Feature: 'Up in the Air', chapter 1

When I got back into fishing again last summer after a 14 year break, one of the first methods I targeted was fishing shallow. Going back to the days when commercial fisheries first started sprouting up, we would use a gallon or more of maggots which was expensive but productive. These days of course we have pellets that are cheaper, make more noise and target the Carp and bigger silvers like Barbel, Chub and Ide (yes, the Barbel also come shallow to compete for the food).

I thought I would write this article to document my first year of modern shallow fishing, open up some of my findings to general debate and also perhaps to offer help to anyone who hasn’t tried shallow fishing much, so here goes:

Firstly we need to explore the principal of fishing shallow. I have heard people say that for every Carp on the surface there are 20 on the deck and therefore that is where they fish, on the deck. Contrary to popular belief however, the idea is not to target fish cruising on or near the surface. It is in fact a method to draw fish up in the water where they will compete heavily for food and pay less attention to which particle they swallow. I have fished many matches in poor conditions where I have caught better than those around me by catching at half depth or shallower and the reasons are because of the feeding pattern and finding where the fish are comfortable to feed. So let’s explore the concept of making the fish feed where you choose and then why getting them up in the water is an advantage:

Firstly, if you are good at paste fishing and enjoy the method, you will no doubt be dump feeding to keep the fish hard on the deck. This is because you do not want line bites that will waste your time, pull the hook out of the paste and result in foul hookers. You are therefore in control of where the fish feed. With shallow fishing the concept is the complete opposite and you are forcing the fish through the attraction of sound and their desire to compete for food to come up and start grabbing at anything that resembles a tasty snack. The benefits of this tactic are that you can attract fish from a wide area often poaching them from your neighbours and that you get more feedback from the swim enabling you to alter things to suit the ever changing situation.

Let me say at this point that I am not suggesting fishing shallow is better than fishing paste, there is a time and place for every method but I do feel that the majority of match anglers opt for paste because you are usually fishing on the deck and that is where they feel comfortable fishing.

Having noted the benefits of fishing shallow and the reasoning behind the method, let’s now look at 2 of the simplest styles of shallow fishing that I have concentrated on this year. Namely the pellet waggler and the pole & dibber, both of which I use on my local waters that contain a large head of small to medium sized Carp. For this reason I will focus mainly on this style of venue rather than the deeper waters that have fewer fish but larger specimens.There have been many articles written about the pellet waggler so instead of running through the basics of the method, I would like to talk more about rigs, depths and feeding.

The pellet waggler – I am a great believer in keeping things simple. I would rather have the ability to feed correctly than a complex rig and also on my local waters the fish range from 1lb – 3lb on average so I see no need for anything other than a conventional waggler style set-up. I will therefore use either a styro or balsa waggler (both un-loaded) that is short and dumpy and just large enough to chuck at whatever range you can fire pellets. Normally a 3AAA or 4AAA float will be fine as I mainly use 6mm hard pellets but I also carry 5AAA and 6AAA for windy days and 8mm pellets.There has been much hype about styro-foam as being the best material however, I have compared them to hand made balsa models (both made by Nick Gilbert) and we concur that neither dives more than the other and the flight is very similar so long as the grade of balsa used is the lightest and most buoyant.



There are other styles of float that I will occasionally use including loaded Puddle Chuckers and thick Carp wagglers both made by Drennan. You are best to glue the base of the float into the plastic peg as they can come flying off but these floats can help in strong wind or deeper water.The styro and balsa wagglers are fitted using a float adaptor although the style with a hole in the silicon base can split with loaded floats so I also carry the type with a swivel and silicon sleeve. Shotting is simple with a bulk around the float with heavier shot closest to the float and smaller shot either side to help secure them. A typical arrangement for a 4AAA waggler would be 1 AAA either side and 2BB either side of those giving a total of 2 AAA and 4BB which equates to 4AAA. The smaller shot are easier to move and have less chance of pinging off the line plus using more shot helps to create more of a ‘slap’ on the surface.

Reel line for me is simply one of the cheap bulk lines you can get like Mr. Crappie, Sundridge Force or Mullarkeys own brand. They tend to be more of a floating line than a sinking line which helps and they are reliable and strong. I will usually use 3lb but may go up to 4lb for larger fish. If you can’t land a bonus 8lb Carp on 3lb or 4lb line in open water then something is wrong! For hook lengths I use Fox Micro in 0.14 – 0.18 and usually 6” in length.I have tried a few hook patterns, most of which have ended up in the bin with only the Drennan Carp Match surviving. I find the Drennans bump far less fish on the strike and you lose far less through hook pulls. These have a 3.2mm Gardner pellet band tied into a small loop and hair rigged to them. I use 2 lengths of hair that allow either a 6mm or 8mm pellet to be ‘a pellets’ distance below the bend. Having the band in a loop helps to prevent the hair going curly through bagging and allows the pellet to hang more naturally bellow the hook bend rather than getting misshaped and hanging half way up the shank.

Lastly, I use a very light and short rod with a nice soft through-action to cope with lunges under the tip. Most pellet waggler rods I have seen are more suited to larger fish but for 1lb – 3lb fish then my Milo ‘Steve Gardner’ Light Waggler Rods are perfect. I hear the 11’ Preston Carbonactive is also well suited. The rods are paired with TD-R 2500 reels.

Moving on to depth and feeding, the first consideration is clearly the weather and if it has been continuously warm then my rigs will be set at 6” and 12” deep (I usually have 2 rods set up). First chuck will be with the 12” rig and I will take things from there. In less than perfect conditions I will probably set up 2 rods at 12” and 24” deep as sometimes the fish prefer to hang out mid-water and often you can catch close to the surface without seeing a single Carp there all day long. The reasons for changing depths are obviously due to catch rate, foul hookers or trying to pick off larger fish. Another point to mention here is that often I am fishing up to a feature where the depth is less than in open water and in fact fishing 12” deep might only be 12” or 24” off the bottom. This depth can only hold a limited number of fish but feeding with a catty spreads the feed around and enables you to hold fish over a large area and also to be selective about where in the swim you cast.

So let’s look at feeding now in more detail: we have already established that feeding often is key here because this is fundamental to getting the fish up in the water but I am always surprised at how few anglers feed often enough. I have seen countless anglers fishing the pellet waggler and only feeding every minute or so when my definition of ‘often’ is to feed with only 5, 10 or 15 second intervals. Even when I am playing fish I will still try and maintain a frequent pattern by shoving the butt between my knees to free my hands.If conditions are hard then I will still feed often but just cut down to 3 or 4 pellets at a time where the quantity on a bagging day will be nearer to a dozen. Of course in perfect conditions the fish will respond immediately and you may not have to alter your feeding pattern for 2 or 3 hours but often this year the weather has been less than perfect and you may find that you have to feed a lot to force the fish to take notice or to come into your peg.Sometimes it does pay to stop feeding altogether and just chuck out your waggler a couple of times, it can pay dividends to also rest the swim for a while but maintain the feed rate so that the fish build their confidence again. I usually have a margin swim primed for this where it is possible to pick up some bonus lumps on paste or meat every now and then.

As well as considering what the fish are doing, you also have to consider what the anglers next to you are doing as well and if they are fishing the waggler then you need to check if they have a better or worse chuck, and a better or worse cross wind. If you know your neighbours then you can also judge how well they can fish the method and how much they are likely to feed. It would not be uncommon to need 8 pints against good shallow anglers where 6 pints might have done the job fishing next to anglers fishing alternative methods. I will always take at least 10 pints with me and expect to use at least 6.While we are talking about feeding, it is important to mention where you cast as you can often pick up bonus fish or improve bite ratio by chucking outside of the feed area or just up to the edge. Often it pays to get tight to features to maximise bites but if you can pick off the larger fish that are wiser and hang off the main feed then you don’t need to catch so many! There are some other tricks to consider if bites dry up but I will leave those for now or I will end up writing a book instead of an article.

