26lb 14 ounces wih Simon putting 27lb 4 ounces on the scales. Thankfully I had 27lb 11 ounces, but Kieron weighed in 34lb (I think) to easily take the section. He had several fish over the pound mark, whilst I only had one, so was more than happy to finish second and get the festival off to a good start. Kieron picked up lake money so I got the section by default. Poor old Lee still felt like shite and had been ounced out by 2 people to add to his pain!
Day 2. Porth Resevoir. Peg 20
Porth Resevoir is a large, deep, natural expanse of water, with Roach, Skimmers and Perch the main targets. Although Des Shipp managed to conjure up an F1 in the Maver somehow! I had drawn peg 20 which put in the middle of the "meadow" section, this is traditionally the section with the lowest weights, so it was gonna be hard work for points again. I hadn't managed to avoid Kieron and he was on peg 24, which didn't overly fill me with joy, especially as the section had been won on the waggler the day before and he is one of the best at it!
My theory with Porth is you have to settle on one method after an hour of fishing or I find you disappear up your own asshole and don't do anything with conviction. I decided to make this decision particularly tough by setting up everything! This included 6 and 13 metres on the pole, a waggler and a feeder. I would fish for "bottletop" skimmers on the tip, roach and perch at 6 metres on the pole and skimmers on the long pole. The wind had strengthed considerably by the start, consequently it was obvious the waggler would not be viable.
The first hour of my Porth match followed it usual pattern with only 5 tiny skimmers coming to a chopped worm feeder and single pinkie with 2 also being chomped by pike. So that was an hour wasted and time to play catch up on the pole! The only good thing being that everyone else seemed to be struggling as well. I always feed 6 metres on the pole as a throw away line and have had some good results on it in the past, it dosen't always work though but was easy to loosefeed a dozen maggots every minute whilst I sat on the feeder. I had set up only 1 rig to cover this line and featured a 0.4 Browning Nevis on 0.09 to 0.08 Browning Cenitan and a size 20 Wide Gape Canal Seed hook. Shotting consisted of a spread bulk of number 11s and 4 number 11 droppers. Elastic was a 4 and the swim was about 5 feet deep. First put in on this line bought me a 2 ounce roach on the drop, followed by several more dumpy perch and the odd roach, which was really encouraging.
In the next hour it was clear the peg was solid and I caught about 50 more fish, mainly roach which was a good sign. It was always possible this swim could dry up any time so I continued to feed groundbait and chopped worm on the long pole in case I needed to switch. Fortunately I was able to put my blinkers on and plunder this line for the next 2 hours before things started to slow, changes of depth bought a few more fish and I was catching just about enough to stay on this line. I couldn't see anyone else bagging so just stayed with it. I was itching to put an extra section on as it was obvious the fish were spooking, especially after I had a pike swirl at a fish. I knew if I followed em out too soon they could keep backing and disappear. I managed to hold out until the last half an hour when the extra section bought me an extra flurry of fish including a couple of hand sized skimmers. My final fish tally was 180 odd fish which had been thoroughly enjoyable and certainly beats a days carping! The scales registered 15lb 3 ounces which was enough for a section win and a lake second, 8lb odd was second in my section. So that was a great start to the week 17 out of 18 points, but could I get 2 more results of a similar ilk? Easier said than done.
Day 3. Bolingey. Peg 7
Bolingey was also fishing much harder than usual and only odd ton up bags were being recorded. It was my worst result in the previous weeks Maver Festival where I had drawn peg 6 and finished 3rd from last with 37lb odd. My draw of 7 obviously put me next door to this but on paper a better peg. It is a corner peg and rated as the best peg on my bank, however, the other bank (pegs 46-50) had been more consistent over the previous days so these would probably be the ones to beat in my section. For company I had Lee Kerry on peg 1, Simon Fry on peg 6 and Rob Wooton opposite me on peg 46.With my peg being a corner peg the bank at 16 metres to the corner was going to provide me with a main line, together with a 4 metre down the edge line, a 6 metre line and a 14.5 metre line into open water. At 16 metres I fed 6mm hard pellets and fished an expander on the hook, similarly at 14.5 metres in open water. Three pellets were pinged regularly on each line. At 6 metres it was the meat and hemp combo and at 4 metres down the edge it was corn and hemp.
My match could be best summarised as being reasonable for 3 hours and disastrous for the last 2. Early fish against the bank and the odd fish on the 6 metre and open water swim gave me a total of 9 fish after 3 hours, from what I could see of the rest of the section this put me in a reasonable position. Now the last couple of hours at Bolingey is normally the time to make hay when the fish start to respond and you hope to at least double your weight. Its a bit like aiming to score 100 in the last ten overs of a cricket match with wickets in hand. Whilst everyone else in the section started to catch I was left scratching my head as I just couldn't get a bite on any of my other lines which drove me crazy. In the last hour I decided I had to concentrate on a couple of lines and try to force them to work, these were 6 metres and 4 metres down the edge. I also dumped two big potfuls of "bombay mix" on my 16 metre line down the bank to try and get something happening here too. With the intention to fish a double dendra over the top.
Despite feeding 6 metres and down the edge regularly by hand my only action was a 6lb foul hooker ghostie which was lost at the net. With 2 minutes left I had my first bite on the short line down the edge and had a 5 pounder. I knew I would be well down the section after that pathetic showing in the last 2 hours, but why hadn't I caught? Obviously my little and often feeding approach didn't work, but also it may have been something else. Lee Kerry on peg 1 (which is probably the worst peg in the section) was carpless after 2.5 hours, but his peg suddenly transformed in the last part of the match and he ended up with 11 carp. His transformation in fortunes coincided with his peg going into shade, which also occured on the other bank. Myself and Simon Fry were in the sun all day and never had a purple patch at the end. Maybe bollocks, but who knows?
The section was actually quite tight in the end from 3rd downwards. Peg 50 had blitzed the section with over 100lb and apparently caught down the edge all day. Rob Wooton was 3rd in the section with 53lb odd. Simon Fry 4th with 51lb odd and Lee Kerry had exactly 1 ounce less for 5th! I was 6th with 47lb. I needed another 6lb for 3rd in section, the last 2 hours had cost me big time and if I wanted to make the final I could not afford any further slip ups. With Pollawyn to come I needed to be lucky.
Day 4. Pollawyn. Peg 25.
Pollawyn had been fishing exceptionally hard due to the KHV virus not having run its course. Many of the fish were unwell and therefore not feeding. The draw was critical as there are several pegs which are generally no hopers for a 1,2,3 int section. As usual I waited for the last peg in the hat. Lee Kerry two in front of me in the queue pulled out peg 4, which is an atrocious peg and one I was glad to avoid!, the guy in front of me pulled out peg 17 and left me with peg 25. Both 17 and 25 are top pegs and give you a chance of a section win, which is all you can ask for. Peg 25 is in the famous high bank section and in days of old if you won that section you would probably win the lake with a big ton plus weight. I'd spoken to Steve Clark earlier in the week and he had come second in the section off 26 with about 50lb, he advised me to cast tight to the island with a PVA bag as this was the only way he could get a bite.
Arriving at my peg it was almost a re-run of the section at Bolingey the previous day. On 27 was Simon Fry and 28 Rob Wootten, Ricky Teale was on 29 and Sean Huggins next to me on peg 18. I knew to win the section I had to catch carp, the section could not possibly be won with silvers, therefore my approach was simple and positive. Two bomb rods were assembled, one to cast tight to the island and the other to cast 3/4's of the way across. I would ping 2 and 3 8mm pellets fairly regularly on the 3/4 line and rely on a PVA bag to feed the island as it was too far to feed pellets accurately. Incidently in my bag I had about a dozen 6 mm pellets and a few 8mm pellets as well. The bag was simply double hooked onto a size 14 Kamasan Animal and was attached to 0.18 Browning Cenitan line. Surprisingly, I found I could get it out there with a half ounce bomb so stuck with that. I also assembled 2 pellet waggler rods, one set at 3 foot and the other at 5. I didn't really expect to catch on either as it hadn't been working all week and also the wind was in my face so was unfavourable, but the option was there if I was struggling.
The pole was assembled at 16 metres, here it was about 8-9 foot deep and my intention was to dump feed this with a potful of meat and castors at the start and have an odd look on this line throughout the match, topping up accordingly. Steve Ringer had won the lake the previous week in this way so it was the way to go for me. My rig for this line was a 0.4 Wilkinson Cane Diamond, tied to 0.16 Browning Cenitan and a 16 B911 hook.
The first 2 hours of match were a replication of the closing 2 hours of my Bolingey match except that they were even worse and I hadn't had a single bite! Mind you I think only a couple of carp had been caught in the whole section at this point. During those 2 hours I had tried tight to the island, 3/4's, pellet wagg and long pole so had been through the whole repotoire. There were loads of fish "boshing" to my left and pegs 15, 16 and 17 were nicking odd fish mainly on "the bag" tight to the island. With this in mind I felt my best opportunity of catching was to get back out on it tight to the island and as events unfolded this is where I stayed for the remainder of the match.
After about 2 and a quarter hours after casting for the umpteenth time the tip whizzed round and I was into carp number 1, which was a very welcome 6lb. Over the remainder of the match I picked up odd carp, but only when I got the lead right tight to the island. Sometimes this took a few attempts due to the cast being difficult. There are trees that hang out over the lake on peg 25 so you have to punch the lead out with a low trajectory to avoid these, the PVA bag annoyingly seems to want to loop upwards and I did have an odd moment of going for squirrels! It was a good job I had 60 odd bags tied up! If you got the cast right quite often the tip would go round straight away, it was hard to believe the bag even had a chance to melt!
By the end of 5 hours I had 11 carp in the net and on numbers this was more than anyone else in the section, Simon Fry was the nearest to me on 9 carp. The scales confirmed my weight at 62lb 4 ounces, with Simon weighing about 50lb, therefore I had won the section and had the added bonus of winning the lake as well. I had been lucky to draw at the right end of the section because pegs 19 and 20 along with 28,29 and 30 had basically been devoid of feeding carp.
Day 5. Twin Oaks, Python & Trewlaney. Twin Oaks Peg 18.
At the end of day 4 I was 22nd in the festival which would have been good enough for a spot in the final. To get into the final it is generally accepted that 31 points is the benchmark. This meant that I needed a top 5 finish to get to 31. However I could still get 35 points with a section win and this would guarantee a top 5 finish and a decent payout. Before the draw I would have taken 5th in section though as its all about getting in the final.
Well peg 18 on Twin Oaks had been a Jekyll and Hyde peg over the 2 weeks and had produced 40lb the day before for 6th in section. Not overly encouraging but at least it hadn't been totally devoid of fish, unlike on day 1 of the festival when Ben Leach had drawn it and finished last in the section, whilst Darren Cox won the lake with over 100lb on peg 16 (the next peg in) on the feeder. However on Wednesday Mark Pleavin had won the lake on peg 18 catching on pellets shallow. Peg 18 is set very close to the corner and you do feel slightly removed from the rest of the lake, its one of those pegs in which you want a decent wind blowing into the corner. Unfortunately the wind was blowing the other way and Steve Cooke had won the section on the other end peg (peg 2) the previous day. When I arrived at my peg it was flat calm with lots of fry sitting under the surface, however I did see 2 or 3 carp move before the all in which gave me some encouragement.
My tactics were clear and I was going to start on a pellet feeder tight to the far bank as far to my left as I was allowed to chuck. 4mm pellets were soaked as feed and I would either fish a banded, hair rigged 6 or 8mm on the hook. Whilst fishing the feeder I would be pinging 3 and 4 6mm pellets all the time at 16 metres, with the aim being to catch shallow. My other line was going to be 14.5 metres against the bank where I had found 2 feet just off the grass. Here I would kinder cup and loosefeed 6mm pellets again. I could have fished 6 metres as well, but it would have been impossible to feed all those lines properly, seeing as I only have two arms! Silver fish were not an option in this lake and it was impossible to fish a "safe" match for 5th place, so it was a case of catch whats there and see what happens.
In the end I ended up with 17 carp and after speaking to the guy on peg 16 I was unsure where I would finish as he was admitting to 70lb plus and apparently the next two pegs to his left had also caught well. I was last to weigh on the lake and peg 14 was top with 90 odd pound caught on the pellet feeder, next was 16 with 77lb. I put 73lb on the scales which was good enouh for 3rd in the section and also 3rd on the lake. More importantly 3rd in the section gave me the points I needed to qualify for the final. My final tally being 33 points dropping 3 points. Overall I ended up 7th in the festival which was a bonus as it guarnteed me a bit more bunce. The festival was won by Harry Billing with a perfect 36 points, 2nd was the ultra consistent Des Ship and third was Phil Ringer. The top 24 contained most of the "usual suspects" and it was sure to be a cracking match in the morning.
