Two 40 plus peg matches in the space of a couple of days both within twenty minutes of my house is almost unheard of these days, but this rare event was about to occur. Fennes is a place I only visit occasionally and nearly always in the winter. I was second in this annual match last year with 17lb of roach on pole and bloodworm and was hoping to go one better this year. Three lakes were to be used for this match, Ash Grounds, Hobbs Croft and Hill & Black. Fennes is a cracking looking fishery and if I won the lottery is the sort of place I would love to buy as it has so much potential. The lakes are established, picturesque and are of good size. Unfortunately, it has not been stocked properly for many years and consequently the carp average double figures, not the right size for match fishing in my opinion.
Last year I drew peg 18 on Ash Grounds and to be honest I was hoping to draw anywhere on Ash grounds or Hobbs Croft. Myself and Danny Grimsey had decided we would have an early bath if we drew Hobbs Croft, due to the lack of silver fish in the lake! Incidentally carp or brown goldfish were to count as a pound.
Bait for the day was to be as follows:
1/2 kilo of joker.
hooker pack of bloodworm.
1 pint of castors.
mixture of micro pellets, 3mm and 4mm pellets soaked to soften.
1/2 pint of 4mm expanders.
1/2 pint of red and fluoro maggots.
1/2 bag of green swim stim.
3 kilos of terre de somme
bag of grey leam
At the draw queue I hung back afraid of drawing Hill & Black, I was not in the right frame of mind to tackle this lake. Fortunately, all of the H&B pegs went quite quickly, so I dipped into the draw bag with my mind at ease. My draw of Ash Grounds peg 19 put me one peg away from last year, therefore I was more than happy with this.
After plumbing up I found a flat bottom from 8 metres onwards with a depth of about 6.5 foot. This was good as I knew some of the pegs on AG were real bomb holes which kept sloping sharply at 13 metres, not what I wanted for feeding hard balls of leam.
Tactics for the Day
At the start I was planning to feed 500ml of joker in about 15-20 balls of double leam (comprising 1/4 bag of grey) squeezed very hard at 13 metres. The balls were squeezed hard as I was expecting a large head of roach in my peg and I didn't want them to come in and just muller all of my feed. With the "hard balls" the fish would hopefully have to work hard for the bait as the balls would break down slowly, keeping them in the peg for longer. My rigs for this line were to be Sensas Jean Francois in 0.6 and 0.4, both comprised main lines of 0.09 to hook lengths of 0.07, hooks were size 22 B511s. This was likely to be my main catching line. I was also going to flick 5 castors at regular intervals at 2'o clock on the 8 metre line. My castor rig again consisted of the same line combinations, but with a spread bulk at 3/4 depth and 4 no 11 droppers. At 16 metres I fed a small ball of swimstim groundbait, together with half a pot full of mixed softened hard pellets and expanders. My intended quarry on this line was to be skimmers and maybe an odd carp. I assembled a feeder rod to fish the open water, this featured the swim stim mix with a few pellets and dead maggots added.
I started the match on the feeder whilst leaving my pole lines to settle. I didn't want to touch the bloodworm line for at least an hour to hopefully allow a good head of fish to settle here. The feeder line was unproductive and after an hour i still hadn't had an indication on my double dead flouro maggot hook bait, this was despite other people nicking odd skimmers. Opposite me I had seen Danny Grimsey lasso a couple of skimmers and a brown goldfish on his long pole line. This was the signal I needed to try my 16 metre line, however again frustratingly I did not get an indication and was probably 4lb behind Danny and many other competitors.
It was time for my main 13m bloodworm line. I lowered my 0.6 gram rig in with a single bloodworm on the hook and the float kept going, my first fish was a 2oz roach. Next put in was a 6oz fish and i was away. For the next hour and a quarter the peg was solid and i was getting a roach between two and six ounces as soon as the hook bait reached the final foot of the swim. I double bulked my rig to make it ultra positive and some serious "power swinging" began. In an hour and a quarter I reckon I had put 8lb in the net and was up with, if not in front of everyone else and was thinking 20lb was easily on the cards. Danny's roach line had not really fired so he was not bagging at this point.
Inevitably things began to slow as I reckon the fish were giving the bait some serious hammer, it was time to top up. I took the remainder of my double leam and joker and cupped in a further 8 balls with 200ml of joker in. I planned to leave this for half an hour whilst I tried the other lines. The 16 metre pellet line was disappointingly still devoid of fish and the same could be said of the castor line, which was frustrating as I was convinced I would catch on it as my peg was obviously solid with roach and I had been consistently feeding it whilst on the bloodworm. A desperate 10 minutes on the feeder meant it was time to sack again ont bloodworm ..... or was it?
I dropped the bloodworm rig back in and expected an instant response and got one from an ounce roach, then a half ouncer, not the stamp I was looking for and I knew I had fooked the re feed up. Next put in resulted in me striking and 10 feet of number 3 laggy emerged from the pole and nothing moved, had I hooked the bottom, was it a plastic bag full of water? After a couple of seconds something started moving slowly and it was obvious I was in to a large carp. I shipped straight back to the top kit, hoping to "mug it" before it woke up, however the hook pulled and I suspected it was a foul hooker. I was hoping this was the reason for the peg being slow. However, over the next couple of hours I could only catch spasmodically from this line with only the odd netter. Frustratingly, I did not manage a single bite from any of the other three lines even though I was absolutely convinced the castor line would go.
In the final hour I could see Danny Grimsey catching odd harry rimmers and roach opposite me and he was easing ahead, however no-one else was doing to much damage.
I weighed in a disappointing 11lbs 15oz, which was obviously below par for the peg. However, I won my section and was 4th overall in the match. Grimace won the match with 15lb odd, a nice mixed bag with several big skimmers and a couple of brown goldfish being the weighers in his catch. My peg was definitely a potential match winning peg. I didn't even have the consolation of a raffle prize this time!
Lessons learnt
I know that I fed my joker correctly at the start , however my top up was not correct. I probably should have topped up with one or two joker rich balls, rather than putting a load of gear on their heads again, also I should have tried resting and going back on the line thus delaying the top up longer. Maybe I could have been a bit unlucky drawing that carp in which in turn spooked the roach. Also, I should have had a heavier more positive bagging rig assembled. Ideally, I reckon putting in a kilo of joker at the start would have been correct, this would have eliminated the need for a top up. Bait limits dictated otherwise though.
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