Lastly, perhaps I should mention that when feeding, my rod is always laid across my lap and the top of a keepnet allowing an angle to cushion any takes while my hands are on the catty. I reckon on a reasonable day 25% of my fish will hook themselves and pull the rod round. In fact, I am considering training myself to feed while still holding the rod. It can’t be any harder than using a catty while holding a pole and it is just a matter of muscle memory and habit, just like the way you learn to hold a golf club properly.

The shallow pole – having enjoyed my first attempts with the pellet waggler, I soon moved onto the pole and to a certain extent I find this even more enjoyable for a number of reasons. Firstly I will usually fish it quite short (7m – 11.5m) into open water which allows you to come in or go out much more than fishing a waggler up to an island and secondly because the whole motion process of feeding and casting is quicker, smoother and easier to handle without breaking your feeding pattern.

If you saw the rigs I use then at first glance they look extremely basic but although simple in construction, they are actually precisely refined to perform exactly how I want them to. Firstly the float is not one that you can buy in the shops. I have wasted money on a number of styles of dibber only to find that they are too big, too small, too light or too fragile. I therefore sent my float-making mate a design that I felt would be much better. After testing a few prototypes we have now arrived at a design that I think is perfect. It is constructed from balsa with a short, thick glass stem to cock it down to the base of the tip but with a straight-ish tip just long enough to take two Gardner pellet bands and the weight of a 6mm or 8mm wetted pellet. The idea of the pellet bands is to avoid the use of an eye that can create tangles and pull out but also they are far less likely to be cut by the line than standard large diameter float rubbers but I use two just in case one does cut. The float is about 50mm-60mm long which is ideal and also just heavy enough to slap around.



Main line will be between 0.16 and 0.20 Fox Micro with a lower diameter hair rig hook length identical to the ones I use for the pellet waggler. Shot will be a single no.8 directly under the float to act as a ‘stop’ and also enabling me to take it off if I want to use a bit of paste or if the water becomes choppy and I need more tip showing. Lastly, I will have two lengths of rig made up on winders. Firstly a short-line rig where the float can be between 6” and 12” from the pole tip and secondly a long-line rig where the float can be between 24” and 36” from the pole tip. These rigs enable me to fish very shallow or at half depth but also they perform in two different ways. The short-line rig acts as a ‘hanging’ rig where the fish hang themselves and you simply see the elastic streaming out of your pole and the long-line rig can be used to flip the rig over the pole tip when slapping and also to keep the pole well off their heads.

Moving on to the gear on the bank, you will usually see me set up for speed unless the wind is very strong and I will have a single V roller behind me and at an angle and use the mouth of a keepnet as a pole sock. Shipping back, breaking down and freeing my hands up is made easy and the angle of the pole roller enables me to swing hooked fish away from the swim as soon as they are hooked and draw them in well away from the rest of the fish. This is a speed method on my local venues and I need to ensure that I give myself as much fishing time as possible.My bait choice will nearly always be 6mm hard pellets for feed and for the hook with 4mm a possibility on harder days. The range I can feed at by hand is fundamental to the distance I fish with this method. If I can feed at 10m with my weak hand while holding the pole with my strong hand then I will fish at about 8m allowing me to go longer if I need to follow the fish out. If I need to fish longer or if the wind turns into my face then I have learnt to flip the pole into my weak hand and feed with my strong hand swapping back only to slap the rig or to play fish. I can probably gain one or two meters extra feeding distance with my strong hand although having the pole in my weak hand is slightly less graceful, but hey, I’m in it to catch fish not look good!



Feeding is similar to the way I described for the pellet waggler although it is now possible to be more precise with accuracy and frequency. As soon as I have hooked a fish I will throw pellets on it’s head to keep the other fish busy. As soon as I have drawn the fish away from the swim I will feed again and then again when I have broken down, again when I have netted the fish, again when I have slipped the top kit back on and again before slapping the rig back in. By this time the fish have forgotten all about one of their brothers being hooked and are ready to climb up my pole.

Having talked about the ‘bagging’ side of the method, there are also days where the fishing is rock hard but a shallow approach will still beat a deck approach. A couple of times this year I have done well catching 35lb to 45lb of small Carp having fed 6 pints of pellets and catching between 12” and 24” deep in 4’ or 5’ of water. Proof that the method can force fish into feeding and you don’t have to fish on the deck to get bites.One or two other interesting points spring to mind as well. I recall an open I won at Monk lakes around June time with 114lb of Carp……a couple of Tench…… and a Barbel……all caught fishing 6” deep! It seems that getting the fish into feeding mode up in the water works on otherwise regarded ‘bottom feeders’. I also won a small match at Sam’s Lakes in Headcorn catching silvers on maggot and when I came shallow in the last hour I had a few large skimmers and proper Bream at half depth. I am sure I would not have caught these fish shallow if I wasn’t hand-feeding maggots every 5 – 10 seconds.

I am quite sure I have left out a lot of detail here and that most of the contents will be nothing new to anyone reading it but I hope that anyone who wanted to learn more about a shallow approach will benefit from this and that it may spark a few thoughts among others.

Shallow Bream at Sam's - 11/10/08

Sam’s lakes just south of Headcorn form an idyllic picturesque venue consisting of 2 lakes with around 30 pegs on each and run by a very nice chap called Mike. Nick Gilbert had organised this Maggotdrowners match and today we had about a dozen pegs booked on the bottom lake for a ‘silvers-only’ match as the carp here are too few to give everyone a good days fishing in a match situation and also there is a good head of silvers here with some stonking Chub!



As is usually the case when I fish a match with Nick, I got drawn next to him but his platform projected about 2m further into the lake than mine which I thought could be a problem for me. I therefore decided on a 13m line to draw fish from the distance he was likely to be fishing and also an 8.5m line for loose feeding by hand. I set up rigs for fishing over-depth with corn and maggot at 13m, over-depth with maggot at 8.5m and also a shallow maggot rig.

When Nick called the all-in I stood up holding my pole and balled-in 4 jaffas at 13m. I then began flicking maggots over the 8.5m line and fished double maggot for a while but without much joy. Both sides of me were catching skimmers and small Roach steadily so maybe I had spooked my peg with the jaffas but I was sure things would settle down for me. I changed to single maggot and the reaction was surprising as I was now getting quick bites but I bumped the first 6 fish. Maybe the B611 hooks I was using were too tough but I was hoping for a few of those big Chub!

Eventually I started to connect with the bites as I waited for them to develop more and soon I was catching up with my neighbours. After about an hour I decided to take a look on the 13m line as Mike the owner had passed by and mentioned that he had put a load of Bream in the lake up to around 6lb. 10 minutes later I had a bite and a 12oz Crucian came to the net but that was it so I went back to the maggot line.

By constantly flicking out a few maggots every 10 seconds and tweaking my rig I managed to increase the catch rate and also there were now some nice sized Roach and skimmers showing. By the third hour I was sure that I was ahead and Nick’s swim seemed to die off so he chucked in some groundbait to try and spark some life into it. Shortly after he hooked into something big and although we were both hoping that it would be one of those nice Chub, it turned out to be an F1 of about 4lb. He soon had another and then finally a nice 2lb Chub came out for him.