Parkdean Masters £25,000 Final. Jennys Lake. Peg 24
This was my 3rd appearance in the final and like everyone else I was desperate to win. I know the pegs reasonably well now and the pegs which I didn't want to draw were pegs 25-38. These pegs have poor Parkdean Masters form due to a few reasons. Firstly, they are situated in the narrowest end of the lake with a lack of open water and with Jenny's now being dominated by F1's caught shallow, open water of some description is a must. Also this area is shallower than the rest of the lake and holding a number of fish in 2 and a half foot of water isn't easy or ideal.
If I could have picked a peg it would probably have been peg 1, next to where Des Shipp won from last year.
Obviously there is a great sense of anticipation at the draw which was only slightly tempered by the absence of Billy Knott "The Angling Bookmaker". After the obligatory group photos and posing for the sky cameras it was time to draw. The draw is conducted in the festival finishing order, therefore I was 7th to draw. After a quick rummage in the bag I pulled out peg 25 and instantly knew I had made the wrong choice. There was probably more chance of Daryl Hair going on holiday to Karachi than me winning from there! As the other lads drew there were various oohs and aahs as some people obviously fancied things more than others. I was now rueing not being able to draw last as I had done throughout the festival week.
Peg 25 is actually the left hand end peg on the lodge bank and is 16 metres to an island straight out in front on my Browning CC990. There is also a small tree in the water at 5 metres to the left down the edge. It dosen't look too bad to be honest and with there being no wind at all I have to admit I half fancied it for a few. The most revealing thing about the peg though is when you get the plummet out. The deepest part of the peg is about 2.5 foot and generally its between 2 and 2.5 feet all the way across. I knew that Richie Hull had drawn my peg last year and Steve Cooke the year before that and both had struggled. Richie didn't do much for my confidence when succinctly describing the peg as "fookin shite". He did give me some advice though and felt his best line last year was simply down the middle angled to his right where he'd caught some F1's on pellet.
I decided there were two ways I could approach it. Firstly, I could dump meat on several lines and hope to catch lumps, very positive but very Kimikaze. The second way would be to try to keep busy and catch as many F1's as I could on pellets and hope for a few big carp in amongst them and some lumps late down the edge. The second option sounded the most sensible to me so thats what I went for.
The final is only a 4 hour match and obviously one you have to win, so it wasn't one I was going to overcomplicate by fishing a multitude of lines. My first line was 16 metres at 10 o'clock tight to the island in 2 foot, here my intention was to feed "monkey dust" and fish meat on the hook. Here I was looking for some better stamp fish, such as big F1's and carp. My second line was 16 metres at about 1 o'clock, here I would feed dampened down 4mm pellets with either a 4mm expander or a 6mm hair rigged banded pellet (depending on roach problems). Line number 3 was the "Richie Hull" line at 13 metres at 2 o'clock down my peg, again pellet would be my bait here. My final line was against the tree at 5 metres to my left in 2.5 feet of water, hopefully here I would catch some late "Barnies" to quickly accelerate my weight!
Rigs on the lines out all featured 4x10 KC Carpa Chimps, featuring lines between 0.12 and 0.16 and hooks between 18 and 16 B911's. My edge rig was a KC Carpa 2 tied to 0.18 and a size 16 Kamasan Animal hook. Elastics out were white and grey hydros with pull bungs and down the edge hydro elastic in black was used.
My match can be best summarised as a busy match in which I had lots of bites and lots of fish. My first fish was actually a goldfish of about 4 ounces on pellet and I seemed to get spells when I would get an F1 or a skimmer every put in of between 4 ounces and a 1lb before the fish backed off and I had to change lines to get further bites. At one point after 2 hours I felt I may be in with half a chance if I kept catching F1's one a bung and had an odd bonus as well. I knew the stamp of my fish was going to be the problem though, it was almost as if my peg a nursery swim. I did manage to tempt one carp of about 6lb which came out of the blue on my down the middle line. Unfortunately my edge line just produced roach and I couldn't catch the proper carp required to significantly boost my small fish net. The "monkey dust" was a total faliure and it now seems that Jenny's is an out and out pellet water in October. The best way to feed all of the pellet lines seemed to be to kinder cup when fishing them and loosefeed pellets to keep fish in the area when not. If I contined to ping pellets regualarly when fishing a line I got roached out.
To be honest I felt a bit isolated being tucked away in the corner away from the main action, with only the odd person venturing down to see what was happening. Occasionally a "roar" would go up from the spectators assembled behind the main contenders. My last hour was the slowest of the match and it was a real job to get a run of fish off any line and when the whistle sounded it wasn't a moment too soon! The scales soon arrived and I registered 34lb 14 ounces which I was pleased with as I felt I had done the peg justice and not disgraced myself. It was good enough for 10th overall.
From speaking to people who had been watching the match the general verdict was of it being one of the best finals to watch as going into the final hour there were still 3 or 4 contenders and even when the whistle went it was not clear who had won. Adam Wakelin done fantastically well to win from peg 40 (especially as he had a big crowd skylining him) with 70 odd pound and Adam Richards was really unlucky to fall just a few pounds short, both caught on pellets shallow. It had been a great week and now all I need to do is to try and qualify for the final again to have another crack at it next year!
Good news on the horizon was the weather forecast of light winds and temperatures in the low twenties for the week. This would be in stark contrast to the Maver where I was freezing cold and soaked everyday. Incidentally the fishing in the Maver had been harder than previous years obviously due to the KHV outbreak, however there are still stacks of fish in Whiteacres and fish can be caught from all pegs. The main difference being if you draw badly its time to scale down and to get out the worms and casters for silvers, rather than sitting it out for half a dozen carp.
I managed to avoid the Whiteacres "big 3" of Steve Ringer, William Raison and Des Ship in my section draw, so I was reasonably happy, however there are loads of top notch anglers in every section so no easy points are on offer. I was in "C" Section which put me on Trewaters first day. These are Clints new lakes and are predominantly stocked with fish under a pound, such as tench, F1's, skimmers and small carp. However there are a good sprinkling of bonus carp up to 4lb as well. I had fished here on the bottom lake on the last day of the previous weeks festival and finished 2nd in my section so felt I had some idea of what to expect.
Day 1. Trewaters. Peg 28
My draw of peg 28 put me on the top lake, which was a bit annoying as I had fished the bottom lake on Friday, however it sounded like both lakes were very similar anyway. My peg put me three quarters of the way down the far bank and with all pegs looking the same with just grass on the far bank there were no obvious features. There is a 13 metre pole limit at Trewaters, this is supposed to test the skills of anglers on varying methods and something I agree with. I believe a 16 metre limit would be good on all venues and would bring us more in line with the rest of Europe.
There was no easing into the festival as I had drawn Kieron Rich, Lee Kerry (who felt terrible with a heavy cold)and Simon Gould all in my 9 pegs, it was sure to be a tough battle to get a good start. The island was about 18 metres away and would be the place to focus my attentions to start with. I set up a Drennan Micro open end wire cage feeder on a running paternoster, which would be plugged with groundbait, micros and a few maggots. Single or double maggot on an 18 B611 tied to 0.10 Browning Cenitan comprised my terminal tackle. Due to the lack of wind I also assembled a waggler rod, which comprised 2.5lb Maxima line tied to the same terminal tackle as the feeder. The waggler was a 2.5AAA Drennan Peacock waggler set at about 2.5 feet. Both rods were clipped up tight to the far bank.
Three pole lines were fed and these comprised of two 13 metre swims at 10 o' clock and 2 o' clock and one at 5 metres. Floats on all of these lines were 4x12 KC Carpa Chimps on 0.12 to 0.10 Cenitan again with a Kamasan B611 hook. I also set up a 4X10 Chimp set to fish a few inches off the bottom. On all 3 lines I fed a golf ball of groundbait with a few micros, a few 4mms and a few maggots. Elastic was a 6 through 3 sections. It was a softly, softly approach as I'd learnt from the Maver Festival that you simply couldn't feed too much bait and had to build up your peg slowly.
My match was a busy affair and went reasonably well. I started off on the feeder and had indications immediately and caught a couple of tiny (2-3 ounce) F1's in the first 10 minutes. However I felt the waggler would provide better presentation and as I had been pinging half a dozen maggots across from the start went straight on it. This was miles better than the feeder and I caught another 10 fish fairly quickly on this before things went quiet. Most of my fish came quickly after casting, it was important to feather the float in so the bait landed tight to the far bank past the waggler. Kieron and Lee Kerry were also catching well though, Lee catching on the pole and Kieron on the waggler. Kieron is class on the wagg and had a definite better stamp of fish than me, as he netted several over a pound early on whilst all mine were smaller than a pound! I switched to the short pole and only had a couple of 1 ounce crucians which were useless, so I went out to 13 metres where I caught odd F1's, small carp and skimmers on pellet, which I kindered after every fish. It was noticeable though that a flurry of fish would be met with a quiet spell. I soon got into the rhythm of catching a few on the wagg before resting it and switching back to the long pole.
As the match progressed it was obviously becoming harder for everyone. As the last couple of hours approached Simon Gould began to latch in to some better stamp fish on the corner peg and even had something looking about 4lb, which was a massive bonus. I knew I could do with something of that ilk to boost my small fish net. Unfortunately it didn't come and I ended up with about 50 fish. I knew I had caught more fish than Kieron and Simon but they had bigger fish. Lee had also caught small fish like me and had a similar amount. I felt I could win the section or finish 4th it was impossible to predict. When the scales arrived Lee had weighed 26lb 14 ounces wih Simon putting 27lb 4 ounces on the scales. Thankfully I had 27lb 11 ounces, but Kieron weighed in 34lb (I think) to easily take the section. He had several fish over the pound mark, whilst I only had one, so was more than happy to finish second and get the festival off to a good start. Kieron picked up lake money so I got the section by default. Poor old Lee still felt like shite and had been ounced out by 2 people to add to his pain!
Day 2. Porth Resevoir. Peg 20
Porth Resevoir is a large, deep, natural expanse of water, with Roach, Skimmers and Perch the main targets. Although Des Shipp managed to conjure up an F1 in the Maver somehow! I had drawn peg 20 which put in the middle of the "meadow" section, this is traditionally the section with the lowest weights, so it was gonna be hard work for points again. I hadn't managed to avoid Kieron and he was on peg 24, which didn't overly fill me with joy, especially as the section had been won on the waggler the day before and he is one of the best at it!
My theory with Porth is you have to settle on one method after an hour of fishing or I find you disappear up your own asshole and don't do anything with conviction. I decided to make this decision particularly tough by setting up everything! This included 6 and 13 metres on the pole, a waggler and a feeder. I would fish for "bottletop" skimmers on the tip, roach and perch at 6 metres on the pole and skimmers on the long pole. The wind had strengthed considerably by the start, consequently it was obvious the waggler would not be viable.
The first hour of my Porth match followed it usual pattern with only 5 tiny skimmers coming to a chopped worm feeder and single pinkie with 2 also being chomped by pike. So that was an hour wasted and time to play catch up on the pole! The only good thing being that everyone else seemed to be struggling as well. I always feed 6 metres on the pole as a throw away line and have had some good results on it in the past, it dosen't always work though but was easy to loosefeed a dozen maggots every minute whilst I sat on the feeder. I had set up only 1 rig to cover this line and featured a 0.4 Browning Nevis on 0.09 to 0.08 Browning Cenitan and a size 20 Wide Gape Canal Seed hook. Shotting consisted of a spread bulk of number 11s and 4 number 11 droppers. Elastic was a 4 and the swim was about 5 feet deep. First put in on this line bought me a 2 ounce roach on the drop, followed by several more dumpy perch and the odd roach, which was really encouraging.
In the next hour it was clear the peg was solid and I caught about 50 more fish, mainly roach which was a good sign. It was always possible this swim could dry up any time so I continued to feed groundbait and chopped worm on the long pole in case I needed to switch. Fortunately I was able to put my blinkers on and plunder this line for the next 2 hours before things started to slow, changes of depth bought a few more fish and I was catching just about enough to stay on this line. I couldn't see anyone else bagging so just stayed with it. I was itching to put an extra section on as it was obvious the fish were spooking, especially after I had a pike swirl at a fish. I knew if I followed em out too soon they could keep backing and disappear. I managed to hold out until the last half an hour when the extra section bought me an extra flurry of fish including a couple of hand sized skimmers. My final fish tally was 180 odd fish which had been thoroughly enjoyable and certainly beats a days carping! The scales registered 15lb 3 ounces which was enough for a section win and a lake second, 8lb odd was second in my section. So that was a great start to the week 17 out of 18 points, but could I get 2 more results of a similar ilk? Easier said than done.
