Sunday 3rd February 2008. Open Match Maldon Canal. 25 Pegs

After arriving home from Pewsey at 9pm from a 15 hour day I was too knackered to go out in the evening as intended and decided to go fishing the next day on the Maldon Canal instead. I could simply roll up to this match and use my left over joker and bread from the day before, so no preparation was required. This would also be good additional practice for the semi and allowed me to keep my "canal head" on. The match was to be pegged at the factories and to the left and right of the footbridge at Tescos. As is normal with this canal an end peg would have been my choice but the match could really be won from anywhere. After coming second in an open in January with under 4lb I was not setting my sights too high in this one and combined with the cold, icy weather I felt 5lb would be mega.


Bait for the Day


Liquidised bread
1/3 kilo of joker
bloodworm hookers
few castors
few maggots and pinkies
lobs.


My peg put me on peg 24 which was one off the end peg of the match. This put me to the left of the footbridge at Tescos in an area which hadn't been match fished for a while. Some people were predicting blanks from down here, but I didn't see any reason for there being any less fish here than elsewhere. I had drawn next to my Wickford team mate Paul Connell who was to my right on 23. This provided me with an extra incentive to do well as I didn't want to have my pants pulled down my mate off the next peg! On arriving at my peg I was encouraged to see that I had a decent gap between myself and peg 25 (30 yards) due to the towpath narrowing, also there was a slight tinge of colour in the cut, so all in all didn't look to bad.


After catching mainly perch over joker in leam in the last match I decided to employ these tactics again, however roach were my primary target to win so punch was to be equally important with my feeding at the start. I was going to feed in exactly the same way as the previous match with bread at 10 o' clock at 6 metres and 2 o' clock at 10 metres. The joker was to fed at 2 o'clock at 6 metres and 10 o'clock at 10 metres. I had around 4.5 foot on all these lines. My only other line was to be a lobworm line at thirteen down the canal to my left. This would hopefully exploit the decent gap between myself and the next peg where a 3lb perch could be laying. As I think I have said in my previous Maldon Canal blog the roach definitely prefer the bread to the joker here when it gets really cold which is slightly strange.


Rig Specifics and Feeding


Feeding was to be of a positive nature on the bread and negative on the joker. At the start I introduced a full pot of liquidised on both the 6 and 10 metre lines. I had come here to win the match so didn't see any point in drip feeding the bread, also as I have said before you have more chance of a bonus fish if you put a decent bit of bread in at the start in my opinion and hopefully means you can catch for longer before topping up (always dicey). On the joker lines I fed approximately 30 mls of joker in three balls of double leam on both lines. My intended quarry here were perch and I wanted them to be working hard to find the bait in amongst the leam and not gorging themselves. My other line was to be fed with 6-8 lobs and a few castors in the hope of a bonus big stripey.


Two rigs were to be assembled for the two joker lines and two for the two punch lines. My joker rigs were to be my faithful Milo floats (wire stem, fine fibre bristle) in 4x12's and 4x14. The 4x12 rig was shotted with no12s and the 4x14 number 11s. Both featured a bulk and 4 droppers attached to a size 26 IM1 which is perfect for single and double joker. Line was 0.08 to 0.06 Cenitan and elastic was a Preston original number 2. Bread rigs were exactly the same as I had set up the previous day at Pewsey, to summarise, a light and heavy rig both attached to a 22 B511. The one employed would be dependant on the response of the fish on the day.

After feeding I went straight out on the 6 metre bread line and after 10 minutes had not had a bite. . Therefore, it was time to catch that 3lb perch which was lurking down my peg. Despite dragging the tail of a lob around for 10 minutes again I was still biteless and I was not the only one as Paul at the next peg was suffering a similar fate, in fact I hadn't seen anyone catch in the dozen or so pegs in my field of vision. It was now time for a drop on the long bread line and this time a tentative dip on the float signalled the presence of something fishy, despite missing the indication I was soon swinging in my first fish of the day a 2 ounce roach. I caught another 10 between half an ounce and an ounce before hitting into something more substantial. This fish moved quickly down the canal staying deep and I couldn't fathom out what it was until it came to the top ........ an 8 ounce perch on bread!!! very unusual to say the least, but a handy bonus all the same.