At around the start of the fifth hour I started picking up some nice sized skimmers and decided to up the anti as I thought I might have fallen behind. I had 4 pints of maggot with me and had fed 2 pints in the first 4 hours. I decided that I would feed the remaining 2 pints in the last hour to see if I could get those bonus fish buzzing. So in went about 30 maggots every 5 seconds and out came the shallow rig. I was determined to get me some nice fat Chub!!!

Now I have to admit that although my intention was to get those bonus fish feeding franticly and coming up in the water, my target was Chub, big Roach and maybe some skimmers but my first ‘bonus’ fish turned out to be a 2lb bronzed back skimmer otherwise known as a Bream (at 30 inches deep)

I’m sure I heard someone complaining that if 4lb F1s don’t count then catching Bream shallow don’t count either :-)

During this last 1 hour period I had a couple more proper Bream and a few large skimmers having shallowed up to 2’ and this added significantly to my weight. It was a shame that the all-out was called after 5 hours because this is probably the most enjoyable days fishing I have had this year, a nice change from catching Carp even though the weight would be low by comparison.

Nick grabbed the scales and various weights were recorded around the 10lb mark, Nick took his net out (and ditched the 4lb F1s) and his weight then registered 16lb 3oz. My little encounter with those Bream and one or two dog Roach settled the needle on 22lb 8oz for a great day’s fishing and a couple of traditional pound coins to add to the kitty.

This place is great and I hope we can have another silvers match here again soon!

Shannon's, Tunbridge Wells 14/09/08

Although time prevents me from doing this much, sometimes it is quite useful to watch how someone else approaches a match and as I didn’t have much on this weekend I thought I would take a drive down to a venue that I have never seen before and see how Nick Gilbert was getting on. I only intended to stay for an hour or so but ended up waiting for the weigh-in as things were becoming quite interesting……..in more ways than one!

As Nick hadn’t fished the place before, he was after some advice leading up to the match and the word on the street was that paste was the method and that nobody had managed to do well fishing shallow there. Perhaps the challenge was on then……….

I arrived about an hour or two into the match to see Nick on peg 18 fishing the tip. As I approached him he lifted into a nice Carp and I unfolded my speci chair and took my place behind him. Soon a nice 2lb Carp was in the net and Nick told me that he had 1 on paste, a few shallow but the conker bomb seemed to be working better, pinging pellets over the top.



He re-baited his hair rigged pellet band with an 8mm skretting, wrapped it in paste so that it was about the size of a small sprout and flicked it out about 30m followed by around 8 pellets every 30 seconds over the top. Within 3 or 4 minutes the tip was twitching and another pull round brought fish number 10 to the net, again around the 2lb mark. Although the average size of fish here is said to be 5lb, Nick only caught a handful that were any larger than 3lb or 4lb while he was on the bomb but the sport was consistent and nobody else seemed to be catching much.



As I sat and watched Nick’s tip we were chatting about the possibility of catching shallow as there seemed to be quite a few fish in his peg. Then Nick pointed out the fizzing where he was feeding pellets which indicated the fish were rummaging around on the deck. The tip pulled around sharply and Nick grabbed his 10’ Shakey and proceeded to strike towards the nearby tree and slapped the tip against a protruding branch! This time it was clear that a decent sized fish was on and as it came closer he grabbed his landing net and proceeded to stab the fish several times in an attempt to net it! The fish clearly woke up at this point and gave a better account of itself but Nick won the battle having subdued it and a nice 4lb Carp was added to the keepnet. Nick joked that he was not putting on a good display of ‘how to net a fish’ and I chuckled to myself recalling the first time I saw him fish on Peartree last year and trying to land an 8lb Carp by chasing it up and down the margins with his net!

The sport continued as did Nick’s feeding although I was unsure where Nick’s far bank marker was as I had noticed that sometimes he would cast at 11 o’clock and sometimes he would cast at 10 o’clock. Also some of his casts were 25m and some were more like 30m or so. I then saw him ping pellets out about 5m further than where his bomb landed and he turned round and said ‘whoops, that wasn’t very close was it’? I laughed and told him that he should have said ‘I am spreading the feed around and searching the whole swim with my bomb to pick off bigger fish from the outside’. We had a chuckle and then his tip flew round again and once more Nick struck the rod straight into the tree. Another few fish later and his clicker indicated 18 Carp although his Shakey was taking more of a beating than the fish!

As the day wore on and the pellets kept going in, we began to see signs of fish close to the surface. I was itching to see him pick up the waggler rod and then as he pinged out a few more pellets there was a swirl followed by a few fish mouthing on the top. He placed his bomb rod onto the roost (a bush to his left), picked up the waggler rod and gave it a tug to free the rig from his roost (bush). ‘What’s the chances of mugging that fish first chuck?’ he asked as he flicked out some pellets and cast his home made styro. ‘Your chances are probably quite good if you cast the float somewhere close to the fish’ I replied as his waggler landed about 4m left of the pellets and the fish. He brought it in, re-fed and re-cast, this time a bit closer but still not on the money. The third cast was right in the middle of the swim and right on top of a very accurate pouch of pellets and the float sailed away as soon as it hit the water. There is nothing quite like mugging a decent fish off the surface! You see it, feed it and cast your bait onto it’s head and then WALLOP! Great stuff! The fish was probably 5lb plus and it was like watching a kid on Christmas morning, he couldn’t wait for his next present!



Another few fish later and the sport was as good on the waggler as it was on the bomb. Another take and as Nick was unhooking the fish he snapped his hook length in the net but 20 seconds later his rod was ready. As he picked it up the reel line got caught on his pole roller and then a bit of untwisting was required. Another couple of fish and his rig came in totally tangled, a new one was ready within a minute. Pellets were going all over the shop, his casting was unpredictable but the fish were coming in nice and steady.

This sport continued for a while and the clicker read about 28 fish before the bites became fewer and less easy to hit. Nick was striking at dips but couldn’t connect. We discussed the possible reason for this as a lot of blokes say that the dips are silver fish but we disagree. I have my own theory that I explained to Nick and this is it: when you are fishing shallow the hook bait gets to it’s maximum depth very quickly. If a carp sucks the pellet in the pellet will be stopped by the resistance of the float and therefore the dip you see is not the pellet going into the fish’s mouth but simply being sucked towards the fish. We agreed that going deeper would help but I also had a theory that the carp here might be a bit stupid having not seen the shallow approach much. I had a bet with Nick that if he went a bit deeper, left his float in place and just pinged 3 or 4 pellets over the top continuously then he would get proper takes but should not strike at dips, simply leave the rod alone and either grab it when the tip goes round or lift it when the line begins to get pulled under the surface. Most Carp take on the splash but I reckoned they would take a static, suspended bait. He gave this a go!

First chuck and the float was dipping so Nick struck. He laughed because he was supposed to leave the rod alone. Again the float dipped and again he struck. I suggested that he should keep his catapult in his hands therefore needing to put it down before picking up the rod. Next chuck and the float dipped, dipped again and then on the 3rd dip it stayed under and the line began to quickly sink beneath the surface. Nick lifted and there was a good fish on the other end. He turned around and saw me with a bit of a smirk on my face!!!



Again he tried the same thing and it was working. Simply leaving the float alone, not twitching, not striking at dips, just letting it sit there and continuously pinging pellets over the top and waiting for the float to either stay under or for the line to start tightening.

This continued for a while but the sport began to slow up. We both agreed that more feed was needed and larger pouches were now going in. The clicker read 37 fish and although Nick wanted 40 it was not to be as the whistle went to signal the end.