Day 3. Bolingey. Peg 7
Bolingey was also fishing much harder than usual and only odd ton up bags were being recorded. It was my worst result in the previous weeks Maver Festival where I had drawn peg 6 and finished 3rd from last with 37lb odd. My draw of 7 obviously put me next door to this but on paper a better peg. It is a corner peg and rated as the best peg on my bank, however, the other bank (pegs 46-50) had been more consistent over the previous days so these would probably be the ones to beat in my section. For company I had Lee Kerry on peg 1, Simon Fry on peg 6 and Rob Wooton opposite me on peg 46.With my peg being a corner peg the bank at 16 metres to the corner was going to provide me with a main line, together with a 4 metre down the edge line, a 6 metre line and a 14.5 metre line into open water. At 16 metres I fed 6mm hard pellets and fished an expander on the hook, similarly at 14.5 metres in open water. Three pellets were pinged regularly on each line. At 6 metres it was the meat and hemp combo and at 4 metres down the edge it was corn and hemp.
My match could be best summarised as being reasonable for 3 hours and disastrous for the last 2. Early fish against the bank and the odd fish on the 6 metre and open water swim gave me a total of 9 fish after 3 hours, from what I could see of the rest of the section this put me in a reasonable position. Now the last couple of hours at Bolingey is normally the time to make hay when the fish start to respond and you hope to at least double your weight. Its a bit like aiming to score 100 in the last ten overs of a cricket match with wickets in hand. Whilst everyone else in the section started to catch I was left scratching my head as I just couldn't get a bite on any of my other lines which drove me crazy. In the last hour I decided I had to concentrate on a couple of lines and try to force them to work, these were 6 metres and 4 metres down the edge. I also dumped two big potfuls of "bombay mix" on my 16 metre line down the bank to try and get something happening here too. With the intention to fish a double dendra over the top.
Despite feeding 6 metres and down the edge regularly by hand my only action was a 6lb foul hooker ghostie which was lost at the net. With 2 minutes left I had my first bite on the short line down the edge and had a 5 pounder. I knew I would be well down the section after that pathetic showing in the last 2 hours, but why hadn't I caught? Obviously my little and often feeding approach didn't work, but also it may have been something else. Lee Kerry on peg 1 (which is probably the worst peg in the section) was carpless after 2.5 hours, but his peg suddenly transformed in the last part of the match and he ended up with 11 carp. His transformation in fortunes coincided with his peg going into shade, which also occured on the other bank. Myself and Simon Fry were in the sun all day and never had a purple patch at the end. Maybe bollocks, but who knows?
The section was actually quite tight in the end from 3rd downwards. Peg 50 had blitzed the section with over 100lb and apparently caught down the edge all day. Rob Wooton was 3rd in the section with 53lb odd. Simon Fry 4th with 51lb odd and Lee Kerry had exactly 1 ounce less for 5th! I was 6th with 47lb. I needed another 6lb for 3rd in section, the last 2 hours had cost me big time and if I wanted to make the final I could not afford any further slip ups. With Pollawyn to come I needed to be lucky.
Day 4. Pollawyn. Peg 25.
Pollawyn had been fishing exceptionally hard due to the KHV virus not having run its course. Many of the fish were unwell and therefore not feeding. The draw was critical as there are several pegs which are generally no hopers for a 1,2,3 int section. As usual I waited for the last peg in the hat. Lee Kerry two in front of me in the queue pulled out peg 4, which is an atrocious peg and one I was glad to avoid!, the guy in front of me pulled out peg 17 and left me with peg 25. Both 17 and 25 are top pegs and give you a chance of a section win, which is all you can ask for. Peg 25 is in the famous high bank section and in days of old if you won that section you would probably win the lake with a big ton plus weight. I'd spoken to Steve Clark earlier in the week and he had come second in the section off 26 with about 50lb, he advised me to cast tight to the island with a PVA bag as this was the only way he could get a bite.
Arriving at my peg it was almost a re-run of the section at Bolingey the previous day. On 27 was Simon Fry and 28 Rob Wootten, Ricky Teale was on 29 and Sean Huggins next to me on peg 18. I knew to win the section I had to catch carp, the section could not possibly be won with silvers, therefore my approach was simple and positive. Two bomb rods were assembled, one to cast tight to the island and the other to cast 3/4's of the way across. I would ping 2 and 3 8mm pellets fairly regularly on the 3/4 line and rely on a PVA bag to feed the island as it was too far to feed pellets accurately. Incidently in my bag I had about a dozen 6 mm pellets and a few 8mm pellets as well. The bag was simply double hooked onto a size 14 Kamasan Animal and was attached to 0.18 Browning Cenitan line. Surprisingly, I found I could get it out there with a half ounce bomb so stuck with that. I also assembled 2 pellet waggler rods, one set at 3 foot and the other at 5. I didn't really expect to catch on either as it hadn't been working all week and also the wind was in my face so was unfavourable, but the option was there if I was struggling.
The pole was assembled at 16 metres, here it was about 8-9 foot deep and my intention was to dump feed this with a potful of meat and castors at the start and have an odd look on this line throughout the match, topping up accordingly. Steve Ringer had won the lake the previous week in this way so it was the way to go for me. My rig for this line was a 0.4 Wilkinson Cane Diamond, tied to 0.16 Browning Cenitan and a 16 B911 hook.
The first 2 hours of match were a replication of the closing 2 hours of my Bolingey match except that they were even worse and I hadn't had a single bite! Mind you I think only a couple of carp had been caught in the whole section at this point. During those 2 hours I had tried tight to the island, 3/4's, pellet wagg and long pole so had been through the whole repotoire. There were loads of fish "boshing" to my left and pegs 15, 16 and 17 were nicking odd fish mainly on "the bag" tight to the island. With this in mind I felt my best opportunity of catching was to get back out on it tight to the island and as events unfolded this is where I stayed for the remainder of the match.
After about 2 and a quarter hours after casting for the umpteenth time the tip whizzed round and I was into carp number 1, which was a very welcome 6lb. Over the remainder of the match I picked up odd carp, but only when I got the lead right tight to the island. Sometimes this took a few attempts due to the cast being difficult. There are trees that hang out over the lake on peg 25 so you have to punch the lead out with a low trajectory to avoid these, the PVA bag annoyingly seems to want to loop upwards and I did have an odd moment of going for squirrels! It was a good job I had 60 odd bags tied up! If you got the cast right quite often the tip would go round straight away, it was hard to believe the bag even had a chance to melt!
By the end of 5 hours I had 11 carp in the net and on numbers this was more than anyone else in the section, Simon Fry was the nearest to me on 9 carp. The scales confirmed my weight at 62lb 4 ounces, with Simon weighing about 50lb, therefore I had won the section and had the added bonus of winning the lake as well. I had been lucky to draw at the right end of the section because pegs 19 and 20 along with 28,29 and 30 had basically been devoid of feeding carp.
Day 5. Twin Oaks, Python & Trewlaney. Twin Oaks Peg 18.
At the end of day 4 I was 22nd in the festival which would have been good enough for a spot in the final. To get into the final it is generally accepted that 31 points is the benchmark. This meant that I needed a top 5 finish to get to 31. However I could still get 35 points with a section win and this would guarantee a top 5 finish and a decent payout. Before the draw I would have taken 5th in section though as its all about getting in the final.
Well peg 18 on Twin Oaks had been a Jekyll and Hyde peg over the 2 weeks and had produced 40lb the day before for 6th in section. Not overly encouraging but at least it hadn't been totally devoid of fish, unlike on day 1 of the festival when Ben Leach had drawn it and finished last in the section, whilst Darren Cox won the lake with over 100lb on peg 16 (the next peg in) on the feeder. However on Wednesday Mark Pleavin had won the lake on peg 18 catching on pellets shallow. Peg 18 is set very close to the corner and you do feel slightly removed from the rest of the lake, its one of those pegs in which you want a decent wind blowing into the corner. Unfortunately the wind was blowing the other way and Steve Cooke had won the section on the other end peg (peg 2) the previous day. When I arrived at my peg it was flat calm with lots of fry sitting under the surface, however I did see 2 or 3 carp move before the all in which gave me some encouragement.
My tactics were clear and I was going to start on a pellet feeder tight to the far bank as far to my left as I was allowed to chuck. 4mm pellets were soaked as feed and I would either fish a banded, hair rigged 6 or 8mm on the hook. Whilst fishing the feeder I would be pinging 3 and 4 6mm pellets all the time at 16 metres, with the aim being to catch shallow. My other line was going to be 14.5 metres against the bank where I had found 2 feet just off the grass. Here I would kinder cup and loosefeed 6mm pellets again. I could have fished 6 metres as well, but it would have been impossible to feed all those lines properly, seeing as I only have two arms! Silver fish were not an option in this lake and it was impossible to fish a "safe" match for 5th place, so it was a case of catch whats there and see what happens.
It was bad news at the start as I'd only just finished feeding when the guy to my left on peg 16 was playing a carp caught at 6metres. Remember thats the line I didn't bother feeding or setting up! It got even worse when a he hooked and landed another one straight away and even worse than that was the fish looked to be between 6 and 8lb a piece. For 15 minutes I didn't have a sign on the feeder before the tip flew round and I got 1, at the end of hour 1 I only had 3 and was behind peg 16 (the only other peg I could see), however his 6 metre line appeared to have dried up.
I had been pinging pellets for an hour at 16 metres up in the water so now was the time to have a look on it. I started off at 2 foot on a 4x10 Carpa Chimp, using a hair rigged banded 6 mm on the hook. To my surprise the float buried straight away and I was into a 4 pounder, back out again and the process was repeated, I was starting to feel much more optimistic about things. My optimism was short lived though as no more bites or indications followed for the next 15 minutes. I chucked the feeder out again hoping that if I rested tyhe shallow line for a short while they would return.
Unfortunately the feeder line had not perked up and even worse news was to come when the up in the water line wouldn't produce again despite a 15 minute rest. It was time to try my 14.5 metre line down the bank as I desperately needed something to happen. Fortunately, this line proved to be my best line as I slowly but surely picked up carp by both pinging and kindering pellets. I found that I could sometimes get a bite immediately by dropping straight on top of my kindered pellets. If not I had to keep pinging odd pellets to attract the fish.The only problems I had were from liners and foul hooked fish by employing this feeding approach. The swim really gained momentum in the last half an hour and by the end I was wishing the match would continue for another hour as it was solid.In the end I ended up with 17 carp and after speaking to the guy on peg 16 I was unsure where I would finish as he was admitting to 70lb plus and apparently the next two pegs to his left had also caught well. I was last to weigh on the lake and peg 14 was top with 90 odd pound caught on the pellet feeder, next was 16 with 77lb. I put 73lb on the scales which was good enouh for 3rd in the section and also 3rd on the lake. More importantly 3rd in the section gave me the points I needed to qualify for the final. My final tally being 33 points dropping 3 points. Overall I ended up 7th in the festival which was a bonus as it guarnteed me a bit more bunce. The festival was won by Harry Billing with a perfect 36 points, 2nd was the ultra consistent Des Ship and third was Phil Ringer. The top 24 contained most of the "usual suspects" and it was sure to be a cracking match in the morning.
Parkdean Masters £25,000 Final. Jennys Lake. Peg 24
This was my 3rd appearance in the final and like everyone else I was desperate to win. I know the pegs reasonably well now and the pegs which I didn't want to draw were pegs 25-38. These pegs have poor Parkdean Masters form due to a few reasons. Firstly, they are situated in the narrowest end of the lake with a lack of open water and with Jenny's now being dominated by F1's caught shallow, open water of some description is a must. Also this area is shallower than the rest of the lake and holding a number of fish in 2 and a half foot of water isn't easy or ideal.
If I could have picked a peg it would probably have been peg 1, next to where Des Shipp won from last year.
Obviously there is a great sense of anticipation at the draw which was only slightly tempered by the absence of Billy Knott "The Angling Bookmaker". After the obligatory group photos and posing for the sky cameras it was time to draw. The draw is conducted in the festival finishing order, therefore I was 7th to draw. After a quick rummage in the bag I pulled out peg 25 and instantly knew I had made the wrong choice. There was probably more chance of Daryl Hair going on holiday to Karachi than me winning from there! As the other lads drew there were various oohs and aahs as some people obviously fancied things more than others. I was now rueing not being able to draw last as I had done throughout the festival week.
Peg 25 is actually the left hand end peg on the lodge bank and is 16 metres to an island straight out in front on my Browning CC990. There is also a small tree in the water at 5 metres to the left down the edge. It dosen't look too bad to be honest and with there being no wind at all I have to admit I half fancied it for a few. The most revealing thing about the peg though is when you get the plummet out. The deepest part of the peg is about 2.5 foot and generally its between 2 and 2.5 feet all the way across. I knew that Richie Hull had drawn my peg last year and Steve Cooke the year before that and both had struggled. Richie didn't do much for my confidence when succinctly describing the peg as "fookin shite". He did give me some advice though and felt his best line last year was simply down the middle angled to his right where he'd caught some F1's on pellet.