The fish on the long bread line were beginning to get small so I switched to the 6 metre bread line hoping they had arrived here as well. I had an instant bite here and hit into something quite substantial which stayed deep and moved quite quickly. Instinctively, I knew I had hooked another perch on bread! Unfortunately my 0.06 hook length didn't hold up when the fish snagged me solid in the middle of the canal and we parted company. The fish felt very decent and I reckon was certainly over a pound, it would have been a handy bonus which I felt could have cost me. As a consolation prize I had 3 ounce roach in quick succession from the 6 metre line before no more bites were forthcoming and another look on the lobworm line proved fruitless. I decided to feed another 6 lobs on this line with a few castors as obviously there were a few stripeys around.

An hour and a half of the match was now gone and I went back onto the rested long bread line and continued to put roach in my net. It was an obvious trend that my first few fish on this line were the biggest before the stamp got progressively smaller and tiny 3 to the ounce fish invaded the peg. These small fish were best caught using a very small punch, however they caused a fair few missed bites. After two hours I had about 50 fish for about 2.5lbs in the net and it was time to top up the long bread line and try the joker. Meanwhile I hadn't seen much else being caught and Paul was struggling next to me with just a few tiny fish.

The 6 metre joker line provided no response with either joker or bloodworm on the hook and the 10 metre joker line was equally poor with just a few tiny bumble bee perch. These were my main catching lines in the last match and were obviously not working, therefore I decided to refeed the long line with 100 ml's of joker in a bit of grey leam just to get it to the bottom. My thinking behind this was that now I wanted to try and catch roach on these lines and joker in its natural form (without heavy soil/binders) is the way to go for roach. My plan was to give this half an hour to settle before coming back to it. Another look on the lob again proved boring so it was back on the bread with half the match remaining.

Again I got immediate responses on both bread lines, with the 6 metre one dying completely after 3 or 4 fish and the long line still following the pattern of the roach getting progressively smaller, however i could always get bites on this line which was something. I decided now was the time to top up both lines in the hope of a run of better stamp fish. I topped up with half a pot of liquidised on both lines. This had the effect of killing the 6 metre swim, however the long line provided a few slightly better 2 ounce roach before the shites returned again. There was now about an hour and three quarter left and I was up to around 70 fish and 3 pounds in the net.

Time for a go on the long joker line again which I had re-fed. I went in with the 4x14 rig and a small single bloodworm on the hook and immediately caught a 2 ounce perch and then a 4 ounce roach before bites stopped. A switch to double joker bought several more small roach and perch before bites came from the tiny fish only, just like the bread line. It was encouraging as at least my re-feed had worked, but it seemed to be absolutely impossible to hold fish of any stamp in any swim for a period of time. The remainder of my match was spent switching in between the long bread line and the long joker line and ended up with a final tally of 110 fish. The final 20 minutes were spent on the bread as my long joker line died, obviously this was in need of a top up but I felt it was to late to do so.

After the match it was clear that many people had struggled to put together any amount of bites and Paul next to me was admitting to a 1lb. I thought I had between 4 and 5 pounds which I felt would be good unless someone had caught lumps. I weighed in 4lb 8 ounces which was enough to win the match. The next weight was a low 3lbs which consisted of a couple of big perch from the factories end. Paul next to me weighed in 14 ounces. I think the decent sized gap between me and the peg to my left had certainly helped me to draw and hold some extra fish, so I was fortunate in this respect on the day.

Lessons learnt

My major change if I fished the match again would be the way in which I fed the long joker line. With hindsight my double leam approach was wrong on the day and I should have fed around 200 mls of joker in a bit of grey to get it to the bottom. My peg contained a lot more roach than perch and this way of feeding appeals to the roach more. This would have hopefully held the roach all match and would have prevented the need for a top up. However, it can be difficult to predict on the day what species you are likely to catch especially as my area of the canal had not been match fished for a while.