As I said earlier, I only intended to stay a short while but when you are sitting behind someone and discussing the tactics and changes and seeing the end results it is just too interesting to leave and I am glad I stayed to the end. There is nothing like bouncing ideas and theories off of someone else who enjoys fishing the same methods and watching Nick is also quite entertaining!

As the scales came around the clip board was showing about 80lb winning but Nick had far more than this. 37 fish at an average of about 4lb should have given him about 150lb but he was happy with the 139lb that he registered to win with a good margin.

It has been said before that Nick is a bit of a haphazard angler and I must admit that I was chuckling a few times seeing those pellets miss the mark by a few metres or the waggler being cast too far left or the tip ending up in a tree but you have to hand it to him, he does alright and we had a good laugh today.

Stones Kent Masters 2 day festival - September '08

This weekend is the Stones Kent Masters 2 day festival which will be decided on section points and I put my name down along with Nick Gilbert who won it last year.

Day 1

Until this morning I had never seen this venue and upon arrival it looked interesting however the wind blowing from the coast was strong and would obviously have an impact on presentation and limit the number of options.

The entry fee was £50 for both days and I had spent about £40 on bait. Due to the rain, the wind and a drop in temperature I was expecting it to fish hard and therefore brought a lot of small natural baits with me including 6 pints of casters and ½ a kilo of worm. I would therefore need a result over the weekend to cover my costs although I wasn’t expecting to be able to compete with all of the regulars here.





On the Saturday I drew peg 31 on the match lake which had a couple of ‘pots’ in front and the wind howling from the left. These pots are about 1.5m in diameter and sunk below the surface with big reeds sprouting from them up to about 2m above the surface. Clearly these would become sanctuary for hooked carp and care would be needed to avoid getting hooked up in them.



I had 1 regular visitor to my right and 2 empty pegs to my left so I was happy with the draw although my neighbor informed me that 30lb – 40lb is always good at this end of the lake. The good pegs are apparently up the other end!

I was not sure what to do here although the regulars all seem to fish paste either close in or up to the pots so I decided to fish paste to the nearest pot in front of me and fish shallow up to the pot to my left then feed casters into the margins for silvers or lumps late in the day.

I set up 2 dibbers rigs using Nick’s hand made floats, a paste rig using a K C Carpa Cocker and a margin worm rig again using one of Nick’s diamond shaped long glass floats. Both pots were within 10m so I set up the roller a few feet behind me but it was on a steep bank and the wind might turn out to be a problem. Sure enough as the whistle went the wind picked up and the roller blew over. I had to get up and sort it out after rescuing the pole from underneath it and after sitting back down again the same damn thing happened. 5 minutes into the match and I hadn’t even managed to cup any feed in!

Having moved my carry-all and rested it on one of the roller’s legs for stability, I shipped out the cupping kit with a pot of 6mm skrettings and dumped them to the left of the pot in front. I then fed the margin to my left with a pot of chopped worm and casters and shipped out a shallow rig to fish up to the left hand pot. First slap in and I hooked a sunken reed clump that was not visible until I pulled on it and the hook was snagged up hard and fast! I tried everything to free the hook and then suddenly the latex came pinging back at me minus the whole rig and the connector! I had broken the latex! So with 20 minutes gone I had not done any fishing and was feeling very demoralized. Still, the blokes around me hadn’t caught yet so nothing was really lost. It was obvious that I wouldn’t be able to fish to the left hand pot because of the protruding reeds so I decided to fish worm over caster closer in for anything that swam and leave the paste pot to settle for a while. Out went the worm rig and in the next half hour I managed a few skimmers and rudd but not fast enough to convince me to stay on it. My neighbour had now caught a carp on paste so I shipped out the paste rig and gave it 20 minutes. The wind however was murder as my float had no cover from the onslaught of waves and apart from a couple of nibbles I had nothing to show for it.

I was now sitting there very frustrated because I really didn’t know anything about this place and my peg was nowhere near as good as it initially looked. I decided that I should focus on doing a couple of things that I am confident with and all my efforts would now go into fishing shallow and fishing down the edge. I started pinging pellets to the nearest pot in front which didn’t appear to have any underwater snags and re-fed the margin with chopped worm and caster.

As the pot was only 8.5m away, I could flick pellets out under-arm and I kept this up for a few minutes before carp number 1 was hooked. The relief on my face must have looked like someone who had been constipated for a week and just had the cork pop! I then saw a dorsal fin waving at me from the side of the pot, I’m sure the fish was resting on top of it! This was good news as I had managed to bring them shallow and now they were interested in my pellets.

On I went then and although the fishing wasn’t prolific I was still putting Carp in the net every 15 minutes or so and they all went around 1 ½ lb – 3lb. My neighbour was managing the odd carp and I felt that I was now equal with him. The other blokes in my section weren’t doing much so I felt I now had a good chance.

With about 3 hours gone the fishing seemed to die altogether so I tried the margin swim while carrying on feeding pellets. There was nothing there, not a sniff! I went back out on the shallow rig again and managed to winkle out a carp from between the pots instead of up close and I managed to alternate between catching close and in the middle but the fishing was very slow. I decided to stick with it though because I was definitely beating the 3 blokes to my left and had a small chance of beating the bloke to my right. Then once again disaster struck as a very big fish took my pellet and went straight round the back of the pot and right into the reeds. I had no chance because the fish took the float sideways and before I could react it was snagged up. I did all I could to free the rig and once again the latex came pinging back to me minus the connector which was buried somewhere in the pot. To have this happen twice in one day was unthinkable, I can only assume that having the latex stretched while on my roost in the summer had weakened it. A lesson learned the hard way here and I had now lost my 2 strongest kits with the bigger fish to contend with tomorrow.

As the final whistle went my neighbour announced that I must have murdered him although I replied that it would probably be tight. I admitted to having around 20lb – 25lb in my net but he was sure he had the same and that I had more. The scales came round and registered 35lb odd which I was shocked at and my neighbour had 23lb. So maximum points from a hard day on a new venue and JOB DONE!

In the car park I was handed £30 for coming 3rd in the super-pool and told that section payouts would be made the following day. I was telling Nick what a disaster I had in the first half hour, it turned out that he hadn’t had a good draw either and also didn’t do well in the section. He still decided to come back for the second day though to try and pick up an envelope and also help me by pinning back any leaders in his section.


Day 2


Saturday night had seen torrential rain but the sky looked a bit clearer this morning. I couldn’t stop thinking about the possibility of drawing well on the old speci lake today as the better weights were coming from here. I still had some problems though as the list of disasters continued. Last night I tried to thread new latex through the two top kits but the bush on one kit was too loose and then my diamond eye threader went and broke half way down. I asked Nick if he could bring one with him so I could fix everything at breakfast but Nick’s broke and then it fell out of my pocket and I lost it completely.

In the end I gave up and settled for the fact that I would have to fish on the better lake with my number 10 kits!

We joined the queue and Nick pulled out his peg on the match lake which looked ok and I pulled out 66 on the speci lake which DID NOT LOOK OK!!! It was on the narrow section half way up close to Nick’s peg yesterday and the section was worth between 10lb and 25lb. The problem here is that you will probably end up with a few blokes on 2 section wins and it will then come down to weight. At least I had 35lb in the bank though so all I could hope for was a section win and maybe the guys that had good draws yesterday would not put much in their nets today. I was then informed that 2 of the section winners from yesterday had drawn on flyers so my chances were slim from my peg.




With about 30m from one bank to the next and no pot to fish to, I had limited options. Nick had caught ok on the method feeder yesterday and said he could have done better if he had stayed on it all day. I therefore decided that having a static bait right in the middle of your feed was going to do best and chose to fish the feeder slightly to my left then dump spicy hemp and corn at 10m and dump caster into the right margin against a nice bank of reeds. I know it didn’t work yesterday but you can’t ignore the margins on any venue and I didn’t want to use big baits there.