I decided there were two ways I could approach it. Firstly, I could dump meat on several lines and hope to catch lumps, very positive but very Kimikaze. The second way would be to try to keep busy and catch as many F1's as I could on pellets and hope for a few big carp in amongst them and some lumps late down the edge. The second option sounded the most sensible to me so thats what I went for.
The final is only a 4 hour match and obviously one you have to win, so it wasn't one I was going to overcomplicate by fishing a multitude of lines. My first line was 16 metres at 10 o'clock tight to the island in 2 foot, here my intention was to feed "monkey dust" and fish meat on the hook. Here I was looking for some better stamp fish, such as big F1's and carp. My second line was 16 metres at about 1 o'clock, here I would feed dampened down 4mm pellets with either a 4mm expander or a 6mm hair rigged banded pellet (depending on roach problems). Line number 3 was the "Richie Hull" line at 13 metres at 2 o'clock down my peg, again pellet would be my bait here. My final line was against the tree at 5 metres to my left in 2.5 feet of water, hopefully here I would catch some late "Barnies" to quickly accelerate my weight!
Rigs on the lines out all featured 4x10 KC Carpa Chimps, featuring lines between 0.12 and 0.16 and hooks between 18 and 16 B911's. My edge rig was a KC Carpa 2 tied to 0.18 and a size 16 Kamasan Animal hook. Elastics out were white and grey hydros with pull bungs and down the edge hydro elastic in black was used.
My match can be best summarised as a busy match in which I had lots of bites and lots of fish. My first fish was actually a goldfish of about 4 ounces on pellet and I seemed to get spells when I would get an F1 or a skimmer every put in of between 4 ounces and a 1lb before the fish backed off and I had to change lines to get further bites. At one point after 2 hours I felt I may be in with half a chance if I kept catching F1's one a bung and had an odd bonus as well. I knew the stamp of my fish was going to be the problem though, it was almost as if my peg a nursery swim. I did manage to tempt one carp of about 6lb which came out of the blue on my down the middle line. Unfortunately my edge line just produced roach and I couldn't catch the proper carp required to significantly boost my small fish net. The "monkey dust" was a total faliure and it now seems that Jenny's is an out and out pellet water in October. The best way to feed all of the pellet lines seemed to be to kinder cup when fishing them and loosefeed pellets to keep fish in the area when not. If I contined to ping pellets regualarly when fishing a line I got roached out.
To be honest I felt a bit isolated being tucked away in the corner away from the main action, with only the odd person venturing down to see what was happening. Occasionally a "roar" would go up from the spectators assembled behind the main contenders. My last hour was the slowest of the match and it was a real job to get a run of fish off any line and when the whistle sounded it wasn't a moment too soon! The scales soon arrived and I registered 34lb 14 ounces which I was pleased with as I felt I had done the peg justice and not disgraced myself. It was good enough for 10th overall.
From speaking to people who had been watching the match the general verdict was of it being one of the best finals to watch as going into the final hour there were still 3 or 4 contenders and even when the whistle went it was not clear who had won. Adam Wakelin done fantastically well to win from peg 40 (especially as he had a big crowd skylining him) with 70 odd pound and Adam Richards was really unlucky to fall just a few pounds short, both caught on pellets shallow. It had been a great week and now all I need to do is to try and qualify for the final again to have another crack at it next year!
Wednesday, 27 August 2008
Sunday 13th July. Angling Times Team Championships Final. 14 Teams. 140 Pegs
This is probably the most prestigious team event in the UK, which is incredibly difficult to qualify for and even harder to compete against the top class line up. My team Browning Wickford had qualified by finishing 3rd on the Kennet & Avon canal back in March. Being realists we were aiming for a top half finish in the final, however apart from Dorking, Barnsley and Trentmen I felt the outcome would be difficult to predict and as a result a decent finish could be up for grabs for any team which sorted the venue out.
The final is held on the River Nene in and around Peterborough town centre and coincides with the "Tacklefest" show which means plenty of spectators on the bank. The layout of the venue is first class with fantastic access for competitors and spectators and there really is a buzz around the place at the draw. There are not many matches with spectators so this puts a bit of extra pressure on all competitors.
To say the practice matches had been patchy was probably being generous. I had taken part in all 3 and in 2 I had drawn the North Bank and in 1 the Middleholme Section. To get straight to the point the North Bank had been utterly diabolical for 99% of people during the practice sessions. There were no roach to be caught and almost no bream, not to mention hardly any bleak. The only fish being caught were small Perch and the odd eel. Consequently any weight over a pound from the North bank was absolutely mega during practice. On the first practice match I drew in the 70s on the North Bank and after 3 hours had caught 1 perch and was joint top in my section. However, I eventually lost the will to live and packed up early and walked the entire match length with Danny Grimsey. The second practice match again saw me draw the North Bank and I had a mega day catching 7 perch for 13 ounces, unfortunately I missed out on the section which was won by Ian Didcote with 15 ounces! Both matches were not aided by gail force winds. As you can imagine before the draw at the final practice match I was especially enthused at the possible prospect of another North Bank draw. Fortunately I was spared more pain and drew peg 5 at Middleholme. This turned out to be a really enjoyable day as I caught lots of small roach and hybrids on the long pole with bloodworm and bleak on the short pole for a total of 4lbs 10 and a half ounces. This was 3rd or 4th im section. I felt I'd learnt quite a bit and went into the final with some optimism.
The sections in the match were as follows:
A and B Railworld
C and D The Embankment
E and F Middleholme.
G,H,I,J The North Bank.
With it being the final my only concern was securing good points for the team, however if I'm honest I would have preferred a day not seeing the North Bank. Conditions in the 2 weeks leading up to the match had seen heavy rain and the river was certainly flowing more than it had been, yet mysteriously still remained crystal clear?? The weather on the day was very hot, still and high pressure. Poor conditions for fishing any natural venue.
The Draw
The problem with match fishing is you don't get to pick your peg and almost inevitably I was handed H section which was a third of the way down the North Bank. It was now a case of trying to get maximum points for the team and which meant the quality of the fishing was irrelevant. Anglers in sections panned out as follows:
Railworld: Keith Austin & Mark Campion.
Embankment: Simon Hodder & Dean Tennant.
Middleholme: Paul Chambers & Danny Grimsey.
North Bank: Peter Steward, myself, Steve Joy & Dave Guntrip.
The draw is discussed ......My Peg
If anyone hasn't seen the North Bank of the Nene they are not missing much, its certainly not one of the wonders of the world. It is a dead straight almost featureless piece of water (except for lots of weed) and is about 25 metres wide in most places. The only exception is the area where wires go across the water and these pegs are notorious bream fiers. The one good thing about it is the road which runs parallel with the river, which means you can park behind your peg.
My peg was in the section before the wires so I didn't have to worry about the flyers. The first thing I noticed about it was the amount of weed I would have to contend with. It was solid for about 6 metres so the first job was to clear some of it out. I had learnt in practice it was important to have a clear channel in front of you for 3 reasons. Firstly, you could catch tiny fish under your feet in a gap in the weed, and every fish would be vital on the North Bank. Secondly, when shipping out olivette rigs if you didn't have a clear spot you would hook up on shite on the way out and thirdly if a big fish was hooked you would have more chance of landing it if there wasn't six metres of thick weed in front of you! An old indestructable pole was used with a weedcutter to cut out the peg and I soon had a clear channel.
Groundbait
My grounbait had been mixed the night before and was equal portions of Browning River, Gardons, canal and brown crumb. Also, added to this was a bag of damp leam to help it break down and some VDE Pigeon Shit (which would hopefully attract lots of dog roach!). This totalled 4 kilos. We all had 3/4 of a kilo of joker and bloodworm of various sizes, but mainly small. The joker was the bollocks and was either Polish or English as it was big, lively and easy to hook. My initial feed was to throw 12 orange sized balls at 14.5 metres containing 250 mls of joker with a few pinkies and casters. I had 2 kilos of top up mix which consisted of Sensas Terre de Rivierre and grey leam. This would simply deliver jokers. At 4 metres in a gap in the weed I would feed 2 soft joker rich balls which would probably in all honesty just catch tiny fish and maybe an odd bonus perch. At 8 metres which was the bottom of the near shelf I fed a 50;50 mix of soil and groundbait in 4 balls with 100mls of joker, again I was hoping for Perch here as well. I also had a bag of Sensas Ablettes knocked up with a third of a bag of "Terre de Surface Jaune" (yellow surface leam) added to aid clouding this was mixed into a slop and would be fed for bleak at about 9 metres down my peg. So thats over 7 kilos of groundbait mixed up when I expected to struggle to catch a 1lb!!!
Rigs
With the river flowing harder than in practice a multitude of rigs were gonna be needed to cover all eventualities. My rig for 4 metres was a 0.3 gram Sensas Jean Francois for fishing 4 feet deep and featured 0.09 Browning Cenitan to an 0.07 hooklength and a 22 B511 hook. Elastic was a 3.
At 8 metres I had 2 rigs assembled, both featuring Browning Nevis floats in 1 gram and 1.5 grams. I could hold back hard with 1.5 grams on this line in the depth of 9 feet. Line was 0.12 to an 0.08 hooklength to a size 20 Mustad Wide Gape Canal Seed hook. A bulk of number 8s was used on the gram rig with 4 number 10 droppers set at equal intervals below this. There was about 20 inches between the bulk and the hook. The 1.5 gram rig was shotted similarly below the olivette, except for the droppers being number 9's. Elastics were 4 on both rigs.
14.5 metres was my main line in approximately 11 feet of water which was also in the main flow and I had 4 rigs for this line. Again lines were 0.12 to 0.08 to 20 WGCS's. Rig 1 was a 1 gram "Perfect" Pencil float which had a carbon stem and a fine fibre bristle and featured shot instead of an olivette. This rig would only be used if it stopped tanking. Other rigs were 1.5 grams and 2.5 gram Nevis' shotted with olivettes and droppers as per the other rigs. I could just about ease the 2.5 rig through with the flow when setting up which was a considerably more flow than we had had during pactice. Number 5 elastics were used on these rigs. My final rig was a Bream rig, which was ridiculously optimistic, but if they turned up I had to be prepared. This featured a 3 gram Sensas Bogdan flat float and enabled me to hold my rig dead still overdepth. Lines were 0.12 to 0.10 and the hook was a 16 WGCS which would take bunches of 5 bloodworm. The only irritant was a layer of fine silk weed which seemed to cling to the hook on every drop in with this rig.
The Match
After the initial bombardment it was team tactics to get straight out on the 14.5 metre line and try to snare an early bream or skimmer. A bunch of bloodworm went onto the hook and the rig was lowered in and held dead still over the groundbait. After 10 minutes of no response it was time to have a quick look at 8 metres and after 5 minutes of running the 1 gram through I was still biteless. The sun was now very bright and strong and to my shock I could make out my groundbait on the bottom at 14.5 metres!!! the only consolation of this was I felt my balling was pretty accurate! It became obvious that this math was to be a grueller and I had to get a fish in the net.
Me watching a motionless float!Under my feet at 4 metres I could see tiny fish swimming over my 2 balls of groundbait and a single bloodworm on the hook soon bought a couple of 1/4 of an ounce roach. At least I now had a point! I looked down again and could see a slightly bigger fish down there, I put a pinkie on and soon had a perch of about an ounce in the net. At this point I began feeding for bleak at 7/8 metres down my peg. I didn't expect to catch but had to try feeding it with things looking grim. Dorkings Gary Hamilton was running my section and confirmed my section was fishing desperately with 2 perch being top and many people still fishless.
Over the next couple of hours I switched between all of my lines in search of fish and eventuality caught a few more small roach at 8 metres. The bleak option failed dismally as I could only catch tiny fry here which were absolutely useless, so I abandoned this totally. With bankside word being the top weight int section of 8 ounces I decided I had to concentrate on the fish under my feet and 8 metres as these were the only lines that had produced at that point in the match. My concentration only being broken by a cow falling into the river and only just about managing to keep its head above water. After 10 minutes of commotion it eventuality managed to drag itself out. This probably wouldn't have helped the nerves of any bream in the area!
These small fish under my feet were not even that easy to catch, I seemed to catch 4 or 5 before the shoal would drift off and I would have to feed a small ball f groundbait and leave the line alone before they would come back. After 3 and a half hours no more fish had come off the 8 metre line, therefore I decided to put 2 joker rich balls of soil in to hopefully kickstart some activity. Again Gary confirmed that our section was still fishing appallingly with noone admitting to a pound. In fact our teams runner Alex Reynolds confirmed the whole venue was fishing rock hard.
By the end of the match I had finished up with 2 one ounce perch and 50-60 tiny roach mainly from under my feet. I felt I may have a pound and Gary Hamilton reckoned this would be good. However, we all know how match anglers lie so we would just have to await the scales. One bad bit of news for me in my section was the fact that Stevie Gardner had caught an eel of a pound with minutes of the match remaining to elevate him from near bottom to near the top! Its amazing how these top anglers conjure up big fish with such regularity when they really need them most! I guess its total confidenc in what you are doing.
To say the section was close would be an understatement. In the end my 1 pound 8 drams got me joint 5th in my 14 man section. I was more than happy with this as I fely had done the job for the team and the poor fishing didn't matter at this point. The section was won with 1lb 8ounces and Steve finished 2nd or 3rd with the help of his eel.
It was time to switch the phone on and see how the rest of the lads had fared. Overall, we had more poor results than good and there was one especially gruesome tale which involved catching but not weighing in ...... yep strange but true. Our best performer was Keith Austin who had managed 4th in section from Railworld. Dean Tennant had also done well with a 5th from the Embankment. Unfortunately, it went downhill from here and it became obvious a top half finish was out of the question. To be honest I was too depressed to listen to the results too intensely but believe we finished 11th out of 14. Dorking had turned in another top notch team performance and won comfortably with Barnsley second and Trentmen 3rd. Our London winter league rivals Image put in a fantastic performance and finished 4th, proving that hard work and commitment does get it rewards. A lesson we need to learn as a team if we want to compete in these sort of events. They also had the bonus of producing the individual winner in Tony Marti who caught Bream on the wires peg.
Dean Tennant done well to finish 5th from the embankment
Paul Chambers slips a gear!
Danny Grimsey finished 6th in section.My thoughts on the Venue
Firstly I think Ken Wade runs a really slick match and his organisation cannot be faulted. The layout of the venue is first class and it really is ideal for hosting a big match with few long walks and fantastic spectator access. There is no mud and the tacklefest and the fishing run perfectly side by side.
Its not all rosy though because a massive factor has got to be the quality of the fishing, as this is what really makes the final. Personally, I drew the North Bank 3 times in total (twice in practice, once in the match) and only broke a pound once. It wasn't my angling incompetance either as nearly everyone near me in these matches had a similar fate or even worse. These matches are not cheap either and I reckon it cost me £80 to fish a match which is crazy money for these sort of returns. I really did feel that there was little reward for making the final of the most prestigious team fishing event in the UK. If I had drawn off the North Bank I would have probably had a different feeling as when I did draw off there I had a good day. Most of the anglers in my section were sitting on a top kit watching "fry" take their bait, surely this is not a true test of their abilties as anglers?
I'd suggest there a few ways in which things could be improved. Firstly, it is widely accepted that most natural venues are patchy in June and July, yet come August and September these same venues suddenly become alive with seemingly an endless supply of feeding roach. I know that the East Midlands Angling Times Winter League has a round in early October on the Nene and there are lots of double figure roach catches in this match and thats without the use of bloodworm and joker. I don't know whether there is a reason preventing a change of date?
Secondly, the North Bank was well below par this year and was in the last final I fished (2006 I think). The Nene is a big river and perhaps these 4 sections could be relocated elsewhere. I don't know the Nene well at all but maybe there is some better fishing above railworld, or slightly further out of town. These matches are seriously expensive to fish and anything to improve the fishing would be positive. However, I do think the rest of the venue provides good challenging fishing and the North Bank is just the problem.
I know people have been discussing moving it to a commercial and I don't believe it would tarnish the competition at all if it was moved. After all the majority of match fishing these days is done on commercials and it would therefore just reflect modern matchfishing. With many leagues dying and struggling for teams, this change may give the competition an added boost. There are rumours of Cudmore, but we'll just have to wait and see. Anyway, the winter leagues will begin again soon and i'll be looking forward to doing it all again and hopefully helping the team to qualify for the final again whereever its held!
Monday, 14 July 2008
Friday 11th July. Goldenpeg.com Qualifier. Colemans Cottage. 25 Pegs
There has been lots of discussion in the papers and forums about this new event. The jist of it being 24 qualifiers at 3 different venues around the country, with the winner of each qualifier collecting £1,000 and going forward to fish a grand final at Colemans Cottage fishery on New Years Eve for a cool £50,000. The entrants for each qualifier are selected via a raffle system in which winning tickets are drawn at random. Applicants can buy as many tickets as they want and if they are drawn to fish a qualifier will walk away with at least 50 quid. That's right folks 50 quid for just turning up.
Despite initially being sceptical of the maths behind the event I decided to apply for tickets at Colemans. This is my local fishery and if I had to win a 25 pegger I would have as good a chance as here as anywhere. I applied for 5 tickets and to my surprise had a phone call from organiser Conrad Gomes stating I had been successful. My travelling partner Danny Grimsey also applied for 5 and got a ticket. We decided that to give us more chance of winning some money we would split 70:30, obviously whoever won the money would get the 70% share!
With big money being at stake it was announced at the draw they would be checking rod licences and also peoples bait at random. The draw proceeded from a tombola type machine and there was actually a draw to determine the sequence in which anglers went up to draw making it the most random draw ever! There was a draw for the right to fish the match, then a draw to determine the order of the draw and then a draw to actually draw. There were a few anglers with glazed expressions when they finally went to pick their pegs!
If I could have picked a peg I would have chosen peg 1 or 39. This is due to the strong southerly wind blowing towards that end of the lake all week. I felt it could be rammed, consequently I wanted to avoid pegs at the top end of the lake without wind (17-24). After cranking the handle of the tombola I was given peg 37. Now this peg is an absolute boss peg in the middle of winter because it is wide and deep. Obviously with it being the middle of summer this wasn't ideal, but I felt fairly happy as I knew there would be fish in the area as it was at the windward end of the lake. Grimsey drew after me and was tombollered peg 10. Now this peg had some recent form after Chris Vandervleit (spelling?) had won a summer league team match from it, also in the last open Johnny Bell had caught 100lb in the last 3 hours down the edge. We both had reasonable pegs and had a chance.
Bait & Tactics
After a quick walk to my peg it was time to select my bait after thinking about tactics. Due to it being 17.5 metres to the nearest island and the presence of a strong southerly wind I decided on a 3 pronged attack. If I was gonna win I felt that I had to catch shallow on the long pole. From experience I knew that the fish didn't really like to come far away from the island when up in the water fishing, therefore 16 metres was to be my starting distance which would be more than tricky in the wind. Also, I decided at the start I would fish at least 30 minutes on the pellet feeder, whilst feeding up in water. I would also have 2 edge lines left and right where I was hoping to have a storming finish. Incidentally, I felt that at least 120lb would be needed to win in 5 hours and this would be my target weight.
Now I had decided my tactics I could select my bait, which had to consist of no more than 8 pints of particles (hemp, pellets castor, maggots, worms). On top of this a maximum of three tins of meat and four tins of corn were allowed. I opted to take 3 pints of 6mm hard pellets for feeding shallow. 2 pints of soaked 6mm and 4mm for the pellet feeder, half a pint of assorted size and colour hooker hard pellets and two pints of hemp for the edge lines. I would also bring 3 tins of meat cut into 8mm cubes using a meat cutter, again for the edge. I had carefully selected my bait so as not to break the rules, unfortunately the same could not be said about all my fellow competitors. Of the 3 anglers checked unbelievably 1 was found to be over the bait limit, this goes to show that some people are not even put off by the threat of bait checks!! In my opinion he should have been disqualified, but despite his clear intention to cheat he had the excess bait confiscated and was allowed to fish.
Rigs
As all summer carp rigs should be these were strong but uncomplicated. I set up 3 rigs for up int water, one being a Preston PB4 (I think) dibber set at 12 inches, the 2nd was a 4x10 KC Carpa Chimp set at 18 inches and finally another 4x10 chimp was assembled but set at 2 feet. My edge rig was a 4x 12 KC Carpa 2 to be fished in three feet of water against near side foilage. All of these rigs had their eyes tied and superglued in to prevent damage after hook pulls. The line on all was 0.16 Browning Cenitan tied to an 18 eyed Kamasan Aninmal for the up in the water rigs. I would hair rig and band the pellet on all of these. The edge rig featured a Kamasan B911 in size 16. My feeder rig was a simple running rig incorporating a small Drennan open end feeder and an 8 inch hooklenth tied to a 16 Kamasan Animal.
At the all in I pinged in 8 6mm pellets at 16 metre range before cupping in 3/4 pot of hemp and 1/2 pot of meat on each of the edge lines. Before casting the feeder in between two islands at 2 0'clock to my right on a shallow bar. An 8mm pellet was banded on a hair and the feeder was filled with a mixture of 4 and 6mm pellets. Not many people fish the feeder at Colemans but on a wide peg I felt it could be a potentially match winning method as that tip could just fly round all day. It was really a throw away line as it allowed me to feed my up in the water line for 1/2 an hour to hopefully get some fish queuing up with confidence. Whilst continually pinging 6 6mm pellets on the long line I was also very regularly feeding 4 to 6 pieces of meat on the edge lines.
Unfortunately the feeder did not prove to be a match winning method on the day and didn't give me the flying start I wanted, as only three fish succumbed in the first thirty minutes. Mind you this was not due to a lack of fish in the peg as I could see various backs and tails out of the water and often when this was happening I didn't even get a liner! You cannot underestimate how clever some of these fish are in commercials these days. It makes you wonder that on some of those days when you think there are no fish in your peg its probably solid, but you just cannot catch them!
So now it was time to plunder my main line, however the reality didn't match the theory to begin with. I began on the 2 feet deep rig and didn't get an indication for 10 minutes, despite constantly pinging pellets. To make matters worse the wind was a real pain and at times I had to let my pole go with the wind, this was also affecting my ability to feed accurately. I did manage to start to get some bites after a short while though and a few pound to two pound carp made their way to my net. The guy opposite me was now pinging pellets in a similar direction to where I was fishing and I felt this was causing the fish to split, with an hour gone I decided to make a decision as it was clear I wasn't catching enough to win the match.
I continued to loosefeed but started another line at about 2 metres further to my right about a metre off an island. I hoped I could draw the fish away from his loosefeed and keep the majority in my peg by feeding more regularly than him. After 15 or so minutes my swim took a positive turn and I began to get a run of fish, most of which took the bait almost as soon as it hit the water, prompting me to change to my shallowest rig, the dibber. Looking around me the only person who appeared to be catching fairly consistently was Graham Dack on peg 6, but I felt I was up with him so it was heads down time and plunder the swim. Things were looking up now as the wind was now dropping off and I could concentrate my efforts on feeding and striking, without having my arms ripped out of their sockets!
Halfway through the match I estimated I had about 45lb in the net which I felt meant I still had a chance especially as I was still catching. Unfortunately though in the next half an hour things started to slow a little and it soon became obvious why. Whilst loosefeeding, odd pellets were overspraying and landing close to the island, I could now see odd swirls and backs out of the water where fish were climbing the bank for pellets, consequently they seemed to have backed off my shallow line as bites had slowed considerably. I decided to come off that line and to cease feeding. I then gave it 10 minutes before commencing feeding hoping this would allow me to start again from scratch. I was now conscious of feeding shorter rather than longer as I didn't want a repeat performance.
In the meantime it was time to have a look on the edge lines, which i had been priming for about 3 hours. My left hand line proved to be lifeless, however the right hand line provided an instant response, as I had 2 carp of about 4lb in consecutive drops on a single cube of luncheon meat. I was now strapped in to empty the swim for the remainder of the match. Frustratingly, despite trying both left and right hand lines for the next 15 minutes all I could catch were skimmers. Consequently a large potful of meat and hemp went on both lines and I would now continue to feed in the hope of them being solid in the final hour.
So it was back out to long pole up in the water and I felt that I was now behind Graham Dack who had continued to fish shallow whilst I had mucked about down the edge and was catching consistently. I knew I was in the last chance casino if I was to get anywhere near my target weight and luckily things began to improve. The fish were no longer boiling up the island and as soon as I dropped my dibber in the rubber shot out of the pole and I was into a carp. Things continued like this for the next 3/4 of an hour and I got into a nice routine of feeding, shipping out laying the rig in hooking a fish, feeding and landing a fish. Again I felt I was up with Graham Dack and could have a chance, despite not being able to see the rest of the lake. With 1/2 an hour to go I was contemplating coming down the edge and my mind was made up to do so as my long line began to slow. I'd calculated I had about 90lb in the net and to get up to the 120/130lb mark to win I needed some munters and quick.
My last 1/2 an hour was incredibly frustrating as I only managed 2 more carp and my peg just seemed to become infested with skimmers. I also lost 2 carp at the net on hook pulls which compounded the frustration further. Salt was rubbed into my wounds further as Dacky caught some big fish late down the edge which made me realise I definitely hadn't won.
At the end of the match I was quickly on the phone to Danny and it seemed he had done rather well and it looked like he had saved the day as most people thought he had won!. He reckoned he'd caught 40lb down the edge in the last 45 minutes and couldn't get in quick enough as his blow by blow account illustrated. Of course if I couldn't win I definitely wanted Danny to win not only because hes my mate but also as it would be worth 300 quid to me!