The rig on my 10’ Drennan Method rod consisted of 6lb main line with a small flat bed feeder and a 3” 0.18 hook length and size 14 Drennan Carp Match hook with a hair rigged 3.2mm bait band (I could always cut off the band if I wanted to use a different bait). The pole rigs consisted of Nick’s diamonds onto 0.20 with a B611 onto 0.16. There are plenty of skimmers here and I could always step up if I got into some big carp. Shotting was a spread bulk for the margin rig and on-the-drop shirt button style for down the middle.

Upon hearing the whistle I fed the 2 pole lines and flipped the feeder out laced with Special G groundbait and a 6mm pellet. I poured myself a cupper and watched the tip. 10 minutes later and not a sniff but as I was about to bring it in the tip flew round and a nice 2 pounder was in the net. Cool! I was off the mark and all I had seen caught was a skimmer over the far side.

Another 10 minutes later and the tip went round and again a small carp came to my net. If I could keep this up all day I might do well!

As the match went on I was looking at my watch and sure enough every 10 minutes my tip went round, I even had a few 1lb skimmers as well which is no bad thing on a hard day. Every half an hour I was also dumping feed onto the 2 pole lines in the hope that fish would gain confidence and settle over them.

Another 10 minutes, another fish and so on until after 2 ½ hours I had 2 chucks without a knock. I decided to try the pole line in front and stuck on half a Dendra. The rig settled, the float slid away and the latex came streaming out. After a good fight I ended up dragging a 4lb Mirror carp into the net by it’s tail, it was foul hooked right at the end so now I knew why I had trouble preventing it from swimming under my platform. I did manage to keep it out though and was now thinking that there must be plenty of fish over the hemp and corn. Another put in and the wind picked up so I took off a no.8 from under the rig, slid the tip rubber down and put on a no. 8 back-shot. This stabilized the float and I picked off a couple of skimmers but had decided that after 30 minutes without another carp I would give it a rest. I therefore dumped more hemp and corn in and then spent 10 minutes looking in the margin rig. Once again there was no sign of fish so I dropped in over the hemp again and had another decent carp. The action was slow though and with an hour and a half to go I decided to try the feeder again and if I could catch on that then I should probably stay with it until the end.

Roy, to my right, was now catching well and had a couple of nice lumps. I reckoned he had about the same as me so things were looking a bit hairy. After 10 minutes then, the tip went and it looked like the Carp were back on the feed although I was quite sure we were all just catching the odd fish drifting past. This one though seemed bigger and as it slid over the net I saw a beautiful 6lb Ghost Mirror, what a lovely looking fish!

The sport was slower this time, I either had a bite after 10 minutes or I had to bring it in and re-bait. Time was ticking away and Roy was still catching a bit faster than me. Another couple of chucks and I had 2 more fish before the whistle went and Roy asked me what weight I had. My guess was 22lb. I had been using my clicker and clicking pounds instead of fish. He also admitted to 22lb but it looks like my guess work is still rubbish as I put 30lb 5oz on the scales beating Roy by 2lb and winning the section.

Various anglers were chatting to me about the outcome as they knew I had won my section both days but word on the vine was that 2 of the other section winners had bagged up today so my chances were looking grim. Back at the café and the prizes were handed out, 2 envelopes for my 2 section wins and 1 envelope and a trophy for coming 3rd. There were 3 of us on maximum points but overall weight had knocked me down. Never mind, my first visit to a hard venue in poor weather and I walked away with £180. Cool!

NAME/WEIGHT/POINTS/WEIGHT/POINTS/TOTAL WEIGHT/TOTAL POINTS

GLENN HOLMEN 56LB 1 75LB 3OZ 1 131LB 3OZ 2

STEVE ROBERTS 50LB 1 55LB 12OZ 1 105LB 12OZ 2

MATT LOVE 35LB 5OZ 1 30LB 15OZ 1 66LB 4OZ 2

Hawkhurst pairs match 23/08/08

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This was another well organized match run by Vince Gould from the Maggotdrowners forum with the added twist that partners would be drawn at random after the main draw for peg numbers. Partners would be on opposite banks and no pair would have 2 end pegs. I have only fished this puddle once before on peg 18 and drew exactly the same peg. I was pleased to find out that my partner for the match was to be Peter Morton although he does have a tendency to wander around and take photos for a while but being a decent chap he let’s me steel some for these blog reports!

For company I had Bill Gibbins to my left and Trevor Little further down the bank, opposite was my partner with Paul East next to him. I could see some banter flying around today, especially as across on flyer peg 1 was Nick Gilbert with Vince opposite him on the even better flyer peg 20!

The weather was the best we’ve had for a week or two and the sun was breaking through a few odd clouds and warming us all up nicely. During the previous week the match record had been broken with over 500lb of fish so today was going to be a nice and simple shallow pole approach with a few hundred pounds likely to win it. I therefore set up 2 identical shallow rigs with the dibbers Nick Gilbert had made for me, set at 6” and 18” deep, a margin paste rig with a K C Carpa Margin Cocker and a paste rig for 8.5m in front with a normal K C Carpa Cocker.

As the match started I put a couple of handfuls of 6mm Skrettings down the left margin under a bush, started to throw some out at 8.5m and then slapped the deep shallow rig over the top. 10 minutes in to the match and I hadn’t had a touch although Bill next door had 2 or 3 fish. I deepened the rig and by the first hour I had 3 fish in the net. Looking around the lake it was clear that very few were catching and it was remarkably slow. I went deeper still by adding line to the top of my rig and fished around 3’ in 6’ of water and picked off the odd fish but something was just not right about the place.

After about 90 minutes I decided that my efforts to draw fish up were not going to work and it was also clear from what others were catching that it was going to be a day for scratching around for bites. I decided to put out the deep paste rig and had 1 carp after a few minutes but then nothing. I also looked down the margin but didn’t get a touch. I think you can see that putting in 4 nets was looking like a bad idea!

For the next few hours I swapped between rigs and swims in order to pick off odd fish but my problem was that I had fed so many pellets to get them up in the water that it was hard to buy a bite but I managed a couple of nice 4lb samples to cheer myself up.

The winning weights were low with the best being 38lb. I managed 32lb 12oz for 5th and Pete and I managed 3rd in the pairs. This was yet another disastrous day, probably the third match on the trot that has fished very poorly. Maybe if we all fished with pole pots and small baits we would have done a bit better but who goes to Hawkhurst with that in mind? I am certain that the changing climate is the cause of the problem. Still it was a good day out as always with a great bunch of blokes and the banter was definitely flying around. I did manage to win a couple of £1 coins off some mates as a small consolation but I am hoping that luck is saving itself for the next few matches where some big money is up for grabs at Stones.

Southern Intersite Championship 2008 - Monk Lakes 1 & 3

There are several angling forums on the net and every year a few of them compete against each other for the ultimate prize of being the best team. There were 4 teams of 10 taking part this year and I was fishing for the Maggotdrowners team along with some of the riff raff I have fished with over the past year.

Vince Gould was organising the whole event and Nick Gilbert was the team captain and venue expert. The Maggotdrowner’s aim in these events is to keep up with tradition and come last so there was never any pressure on the day although Nick was running a super-pool which would be rather nice to have a slice of.