I don't like to criticise match organisers but the weigh in was slightly farcical. Conrad used a set of digital scales to weigh everyone in,unfortunately he obviously didn't read the instructions as how to obtain an average weight reading. Therefore when the fish were put on the scales the reading lurched between a margin of 20lbs and were called at random somewhere between this point. Not good enough when 50 grand is at stake. Luckily it wasn't that close in the end and Danny had done the business with a weight of 137lb. Graham Dack was second with 120lb and I think I was fourth with 109lb.
Unfortunately, about a week after the match things turned sour as Conrad had to pull the whole Golden Peg competition. I believe there were a number of reasons, but ultimately I think he realised he could be seriously out of pocket by the end of the event. The concept was great, but I think he needed to advertise the event for longer to gain much more interest and also he could have saved some money by not giving away the 50 quids for just turning up as getting a ticket is reward enough. Hopefully there will be more big individual events around in the future as something will need to replace team match fishing which is dying on its ass.
I felt especially sorry for Danny who rightly thought he had a shot at 50k on a water he knows very well. However, we both can't complain as we both made a few quid out of the match and Danny will go down as the one and only winner of a golden peg match!
Despite initially being sceptical of the maths behind the event I decided to apply for tickets at Colemans. This is my local fishery and if I had to win a 25 pegger I would have as good a chance as here as anywhere. I applied for 5 tickets and to my surprise had a phone call from organiser Conrad Gomes stating I had been successful. My travelling partner Danny Grimsey also applied for 5 and got a ticket. We decided that to give us more chance of winning some money we would split 70:30, obviously whoever won the money would get the 70% share!
With big money being at stake it was announced at the draw they would be checking rod licences and also peoples bait at random. The draw proceeded from a tombola type machine and there was actually a draw to determine the sequence in which anglers went up to draw making it the most random draw ever! There was a draw for the right to fish the match, then a draw to determine the order of the draw and then a draw to actually draw. There were a few anglers with glazed expressions when they finally went to pick their pegs!
If I could have picked a peg I would have chosen peg 1 or 39. This is due to the strong southerly wind blowing towards that end of the lake all week. I felt it could be rammed, consequently I wanted to avoid pegs at the top end of the lake without wind (17-24). After cranking the handle of the tombola I was given peg 37. Now this peg is an absolute boss peg in the middle of winter because it is wide and deep. Obviously with it being the middle of summer this wasn't ideal, but I felt fairly happy as I knew there would be fish in the area as it was at the windward end of the lake. Grimsey drew after me and was tombollered peg 10. Now this peg had some recent form after Chris Vandervleit (spelling?) had won a summer league team match from it, also in the last open Johnny Bell had caught 100lb in the last 3 hours down the edge. We both had reasonable pegs and had a chance.
Bait & Tactics
After a quick walk to my peg it was time to select my bait after thinking about tactics. Due to it being 17.5 metres to the nearest island and the presence of a strong southerly wind I decided on a 3 pronged attack. If I was gonna win I felt that I had to catch shallow on the long pole. From experience I knew that the fish didn't really like to come far away from the island when up in the water fishing, therefore 16 metres was to be my starting distance which would be more than tricky in the wind. Also, I decided at the start I would fish at least 30 minutes on the pellet feeder, whilst feeding up in water. I would also have 2 edge lines left and right where I was hoping to have a storming finish. Incidentally, I felt that at least 120lb would be needed to win in 5 hours and this would be my target weight.
Now I had decided my tactics I could select my bait, which had to consist of no more than 8 pints of particles (hemp, pellets castor, maggots, worms). On top of this a maximum of three tins of meat and four tins of corn were allowed. I opted to take 3 pints of 6mm hard pellets for feeding shallow. 2 pints of soaked 6mm and 4mm for the pellet feeder, half a pint of assorted size and colour hooker hard pellets and two pints of hemp for the edge lines. I would also bring 3 tins of meat cut into 8mm cubes using a meat cutter, again for the edge. I had carefully selected my bait so as not to break the rules, unfortunately the same could not be said about all my fellow competitors. Of the 3 anglers checked unbelievably 1 was found to be over the bait limit, this goes to show that some people are not even put off by the threat of bait checks!! In my opinion he should have been disqualified, but despite his clear intention to cheat he had the excess bait confiscated and was allowed to fish.
Rigs
As all summer carp rigs should be these were strong but uncomplicated. I set up 3 rigs for up int water, one being a Preston PB4 (I think) dibber set at 12 inches, the 2nd was a 4x10 KC Carpa Chimp set at 18 inches and finally another 4x10 chimp was assembled but set at 2 feet. My edge rig was a 4x 12 KC Carpa 2 to be fished in three feet of water against near side foilage. All of these rigs had their eyes tied and superglued in to prevent damage after hook pulls. The line on all was 0.16 Browning Cenitan tied to an 18 eyed Kamasan Aninmal for the up in the water rigs. I would hair rig and band the pellet on all of these. The edge rig featured a Kamasan B911 in size 16. My feeder rig was a simple running rig incorporating a small Drennan open end feeder and an 8 inch hooklenth tied to a 16 Kamasan Animal.
At the all in I pinged in 8 6mm pellets at 16 metre range before cupping in 3/4 pot of hemp and 1/2 pot of meat on each of the edge lines. Before casting the feeder in between two islands at 2 0'clock to my right on a shallow bar. An 8mm pellet was banded on a hair and the feeder was filled with a mixture of 4 and 6mm pellets. Not many people fish the feeder at Colemans but on a wide peg I felt it could be a potentially match winning method as that tip could just fly round all day. It was really a throw away line as it allowed me to feed my up in the water line for 1/2 an hour to hopefully get some fish queuing up with confidence. Whilst continually pinging 6 6mm pellets on the long line I was also very regularly feeding 4 to 6 pieces of meat on the edge lines.
Unfortunately the feeder did not prove to be a match winning method on the day and didn't give me the flying start I wanted, as only three fish succumbed in the first thirty minutes. Mind you this was not due to a lack of fish in the peg as I could see various backs and tails out of the water and often when this was happening I didn't even get a liner! You cannot underestimate how clever some of these fish are in commercials these days. It makes you wonder that on some of those days when you think there are no fish in your peg its probably solid, but you just cannot catch them!
So now it was time to plunder my main line, however the reality didn't match the theory to begin with. I began on the 2 feet deep rig and didn't get an indication for 10 minutes, despite constantly pinging pellets. To make matters worse the wind was a real pain and at times I had to let my pole go with the wind, this was also affecting my ability to feed accurately. I did manage to start to get some bites after a short while though and a few pound to two pound carp made their way to my net. The guy opposite me was now pinging pellets in a similar direction to where I was fishing and I felt this was causing the fish to split, with an hour gone I decided to make a decision as it was clear I wasn't catching enough to win the match.
I continued to loosefeed but started another line at about 2 metres further to my right about a metre off an island. I hoped I could draw the fish away from his loosefeed and keep the majority in my peg by feeding more regularly than him. After 15 or so minutes my swim took a positive turn and I began to get a run of fish, most of which took the bait almost as soon as it hit the water, prompting me to change to my shallowest rig, the dibber. Looking around me the only person who appeared to be catching fairly consistently was Graham Dack on peg 6, but I felt I was up with him so it was heads down time and plunder the swim. Things were looking up now as the wind was now dropping off and I could concentrate my efforts on feeding and striking, without having my arms ripped out of their sockets!
Halfway through the match I estimated I had about 45lb in the net which I felt meant I still had a chance especially as I was still catching. Unfortunately though in the next half an hour things started to slow a little and it soon became obvious why. Whilst loosefeeding, odd pellets were overspraying and landing close to the island, I could now see odd swirls and backs out of the water where fish were climbing the bank for pellets, consequently they seemed to have backed off my shallow line as bites had slowed considerably. I decided to come off that line and to cease feeding. I then gave it 10 minutes before commencing feeding hoping this would allow me to start again from scratch. I was now conscious of feeding shorter rather than longer as I didn't want a repeat performance.
In the meantime it was time to have a look on the edge lines, which i had been priming for about 3 hours. My left hand line proved to be lifeless, however the right hand line provided an instant response, as I had 2 carp of about 4lb in consecutive drops on a single cube of luncheon meat. I was now strapped in to empty the swim for the remainder of the match. Frustratingly, despite trying both left and right hand lines for the next 15 minutes all I could catch were skimmers. Consequently a large potful of meat and hemp went on both lines and I would now continue to feed in the hope of them being solid in the final hour.
So it was back out to long pole up in the water and I felt that I was now behind Graham Dack who had continued to fish shallow whilst I had mucked about down the edge and was catching consistently. I knew I was in the last chance casino if I was to get anywhere near my target weight and luckily things began to improve. The fish were no longer boiling up the island and as soon as I dropped my dibber in the rubber shot out of the pole and I was into a carp. Things continued like this for the next 3/4 of an hour and I got into a nice routine of feeding, shipping out laying the rig in hooking a fish, feeding and landing a fish. Again I felt I was up with Graham Dack and could have a chance, despite not being able to see the rest of the lake. With 1/2 an hour to go I was contemplating coming down the edge and my mind was made up to do so as my long line began to slow. I'd calculated I had about 90lb in the net and to get up to the 120/130lb mark to win I needed some munters and quick.
My last 1/2 an hour was incredibly frustrating as I only managed 2 more carp and my peg just seemed to become infested with skimmers. I also lost 2 carp at the net on hook pulls which compounded the frustration further. Salt was rubbed into my wounds further as Dacky caught some big fish late down the edge which made me realise I definitely hadn't won.
At the end of the match I was quickly on the phone to Danny and it seemed he had done rather well and it looked like he had saved the day as most people thought he had won!. He reckoned he'd caught 40lb down the edge in the last 45 minutes and couldn't get in quick enough as his blow by blow account illustrated. Of course if I couldn't win I definitely wanted Danny to win not only because hes my mate but also as it would be worth 300 quid to me!
I don't like to criticise match organisers but the weigh in was slightly farcical. Conrad used a set of digital scales to weigh everyone in,unfortunately he obviously didn't read the instructions as how to obtain an average weight reading. Therefore when the fish were put on the scales the reading lurched between a margin of 20lbs and were called at random somewhere between this point. Not good enough when 50 grand is at stake. Luckily it wasn't that close in the end and Danny had done the business with a weight of 137lb. Graham Dack was second with 120lb and I think I was fourth with 109lb.
Unfortunately, about a week after the match things turned sour as Conrad had to pull the whole Golden Peg competition. I believe there were a number of reasons, but ultimately I think he realised he could be seriously out of pocket by the end of the event. The concept was great, but I think he needed to advertise the event for longer to gain much more interest and also he could have saved some money by not giving away the 50 quids for just turning up as getting a ticket is reward enough. Hopefully there will be more big individual events around in the future as something will need to replace team match fishing which is dying on its ass.
I felt especially sorry for Danny who rightly thought he had a shot at 50k on a water he knows very well. However, we both can't complain as we both made a few quid out of the match and Danny will go down as the one and only winner of a golden peg match!
Monday, 19 May 2008
Dynamite Baits Festival 2008. Whiteacres. 16th - 20th April 2008. 180 Pegs
The Whiteacres festivals are possibly the highlight of my match calender. I always do at least one festival in the Spring and Autumn, this year it was to be just the one in the spring due to work commitments. Every year the standard of the Whiteacres festivals gets higher and higher. All of the best commercial anglers in the UK are there and in recent years there are less club anglers as they now have there own festivals to fish in.
The format of these festivals is that the 180 strong field is split into 5 sections of 36 anglers and each section fishes one of 5 different venues during the week. The 36 man section is split further into 4 9 peg sections for each days fishing. For a section win an angler gets 9 points, down to 1 for a section last. At the end of the week the 4 best results count and in the event of a tie the dropped result comes into play and then weight.
It was just myself and Paul Connell sharing a lodge this year as the other "regulars" had other commitments this year. The draw was the first important consideration for the week, as there are always some sections harder than others. Both Paul and I were hoping to avoid most of the "superstars" if possible. I had drawn section B which put me on Twin Oaks or Trewlaney on the first day. I was happy with this start, as I felt this section would fish well on the first day and then steadily get worse. The top anglers in my section were Richie Hull and Kieron Rich, however there were many other good anglers as well and it was sure to be a big test. Poor old Paul on the other hand had definitely drawn the "Section of Death". He was in E section starting at bagging mecca Bolingey(which has to be the best commercial lake in the country) and had the likes of William Raison, Neil Mckinnon, Geoff Ringer, Andy May, Alan Scotthorne amongst others......... As you can see there were gonna be no gimme points here for Paul!
The format of these festivals is that the 180 strong field is split into 5 sections of 36 anglers and each section fishes one of 5 different venues during the week. The 36 man section is split further into 4 9 peg sections for each days fishing. For a section win an angler gets 9 points, down to 1 for a section last. At the end of the week the 4 best results count and in the event of a tie the dropped result comes into play and then weight.
It was just myself and Paul Connell sharing a lodge this year as the other "regulars" had other commitments this year. The draw was the first important consideration for the week, as there are always some sections harder than others. Both Paul and I were hoping to avoid most of the "superstars" if possible. I had drawn section B which put me on Twin Oaks or Trewlaney on the first day. I was happy with this start, as I felt this section would fish well on the first day and then steadily get worse. The top anglers in my section were Richie Hull and Kieron Rich, however there were many other good anglers as well and it was sure to be a big test. Poor old Paul on the other hand had definitely drawn the "Section of Death". He was in E section starting at bagging mecca Bolingey(which has to be the best commercial lake in the country) and had the likes of William Raison, Neil Mckinnon, Geoff Ringer, Andy May, Alan Scotthorne amongst others......... As you can see there were gonna be no gimme points here for Paul!
Day 1 Twin Oaks Peg 29 (Right hand lake, Bodriggy)
When I pulled this out I had mixed feelings. I had practiced Bodriggy the day before for about an hour and a half on the meat feeder, just to get my eye in casting and the tip had gone round most casts. Therefore I was confident the meat feeder would work. However, my draw put me in the middle of the lake and it was often the case that end pegs were hard to compete with on this lake. I would be happy with top three, as there is nothing worse than starting your festival with a disaster as it gives you no leeway for a mistake later in the week.
My peg had what looked like a lovely chuck on the feeder as there was a hole of about 3 feet wide where the grass had been cleared tight to the bank. From experience I knew that a cast within inches of the far bank often results in the tip flying round whilst a cast a foot short would result in nothing. There was a brisk wind directly into my chops which meant that conditions were less than ideal for the pellet wagg, however I still assembled one, along with the feeder and two pole lines for 5 metres and down the edge at 5 metres to my right. I could have fished a long pole as well, but you have to be ultra positive at Whiteacres to win sections. I don't think I could have fed an extra line properly so didn't set it up.
Down the edge I fed a potful of hemp and half a pot of meat at the start and on my 5 metre line another pot of hemp and a quarter of a pot of corn. I would have liked to have fed meat at 5 metres as well, however if the meat feeder went I may not have had enough meat for all three lines so went with the corn. Incidentally through the meat feeder I fed shredded meat (through a meat cutter and then through a maggot riddle) and whole 6mm cubes in a Drennan Micro open ended feeder. I put some extra lead on the feeder as well to prevent the wind catching the bow in my line after I had cast and dragging the feeder off the far bank.
To summarise, my match was very stop and start and I never bagged throughout, however after 3.5 hours I felt I had a good chance of second in the section. Peg 36 was paralysing the section having caught down the edge after an hour and eventually ended up with 130 odd pound. The meat feeder was nowhere near as good as I had hoped but I persisted with it and had about 40-45lb of carp between a pound and two pounds after 3.5 hours and felt that I was just edging most other people in the section. I had fed 4-6 grains of corn at 5 metres and 4-6 cubes of meat down the edge regularly and felt that one or both of these lines should fire. However, neither did and I only nicked odd fish off both to end up with 75lb odd and fourth in the section. This was disappointing and I was overtaken by people catching lumps down the side late. After speaking to these anglers it transpired they had dump potted it down the edge with big pots of bait and simply waited for bites. I had fed it the way I fish my local venues as dump potting is the kiss of death here. This will be something I'll remember should I draw this lake again and proves you have do everything exactly right to win sections at Whiteacres.
Day 2 Gwinear Peg 17
There were some real horror stories coming from Gwinear after day 1, with a couple of blanks recorded. Gwinear is now a shadow of its former self and can only be described as an average-poor commercial fishery, which is not fit for a festival. It needs a serious injection of fish to be comparable to days of old.
I knew that I needed some luck at the draw bag or it could be festival over after two days - not a pleasant thought. To a certain extent I had some luck as I pulled out peg 17. This is on the back bank, furthest from the car park and was one of the better pegs on the lake. However, on paper all the pegs to the left of me were better (19,20,24,25) and all the pegs to the right of me were worse (16,14,13,10). I still felt the top 3 finish I needed was possible if I fished a reasonable match.
It was a fairly warm day with some light breeze and seeing as my swim was about 9 feet deep from 6-7 metres onwards, everything pointed to catching shallow. This was going to be my main line of attack where I would ping 6mm pellets at 14.5 metres and set rigs up between 12 inches and 6 foot. I also set up a feeder to chuck to the island and also a 5 metre line where I would feed corn and a kerb crawler for munters late towards the empty peg to my left. My plan was to constantly feed 3-5 pellets on the 14.5 metre line for the first hour whilst starting on the feeder and 5 metres in the hope of catching a few early. My plan was to let the fish build up confidence before fishing for them shallow.
After a slow start on the feeder and only a couple of fish at 5 metres my match improved. In hours two, three and four I caught fish shallow with 18 inches being the best depth. However I had one of those days when I lost 6 or 7 fish to hook pulls which I was convinced were hooked properly, really frustrating! As always in such a competitive environment such losses are bound to prove costly. A hair rigged banded 6mm was the bait in amongst 6mm loosefed pellets. It was one of those days when I was looking for a golden spell to reach that 100lb mark but it never happens. I strongly believed that my 5 metre line would go in the final hour but despite religious feeding I couldn't get more than a couple of bites in succession which was frustrating.
I knew at the final whistle it would be a tight section for places 2nd to 5th. Peg 20 had won the section with a high 80lb. He'd had a storming start catching 8-10 fish at 5 metres at the start. I was pleased to find my 73lb 15ounces was enough for second place, a low 70 was third. An additional bonus was claiming 3rd on the lake which gave me a bit of coin to boot. I was more than pleased with this as the hook pulls hadn't caused me too much pain and more importantly it wasn't festival over after 2 days!
Day 3. Porth Peg 32
It was now my day for a break from the carp and onto Porth Resevoir which is a massive expanse of water dominated by "traditional" species such as roach and skimmers. Porth has been a fantastic venue over the years, however the first two days had revealed it was slightly off colour with only low double figures being required to win the lake. A few rumours were circulating with reasons for this, the most popular being cormorants, pike and clear water.
My peg was in the second section on the near bank and gave me a chance to do some exercise due to a long walk with a tackle laden barrow. I was reasonably pleased with this peg as it was an end peg, however traditionally the higher numbers being better, with peg 40 the flyer. The way Porth was fishing though I felt it was a leveller and I just needed to try and do things right on the day.
Traditionally at Porth you either fish the pole or feeder, never both. Yet the fishing had been so hard every fish would count, therefore the feeder together with short and long poles were assembled. I'd even bought my secret weapon for the day which was some liquidised bread! I'd had bites on it on the canal on days when the roach wouldn't touch anything else, it just had to work didn't it?
The short pole line at 6 metres was fed with bread and some pinkies whilst 13 metres a 50/50 mix of fishmeal and natural groundbaits went in with some finely chopped worms, and a few castors pinkies and dead maggots. The feeder mix was 100% fishmeal compromising Ringers Dark and Natural.
My match was a real battle and every fish was a bonus, my opening gambits of the feeder and the short pole with bread were worth only 4 fish; 1 bottle top skimmer and 3 roach (none of which came on my secret weapon of the liquidised!). The long pole produced fish in spasms for the rest of the match, with most of the fish being very small hand sized skimmers, about 60 in total were landed despite the efforts of Pike to ruin my day! Interestingly, the only way I could catch was to loosefeed maggots and alternate my depths between the deck and 6 inches off to keep the od bite coming. Recupping in groundbait seemed to have no postive impact so I just fished for bites in the end, using 0.07 line and a 22 Wide Gape Canal Seed.
I was last to weigh in and my mate Pemb Wrighting was winning the section with 8lb 3 ounces 8 drams off of peg 38. I knew I would be close to this, when I lifted my net out of the water fishery manager Clint Elliot felt I was just short. Close wasn't the word to describe it and I was mightily relieved when Clint announced my weight at 8lbs 4 ounces. Yep, thats right I had won the section by 8 drams! close but I didn't care as I had the crucial 9 points and again I had sneaked third place on the lake! Things were looking up!
Day 4. Bolingey. Peg 43.
The penultimate day put me on the venue that everyone looks forward to as you are almost guaranteed a cracking day with the chance of latching into some proper 20lb plus munters. I was fairly pleased with my draw as it put me in the right hand arm, which I reckon is the fairest section there, its impossible to predict where the section would be won from. My peg put me 2 out of the corner on the spit. On arriving at my peg the only thing that worried me was the strong wing blowing down the lake from right to left which could benefit the pegs at the wind ward end of my section. Also, I had Kieron Rich opposite me on peg 37 and of course he would be the man I would need to beat.
A big weight would be needed to win the section therefore I kept it simple with a 13 metre line out in open water, a 6 metre line towards the bottom of a slowly sloping near shelf and two edge lines at 4.5 metres left and right. Bolingey had been pellet fishing for all of the week, but I couldn't get the meat option out of my head as it always works at Bolingey ... or does it? My plan was to ping 2, 3 or 4 6mm pellets at 13 metres all of the time and find out where where the fish wanted to feed. Therefore I set up 4 rigs to cover the whole water column on this line. At six metres I decided to feed meat and hemp, loosefeeding 4 to 6 cubes all of the time to build it up later in the match. I found 2.5 feet tight to the near bank on two lines left and right down the edge, where I was to feed in the same manor as on the 6 metre line.
My match went well for the first 2.5 to 3 hours on the 13 metre line where I was getting small carp between 1-2.5 pounds every bung on a 6mm expander. However, I was behind Kieron who was catching a fish a bung at 6 metres, as his fish were clearly bigger than mine. Into the third hour I continued to catch and Kieron began to slow, therefore I began to catch him up. However, that didn't last as the wind got up and I was struggling with my presentation long. The last hour and a half are always times when you look to make that charge and catch on a line consistently. However, both my 6 metre lines and edge lines produced fish intermittently and I didn't get that golden run. I was convinced that I would have caught much better fishing pellets at 6 metres, simply because it was so good at 13. I also paid the price of playing a low double figure fish for the last half an hour whilst watching Kieron bagging 3 pounders one a bung. It was a lean common that wouldn't come in despite me seemingly pulling all of the elastic out of my top kit using my pull bung!
My weight of 110lb was only good enough for third in the section, Kieron had 120 pound odd and the section was won with 130 odd by Wayne Mellings I think on peg 29, he'd slaughtered it in the last two hours on the kerb krawler.
I was in 12th place going into the last day and a section win would give me 33 points which would almost certainly guarantee top 10, so it was all to go for on the last day.
Day 5. Pollawyn Peg 32
This peg is in a section which is split up all over the lake, so it was hard to see what was happening on the other pegs. I just had to get my head down and fish an ultra positive match. Peg 32 is just off the high bank and just off the main head of carp, to win my section I was sure to need 100lb plus, which meant my tactics were gonna be dead simple and revolve entirely around catching 20 carp at least (which was likely to be 100lb). Richie Hull was in my section on peg 22 and was sure to be a threat especially as he was going to flex his muscles and wield 19 metres of pole to the island. The stakes were high for Richie as well because a section win could see him get a top 3 finish.
My peg was approximately 25 metres to an island and this was where I was going to concentrate my efforts. I set up bomb rods and pellet wagglers to fish tight to the island also I decided to fish a line at about 3/4 of the way across, just beyond pole range. On both of these lines I would ping 3 and 4 11mm pellets regularly. The wind was smack in my face so I needed 11mm's to get them out there. My only other line was to be at 5 metres where I would feed meat and hemp to try and get a rush of late fish.
I started off on the pellet wagg tight across but with only one lost foul hooker in the first 20 minutes I soon switched to the bomb. I had a poor first hour only catching 2 fish and even worse news was the sight of Richie slaying 'em on the other side of the lake. I was in trouble already. The 3/4 line didn't produce a bite so it was back tight to the far bank. In the next hour I had a few more pulls and had 6 after 2 hours. The annoying thing was I needed to use a big lead to keep my bait nailed to the far bank as the wind was putting a bow in my line and pulling it away. I am sure the ounce lead was responsible for a few annoying hook pulls. A switch down to 3/4 of an ounce seemed to be a better compromise.
I had a bit of a purple patch in hour 3 and was up to 12 fish, which was ok, especially as Richie had slowed a bit. I needed 6 fish an hour to the end to stand any chance. At the end of hour four things were beginning to slow again as I was only up to 16 fish and to make matters worse Richie was bagging again. Despite trying the other lines I couldn't get a bite anywhere else and a poor last hour gave me 18 fish which gave me a total of 89lb. Richie obliterated the section and the lake with 150lb odd. His performance was really impressive especially as there was a strong wind on his side all day. I don't think many other people would have had the strength to fish like this all day.