Having had a week of hot weather, we were all a bit concerned that the morning was very overcast and blustery. The pressure would have dropped considerably but I was still confident of a few fish and would stick with my usual shallow approach with one or two back-up methods on standby. Some of the blokes here have travelled a long way and have never fished Monks before and I offered a bit of advice to some of our team members. Anyone on the wrong end of lake 3 would need to scratch around for fish and anyone on lake 1 would need to be aggressive and steel fish from the end pegs or be aggressive if they drew an end peg.

So at the draw most of us were hoping for either the flyers on lake 3 or a decent draw on lake1. I pulled out peg 19 on lake 1 and had Nick Gilbert opposite me on peg 3. I also had Mark Hathaway a few pegs to my left and behind me on peg 24 was Matt Nutt in our team and he came over for a chat. He said that he would prefer to fish shallow so I suggested that he should ball it in and fish aggressively to draw fish away from flyer peg 23 to his left.





Apart from a couple of team members that had drawn well on lake 3, we didn’t look to have very many decent pegs so we would have to work hard for good points. I had already decided to fish aggressively and formed 6 large balls of ground pellet and crushed hemp to ball in at the start. I set up 2 shallow rigs with a new hand made dibber that I had asked Nick to make so this would be the first test for it. I have not seen a decent dibber in the shops so this was to be the ‘perfect’ shallow float. I also set up an ‘on the deck’ rig for my 7m shallow swim and a paste rig for the same line as well as a paste margin rig and an ‘on the deck’ margin rig. My plan would be to ball it in at 7m and fish shallow but would have the deck rig and paste rig ready if they wouldn’t come up. I would fish 6mm Skrettings shallow, 6mm soft hookers on the deck and ground expander paste. I also chose to feed 2mm pellets to my left and right hand margin swims and would fish either paste or Dendra over the top. I have had success here using worm in the margins for better stamp fish and was confident that I could pick up extra weight here if I needed it.

So when the whistle sounded I balled in the groundbait, fed the margins by hand and went out with the shallow rig set at 12” deep. For the first 10 minutes I concentrated on feeding 4-6 pellets every 5 seconds to get the fish up quickly. I watched across the lake to see if anyone was catching close in. I know Nick usually fished the margins early on while his shallow line builds up but I didn’t see him land a single fish so I stayed on the shallow rig and kept feeding. During the first 20 minutes I had a couple of dips but soon decided to go deeper and set the depth to 18” and started to catch small Chub. Soon the Carp were having a go and by the end of the first hour I guessed at less than 10lb in the net but was probably ahead of everyone else that I could see.
I noticed that my swim was fizzing and so either the fish were churning up the bottom or the hemp in my ground bait was causing it. As I was not exactly bagging on the shallow rig I decided to take a look on the bottom with a soft hooker. After 10 minutes I had one small Chub so had a look on the paste rig. Neither the soft paste or stiff paste could buy me a proper bite, just liners and nibbles so I went back out with the shallow rig as I had kept feeding the swim little and often. I seemed to be catching the odd Chub and Carp but felt that these were just fish that I was managing to draw up shallow. The thought occurred to me that maybe they were ‘mid water’ so I added a foot of line to my rig and slid the float up until I was now 2’ deep. Immediately I picked up Carp at a better rate and things started to look better as everyone else around me seemed to be having a very rough time.

This didn’t last for long though as during the third hour the peg just died. I also noticed that Nick had set up a waggler rod so things must have been tough over on the far bank. I had kept feeding the margins and it was now time to utilize plan C and on went a Dendra which I dropped into my left hand margin which looked the more ‘fishy’ of the 2. I didn’t have a sniff so I dropped the rig into the right hand margin and immediately had a Golden Tench around 12oz. Another drop in saw another Golden Tench come to the net but the swim needed a good handful of pellets after every fish. Soon I needed to top up my bait box as I was catching well. I recall a match earlier in the year where I got through about 4 pints of casters in the last hour and a half just by plundering the margins and this seems to be a good trick on this lake. I kept putting in handfuls of the 2mm pellets and the fish started to get bigger. A few Carp obliged and then came along the Barbel until the whistle went and I took my time landing the last fish which was probably my biggest of the day.

There was a lot of moaning around the lake as it seemed that many had struggled. I wondered how the aerator pegs had fished because I was sure that I had beaten every other peg on my side of the lake. The scales came around and weights went between 6lb and 30 odd. I reckoned on 38lb in my net but the scales pushed round to 48lb 8oz which I was pleased with but not for long as the aerator peg weighed in 70lb.

The back half of lake 1 seemed to fish better with a few weights around the 60 – 80lb mark. Matt Nutt weighed in exactly the same as me fishing the same method and lake 3 produced the expected ton plus weights but how would we fair in the points stakes?

Back at the café the guys rounded up and told stories of woe. Trevor Little had run out of paste having bagged up for the first 4 hours, Peter Mortan had done well but got beaten by a small margin and the rest had similar stories to tell. It wasn’t looking good and as the results came in it was apparent that we had failed miserably to come last and had to settle for 3rd place with Angling Forums taking top spot. Well done lads! All I could achieve was 2nd in section and another £10 for my pools bank account but I did manage to beat everyone on my side of the lake apart from the flyer aerator peg 22!

Lake 1 fished very poorly indeed and I can only put it down to the sudden change in weather. The following day it fished much better so I guess the fish had settled down by then.

The dibber that I was trying out performed well, better than anything else I have tried although I have asked Nick if he can make them a little bigger and heavier as they tended to get caught a little in the surface tension. The use of 2 pellet bands as top rubbers worked very well as they are very stretchy and the line doesn’t cut through them, nor are they so tight that the line cuts into the float when you slide it up and down. I am sure the next batch will be spot on!



Oh, I forgot to mention the red shoes! Everyone knows I fish in red so I thought I would tempt a few jokes seeing as it was going to be a day full of banter. I think some of the other teams were more worried about the shoes than my fishing ability but the distraction seemed to work lol!

Forum match on Bramley & Peartree lakes, Hartleylands

Today I am fishing a small match on Bramley and Peartree lakes at Hartleylands which Nick Gilbert has organised for members of his forum. Over the past few weeks we have been trying to think of a way to catch more fish on Peartree or to catch bigger fish in order to work out how to break the lake record in a 5 hour match. Normally I would reach for the pellet waggler on this venue because if you are good at the method you can usually frame and even win a match here. However, the last match I fished here was won on shallow pole (by Nick) at about 7m and I came 3rd fishing shallow pole at 11.5m. The shorter line was better because of the time you save and this was to become my choice for today together with fishing spicy meat down the edge for some bigger lumps. 15 turned out for the draw so there was going to be a lot of space for us however as Trevor Little pulled out our pegs for us it turned out that Nick would be fishing alongside me again. I had peg 18 and Nick had 16. Although it is always good fun fishing next to Nick, I think we both feel a bit miffed when we get drawn together because we both know we will be attacking the swim and end up having to share the fish, usually 60/40 in his favour though!

Upon arriving at my peg I realised that I had a very nice island peg with a short chuck and the wind behind me. This was crying out for the pellet waggler and I’m afraid my previous plans went out the window as I changed my mind and decided to start on the waggler to put some fish in the net, then feed the short line with pellets and also dump in a load of meat down either margin. The other reason I decided to start on the waggler was because I had recently bought 2 new 11’ Milo rods that I was dying to try out and had one of them set up shallow with a styro waggler. Along with this I also set up a meat rig for tight to the left margin and a meat rig for fishing down the shelf to my right. I then set up a shallow rig with a Scone float that I wanted to try out.

With my kit all sorted out and a few familiar faces around the lake I decided to go for a walk and found Mike explaining his floating feeder set-up to Jay. Nick and I decided to leave him to it as we walked back contemplating the wind direction and how it might effect the match.

When the whistle went I dumped in the meat and catapulted some pellets over to the island. As I rested the rod on my net to pick up the catty again, the tip flew round and fish number 1 was in the net within a minute of the match starting. After fish number 2 I called over to Nick that I was now in love with my Milo rod as the action was so soft it was a dream to use. About 20 minutes into the match Nick shouted over “how many you got now then?” and I replied “6”. Then after 30 minutes it was “9” and so it went on until I had 20 fish inside the first hour. This catch rate is typical with the wag on this lake so I wasn’t hammering it but at least I seemed to be ahead of everyone else.

During the second hour the wind picked up and started to push my float around when I was casting. Several times it ended up in a bush that was poking right out of the island and several times I snapped my hook length pulling for a break. After about 5 or 6 hooks I realised that I was in trouble because I had run out of hair rigs tied to my new Drennan Carp match hooks. I had begun to use these recently due to problems with hook holds using the PR27 pattern and my mind was definitely made up now as I lost about 5 fish in the second hour. I had made up for this however as a switch from 6mm to 8mm pellet brought me some slightly bigger fish.

As the third hour came around I had about 54 fish in the net and was probably ahead of everyone else. I mentioned to Nick that I hadn’t seen any activity on my pole line and he pointed out that although he was catching, the fish were only at half depth and his catch rate was the same as it was on the waggler which he also started on. My original plan was to drop the waggler and go out on the short line to put fish in the net faster but I was reluctant to do this as I was doing well on the wag and the fish didn’t seem to be coming quicker for Nick closer in. I continued on the waggler while I tried to make my mind up and was also dying to see if there were any lumps on the inside meat swims. Fate made my mind up though as once again a gust of wind grabbed my waggler and chucked it into the bush. I lost the whole rig on the pull and couldn’t make up my mind whether to rig it up again. I decided to pluck up the courage to throw the rod up the bank and picked up my cupping kit to top up the meat swims.

First put in and the float started to dip up and down which I put down to line bites. I wasn’t worried though because I was fishing about 4” over depth to allow for this and just waited for the float to sail away and soon it did just that. A nice 4lb fish came in after a short battle and I then dropped back in but didn’t get a sniff for a while. It turned out that the dips were also being caused by silver fish as I lifted a 1 ounce Roach out that had it’s lips glued onto my 10mm cube of meat! It fell off and I cupped in another large pot of meat and this was followed shortly by another 4lb Carp.

This sport continued but it was all too slow. I was hooking about 1 fish every 20 minutes and my weight was not increasing as much as it would have on the waggler. During the last hour I hooked a proper lump which decided to charge off and stretch my 13 hollow to an alarming length. After 10 minutes the 8lb fish was in the net and for the second time today I had decided to change something about my tackle………..to chuck away the 13 hollow and put something else in my 2 strongest power kits!

By now I knew that I had blown the match because Nick had put about 30 fish in his net in the final hour but at least I had worked out something on the day. I think that fishing for lumps down the edge should be done for 5 or 10 minutes at a time when you are resting a shallow line and it should be your shallow line that provides the bulk of your weight.

At the weigh-in Rusty put around 125lb on the scales from Bramley taken on shallow pole and Nick notched up 117lb. Trevor Little did well on paste though with 90lb and surprisingly I came 4th overall and 2nd on the lake with 88lb………….if only I had stayed on the waggler I might have stood a chance! Never mind, I would rather try out something new at a small match and be better prepared for the bigger ones!

So off I went with another £20 in my pocket and as I was waiting for the bath to run at home I emptied about £50 worth of PR27s into the bin and got out the 2 power kits fitted with the 13 hollow ready to be stripped down and rigged up with something a bit less stretchy! I will have a few busy evenings getting ready for my next match on the Reservoir!

My secret river swim and a day's pleasure fishing.........

I don’t do a great deal of pleasure fishing, just the odd trip to one of the local rivers for a bit of proper fishing instead of catching stockies for 5 hours. The season has just started and today the weather looked good and I didn’t have a match on so off I went at 8.15 in the morning armed with the bare minimum of tackle and my floppy Gortex hat to keep the sun or rain off my head.

Outside my front door is a footpath and 50 yards down this is a rarely fished free stretch of the Beult which I visited a few times last season. I had a couple of good days fishing there catching Roach, Chubletts and Perch trotting a little stick float down this narrow but picturesque river but the only time I went for something bigger on the feeder I ended up losing it to a clump of nearside reeds that the unknown culprit buried itself into. And so today’s main objective was to find out what the bigger fish are and how many of them inhabit this stretch.

My hopes were high because as you can see from the photo, this place looks like a proper fish haven and is rarely fished by anyone apart from the odd schoolboy with a lead and tin of corn. The only doubt I had was due to the possible lack of any fish moving in and out of this section because at one end is a water wheel that everything has to go through and at the other end is a shallow ford under the medieval bridge in the village centre. Now last year I saw a Common Carp around the 10lb mark cruising across this ford and this spring I saw some large skimmers drifting around in the sun-warmed shallows so maybe, just maybe, there were some nice fish to be had if I could find them.

One of the problems with fishing a natural venue that is not fished very often is finding an accessible swim. There are probably 6 or 8 swims along the bank but I could only get to a couple through all the nettles. I settled on the same swim where I lost the mysterious lump last year and proceeded to put together my 12’ MACH 3 Medium Feeder rod with a 2oz carbon tip and a medium plastic cage feeder with a size 14 eyed B911 tied to a 12” tale. My bait bucket contained about 4 pints of freshly prepared hemp mixed with a pint of casters, a tin of corn and half a pint of 6mm pellets. This was all mixed up the previous night so the concoction had time to soak and ferment a little……………..yum! I also had some Dendras for hook bait and a bit of dry groundbait in case my aforementioned concoction did not hold well in the feeder. The groundbait was 60% brown crumb, 20% white crumb and 20% crushed hemp. Last year I had tried a mainly groundbait attack for the bigger fish but this brought a lot of nuisance fish in and so this time I wanted to focus on using particles.

So, I set up my comfy carp chair (a bit different from my usual seat box), filled the feeder with bait, popped 2 Dendras on the hook and tipped it with corn and chucked it 25 yards downstream where I had hooked the lump last year. The mysterious fish in question didn’t really feel massive, just quite powerful and very determined to bury itself into the near bank reeds and nettles before I could get it within netting range.

After a few minutes the tip began to bob up and down a bit and then pulled over nicely enabling connection when I struck. The fish darted around a bit and made a good account of itself considering it was only a 10z Chub but at least it was one of the species that I was hoping for. Another similar sized Chub came along soon after and this continued until the tip slammed over and I hooked a fish that headed straight for the near side cover and buried itself in the reeds and nettles. Not again I thought! This was followed by a succession of small Chub but alas, the monster fish did not arrive.

I then started to get bites that were slower but I just couldn’t hit them. I decided to step up to a size 12 hook and increased my tail to 2’ hoping that the fish would have more time to take the bait before feeling any resistance. This worked a treat as the next fish was a 12oz Skimmer followed by it’s brother.

By now I was casting every 5 or 10 minutes which meant that a good bed of feed was going down but without over feeding the swim. The feeder I was using was working ok because it had teeth on the inside of the cage that helped to grip the mash of particles together.