I ended up second in the section which gave me a total of 32 points dropping a 4th in section. This consolidated my position in 12th place, just missing out on the top 10 on weight. Steve Ringer won the festival with a maximum 36 points with Andy May second and Will Raison third. I'm already looking forward to October to have another go!
Wednesday, 7 May 2008
Wednesday 16th April 2008. Fish O' Mania Qualifier. Barford Lakes. 130 Pegs
Unfortunately I have missed out several matches I would have liked to write about due to a lack of time, so I have gone onto the biggest matches I have fished lately.
Barford is a venue I have fished only about three or four times previously, but I do have fond memories of it as it was where myself and Danny Grimsey qualified for the Maver Pairs final last year and it is actually quite a local venue being only 68 miles from my house. In my opinion it is easily the best commercial fishery in Norfolk and Suffolk. I was looking forward to the match as although the only thing that matters is finishing first I felt that a days fishing could be had from many of the pegs. This is unlike some of the diabolical Fish O's on sub standard venues I have fished in the past.
Talk before the match was of the Pleasure Lake being the one to draw as it holds some proper donkeys up to 20lb with the average size being apparently close to double figures. However the Barford Match Lake, Colton and Willow could all potentially win the match. Most people felt that Railway was the one to avoid as this venue holds primarily F1's and to win from here you would need well over a hundred fish. I felt to do this you would need to catch very shallow and it was still too cold for this. Previous years winning weights had been between 120 and 140lb so this had to be the target for the day.
I had been drawing bang on lately so was hoping my golden arm would not let me down, so when I drew my peg and was told I had a chance by the fishery manager Daniel Brydon I was more than happy. I had drawn the favoured Pleasure Lake, peg 7. This also happened to be the shortest walk on the venue, so I had loads of time to set up, which eliminated the normal Fisho rush. I spoke with local expert and Barford match record holder Warren Martin about my peg and he told he would set up one pellet wagg rod and fish it all day. I asked about feeding a short line on the pole, but he said not to bother as the fish are so big they are a real handful in the deep water ont pole.
Tackle and Tactics
After surveying my peg I definitely fancied it for a few fish as I had a decent cast into the middle of the narrow end of the lake. Also, a small amount of breeze was blowing over my shoulder, perfect for the pellet wagg. The only problem I had was that everyone was setting up pellet waggs and I could see the match turning into a bit of a battle zone with everyone chucking into a small area. I decided to follow Warrens advice but instead of one waggler rod I set up two! Two waggler rods would allow me to fish at different depths and as it was still quite cold I felt that I may have to go quite deep to catch. My first pellet waggler was set at about 5 and 1/2 foot with the other being set at about 2 and a half foot. One rod was an 11foot Maver Reactorlite and the other was a 13 foot Garbolino G Series Power Float. I set up my deeper rig on the G Series as a longer rod would make it easier to cast. Reels on both rods were Shimano Stradic 4000 FB's, loaded with 5lb Korum Line (0.20). Floats were unloaded Mick Wilkinson Styrofoam wagglers in the 3 SSg size, these go out like bullets and I know they cast a bit further than I can feed at full pelt so were ideal as I wanted to get as far out as possible into the middle of the lake.
I have tried varying methods of attaching unloaded pellet wagglers to the line (Drennan grip stops, waggler attachments etc), but I do it the way Steve Ringer does which is to thread the float onto a couple of inches of doubled up line and place shot onto the doubled up line. I've never cracked off on the strike like this and the float flies out as straight as an arrow, no wandering off as it does with waggler attachments. The only drawback with this method of connection is that you cannot adjust the depth by moving the float, therefore you need different length hook lengths tied up to cater for all situations.
Barford is a venue I have fished only about three or four times previously, but I do have fond memories of it as it was where myself and Danny Grimsey qualified for the Maver Pairs final last year and it is actually quite a local venue being only 68 miles from my house. In my opinion it is easily the best commercial fishery in Norfolk and Suffolk. I was looking forward to the match as although the only thing that matters is finishing first I felt that a days fishing could be had from many of the pegs. This is unlike some of the diabolical Fish O's on sub standard venues I have fished in the past.
Talk before the match was of the Pleasure Lake being the one to draw as it holds some proper donkeys up to 20lb with the average size being apparently close to double figures. However the Barford Match Lake, Colton and Willow could all potentially win the match. Most people felt that Railway was the one to avoid as this venue holds primarily F1's and to win from here you would need well over a hundred fish. I felt to do this you would need to catch very shallow and it was still too cold for this. Previous years winning weights had been between 120 and 140lb so this had to be the target for the day.
I had been drawing bang on lately so was hoping my golden arm would not let me down, so when I drew my peg and was told I had a chance by the fishery manager Daniel Brydon I was more than happy. I had drawn the favoured Pleasure Lake, peg 7. This also happened to be the shortest walk on the venue, so I had loads of time to set up, which eliminated the normal Fisho rush. I spoke with local expert and Barford match record holder Warren Martin about my peg and he told he would set up one pellet wagg rod and fish it all day. I asked about feeding a short line on the pole, but he said not to bother as the fish are so big they are a real handful in the deep water ont pole.
Tackle and Tactics
After surveying my peg I definitely fancied it for a few fish as I had a decent cast into the middle of the narrow end of the lake. Also, a small amount of breeze was blowing over my shoulder, perfect for the pellet wagg. The only problem I had was that everyone was setting up pellet waggs and I could see the match turning into a bit of a battle zone with everyone chucking into a small area. I decided to follow Warrens advice but instead of one waggler rod I set up two! Two waggler rods would allow me to fish at different depths and as it was still quite cold I felt that I may have to go quite deep to catch. My first pellet waggler was set at about 5 and 1/2 foot with the other being set at about 2 and a half foot. One rod was an 11foot Maver Reactorlite and the other was a 13 foot Garbolino G Series Power Float. I set up my deeper rig on the G Series as a longer rod would make it easier to cast. Reels on both rods were Shimano Stradic 4000 FB's, loaded with 5lb Korum Line (0.20). Floats were unloaded Mick Wilkinson Styrofoam wagglers in the 3 SSg size, these go out like bullets and I know they cast a bit further than I can feed at full pelt so were ideal as I wanted to get as far out as possible into the middle of the lake.
I have tried varying methods of attaching unloaded pellet wagglers to the line (Drennan grip stops, waggler attachments etc), but I do it the way Steve Ringer does which is to thread the float onto a couple of inches of doubled up line and place shot onto the doubled up line. I've never cracked off on the strike like this and the float flies out as straight as an arrow, no wandering off as it does with waggler attachments. The only drawback with this method of connection is that you cannot adjust the depth by moving the float, therefore you need different length hook lengths tied up to cater for all situations.
Hooks were size 16 Kamasan Animal Eyed (unbreakable) and my method of attaching the pellet to the hook was via a bait band tied to the hair. Hook length was 0.18 Browning cenitan. I bought two bags of the 8mm Barford pellets(more like 11mm) for both feeding and the hook. As I had lots of spare time on my hands I tied up lots of spare hook lengths before the start at 5 foot and 2 and a half foot in length. I could always cut these down to suit whatever depth I needed to fish at. I had some 6mm pellets on my side tray as well, but they were gonna be unused. In a normal match I would never fish one method and one bait, but with Fisho you have to win and at times commit suicide before the start.
There were a few proper anglers on my lake and it was basically a preview for Whiteacres. Next to me on peg 8 was ex world champ Tommy Pickering, a few pegs round in an unfancied corner peg was commercial legend Steve Ringer. On the peg that had won the previous 2 qualifiers was Les Thompson and a few round from him was big Tony Wynnick. On the bank opposite me was Grant Albutt and on the house bank was Geoff Ringer. I had to beat all of these just to have a chance of winning my lake, let alone the qualifier!
The all in sounded and I fired some pellets out and cast into the middle of the lake, the float flew straight as an arrow and landed nicely. Strangely though all I could see was my float lying parallel on the surface of the water. I reeled in and my float remained out there, the body of the float had become detached from the base somehow! what a disastrous and embarrassing start!!
It didn't cost me much time though as I was tackled up and fishing again in a couple of minutes and focused on feeding my peg. I had started on the deeper rig set at 5.5 feet thinking that the fish would be deep to start with and may come shallower later as the feed coaxed them upwards. I fed 3 or 4 pellets before I cast out, then after the float had settled for between 20 and 30 seconds 3 or 4 more, then 3 or 4 more 20 seconds later. If I had not had a bite by now I would reel in and begin the process again.
The first 15 minutes elapsed without a bite or indication of any sort, until I saw a couple of fish swirl under the surface where I had been feeding. Obviously this was the signal to change to the shallow rig. In the meantime Les Thompson on fancied peg 15 had already bagged a couple of decent fish. It took ten minutes at 2 and a half foot to get a bite, which I managed to miss. Ten further minutes and I still had not had another bite, whilst Tommy next to me had a fish and was playing another. Fortunately, soon after a cast the float dipped and I was in to what felt like a right animal. The rod was hooped to the butt and the fish took some line initially. Ten minutes later I was still playing what was obviously a proper munter, it was plodding stubbornly under my rod tip. Eventually she surfaced and I scooped my net under a common which I reckon was 16lb! It had taken me a while to get a fish but at least it was a proper 'un!
Unfortunately this proved to be a false dawn because despite switching between rods for the next twenty minutes I couldn't catch. By this point Les Thompson had 7 or 8 fish and seemed to be catching at about 2.5 foot and was paralysing the match. Steve Ringer had put a few fish in the net as well and was catching up in the water on the long pole from his unfancied corner peg. I decided to deepen the hook length on my shallow rod to about 3.5 feet to try and get something to happen. All the time I was still pinging 4 pellets every 30 seconds.
If I was to have any chance of catching Les Thompson I needed to start catching and fortunately things started to happen. It was about an hour and a half into the match and suddenly I hooked my second fish of the day at 3.5 foot, this one came in considerably easier than the first one and at about 8lb was still a big fish, this gave me two fish for well over 20lb. I don't know whether the fish had drifted towards me or the change in depth was crucial but I had a little spell of bites and a few more fish between 6 and 10lb. At this point I wasn't catching on the drop but leaving my float to settle at its full depth and then catching. Over the next hour or so I was still picking up odd fish and all of them were proper weighers. I was not getting many indications or bites, but when I did get one I tended to hit it. Tommy and Steve's fish had dried up and I was catching as well as anyone on the lake. The only problem being Les had the head start of 7 or 8 fish. I really needed a golden run to overhaul him.
With 2 hours remaining most of my fish were now coming on the drop, although the frequency of bites were not picking up I was catching about 4 fish per hour I guess. I now felt that I had found the correct catching depth and was hoping to have that golden spell that I knew was needed to catch Les. Something interesting that occurred a couple of times was if I missed a bite, it would be common for me to cast out again and get another bite again straight away. This had to be the same fish especially as on many of these occasions I had been bite less for the proceeding 20 minutes. I managed to pick off a couple of extra fish by casting as hard as I could 5 yards or so beyond my other casts, obviously some fish were sitting in a little "safe zone" in the middle of the lake. By the end of hour 4 I had 14 big fish, but was still several behind Les, I felt I was a clear second on the lake however. Bank side rumours were that Les was looking unstoppable unless someone had a spell binding last hour.
I was optimistic going into the last hour as I had settled into a nice rhythm and just kept casting and feeding the whole time in the hope I could have a golden spell. Frustratingly though my last hour proved a real let down, the whole lake seemed to have switched off and no one seemed to be catching. I shallowed up to 2 feet just to try something different, however this didn't feel right and I was soon back at the depth where I'd had most of my success during the course of the day. With 20 minutes to go I finally had a bite and latched into fish number 15 and after another 10 minute scrap fish number 15 hit the net which was a low double. Despite making several more casts before the end that was to be the end of my match.
Rumours at the end were that Les had 21 fish and would weigh in around 200lb, the locals logic being that the fish averaged about 10lb. Apparently Jim Barrowman and Keiron Rich would be the other closest challengers from the other lakes but it was widely accepted that Les would get that ticket to the final unless he had breached the net rules or something. As I watched Les weigh in it soon became apparent that his fish were smaller than people had thought and were not ten pounders. After several weighs he totalled 158lb. This led a couple of people who had been watching me to state that I would run him very close. However, I knew that my fish did not average the required 10lb plus to beat him, unless I had made a big misjudgement. I was the last to weigh in on the lake and my 15 fish went 144lb 3 ounces. A 15lb donkey last chuck would have been enough, but thats easy to say after the match. Les had deserved to win the match as he had caught 6 more fish than me and was unlucky for them not to weigh more. I wasn't that bothered to be honest because I wasn't in pole position at any point during the match, so it wasn't a big let down at the end.
The match re-inforced my view that Barford is one of the best Fisho venues around. There were several ton plus weights, with Jim Barrowman 3rd in the match with 130lb odd from Colton and Kieron Rich 4th with 120lb from the Top Lake.
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