The next few fish were all still Skimmers and then the swim died for a while, no knocks, no nudges, no liners. Had I caught everything in the swim? Had I spooked them off or had something bigger moved in?....Nod…nod...yank! The tip flew round and immediately I felt the familiar pull of a slab hugging the bottom and wondering what the hell was pulling back. River Bream are stronger than still water Bream because they need a bit more muscle to cope with the flow but this one obviously hadn’t ever seen a hook before because it was going bonkers! Well, bonkers in slow motion anyway! I carefully coaxed it up stream and after a bit of messing around among the near side Lillie pads I slid the net under it and admired the bronze beauty with a huge grin of contentment across my chops. 3lb, 4lb at a push.

Although I had achieved my aim of catching something a bit meaty on this river, I was not at all convinced that this was the species that snagged me up last year. A Bream just wouldn’t have the time, muscle or cunning to head for the nearside cover!

I quickly re-loaded the feeder, chucked it to the same spot and within 5 minutes the tip bounced over and another slab was on………..for about 10 seconds. This Bream was bigger and headed straight upstream and into a sunken weed bed whereby it snapped me up at the hook. Not cunning my arse! I was using 6lb reel line and 5lb Fox Micro trace so my only thought was that my hook tying hadn’t been too good. This sort of thing shatters my confidence a bit and I start wondering if all the hooks in my box were tied badly. On went a new trace then and back out with the feeder. 10 minutes later and the tip bounced round………………..and I hooked another slab………………….and the line gave way at the hook end. Bugger! Now I was really disturbed about this. I had tied some hooks using a knotless knot but without a hair, just the knot and I wondered if this knot slips too much if you haven’t got a hair dangling under it to take the slack up.

Now that my confidence in my pre-tied hooks was zero and I was a little suspect of using hi-tech line, I resorted to tying a spade end B911 with 3lb Maxima. I chucked the feeder out and as I settled the rod on the rest I heard an almighty splash over my feeder. As I looked up all I could see was the wake on the surface and wondered what hell it was. 10 minutes had passed and all I had was a couple of tiny knocks so I cast out again and the same thing happened, a big splash but I didn’t see the fish. Another cast and this time I kept my eye on the landing zone. The fish swirled and although I didn’t see it very well I am quite sure it was a Pike probably chasing the small fish that were giving me the little indications.

The sun was high in the sky by now and I was beginning to feel a little bit sleepy and after I munched on a couple of vegetarian sausage rolls I did something that I have never done in the whole of my 40 years on this earth…………….I brought the feeder in, popped the rod on it’s rest, pulled my hat over my eyes and slid down the chair ready for a nice snooze.

Having not seen a soul all day, I awoke to the rustle of the leaves as the breeze started to get a little stronger. I looked at my watch and decided to have another couple of hours fishing before heading home and so on I went, hoping that Mr. Pike had buggered off by now.

First chuck out and the tip went over to the pull of a nice 12oz Chub, good I thought, I was a bit fed up of Skimmers and only wanted slabs, Chub and whatever fish I kept losing to the near side cover. The Chub got a little bigger and then I hooked one around the 1lb mark and it headed straight for the nettles and reeds. I managed to pull it away and net it but something twigged in my head. Another chuck and another Chub of the same size and again it headed straight for the near bank nettles. Now this might not be rocket science but I am willing to bet that the fish I have lost to those nettles and reeds are bigger Chub, maybe not massive but big enough to take you on a merry dance towards a nice place to snag you up. It definitely wasn’t the Bream and I hadn’t caught much else that could have been responsible so I decided it must be Chub.

On then with my plight to hook said beast! Unfortunately the next hour only saw a few Chubletts and Skimmers come to my net. The Bream had buggered off, the Chub were getting smaller and then I went and did something else that I haven’t done since my Dad last tackled me up with a Peacock quill at the age of about 7 years old……………..I caught a bloody Eel! Damn, I hate Eels. They are ugly, difficult to unhook and only Noddies catch Eels so this was the signal for me to pack up, go home and get settled down to watch the footy.

I was quite happy with my day though, my understanding of this beautiful river was getting better, my catches were getting bigger and best of all…………you never know what you are going to catch next. Maybe that 10lb Common I saw, maybe a Tench if the rumours I hear are true? Who knows? I will just have to come back again soon!

1st Invicta League Round 6 on Peartree & Bramley Lakes, Hartleylands 08/06/08

It only seems like a few weeks ago we were all looking forward to this league but today is the last match that will decide the final positions. After the first match and terrible conditions, I was lying very close to the bottom but with some hard work and better weather, I was in 5th position going into this match but with little chance of a top 3 finish due to the points situation. My target at the start of the league was to finish in the top 6 and so this would still be my aim and I would therefore need good points today to keep the other anglers from overtaking me.

This match was ‘pole only’ and ‘float only’ which prevented me from fishing the pellet waggler which is the method I would always go for on these lakes in summer. I was unsure of the potential success of fishing shallow on the pole but this would be my main line of attack with paste in the margins as a back-up plan. My target for today would be 80 fish for around 100lb which I felt would be good for a pole only match seeing as you can get 100lb to 150lb plus on the waggler.

Because I was helping with the draw, one of the guys pulled my peg and out came peg 5 on Peartree. To my left and in my section was Mark Hathway and Kevin Pack which meant the company would be good but the competition would be hard but I was dead chuffed with my peg as it was one of my preferred choices being between the islands. Even though they are well out of reach with a pole, it may be possible to draw fish from the open area and also in the last match a few weeks ago, that area produced well.



The weather has been a lot warmer around here lately and apart from some odd days of rain, a shallow approach has been producing well. As I arrived at my peg I could see some fish on the surface but I was still uncertain how well a shallow approach would work on the pole. My mind was made up though and I decided to try 2 different rigs on a shallow line at 11.5m and just have 1 margin rig set up for later in the match. The 2 shallow rigs that I wanted to try are a little different to the ones I have been using, I wanted to experiment with a different float pattern and also weigh up the difference between a long line and a short line between float and pole tip. The new float pattern is a Preston Pink dibber that has a hole in the tip so that the line passes through the body. The float is very light, just needing a single number 6 shot under it and the weight of a 6mm pellet to cock it. I also wanted to try the Drennan Carp Match hooks out and see if I bumped or lost fewer fish with them so I had a few hair rigs tied up with them on instead of the PR27's I normaly use.



The experiment with the long and short line would be to determine if more fish are caught with the ‘self hooking’ short line or if the long line caught more fish because the pole is further off the surface therefore reducing the risk of spooking the fish. I know it may seem risky experimenting with new things in a match situation but you don’t learn much pleasure fishing because you have no competition to measure your success by and the water is not under pressure.

My bait choice today was simple then, a shed load of 6mm skrettings and a pint of paste made from ground expanders. I also had some worms and corn with me but only because they were in the bag from my last match.

While I was setting up, I had to think about the distance that I would fish out shallow. If we were at Monks then I would start at about 7m so that I could feed easily by hand but I wasn’t sure if the fish would come that close in at Hartleylands. I could have fished at 10m and still fed by hand although it gets a bit hard at that length either using your weak hand or swapping the pole over to your weak hand and feeding with your strong hand. Also, I wanted to draw fish from the gap between the islands so the closer I fished to it the better. I therefore settled on 11.5m as a happy medium between ease of feeding, speed and drawing fish and I would feed by hand when playing the fish and after netting it and feed with a pult when the pole is shipped out.
So upon hearing the whistle, I threw out a couple of handfuls of pellets at my 11.5m line and then shipped out 2 large cups of pellets down my left margin under a small tree. Another couple of handfuls of pellets out on the long line and I then shipped out the pole with the long line set 12” deep and slapped the rig on the surface. After 3 slaps the elastic pulled out and a nice 1lb Carp was in the net and my ‘clicker’ got it’s first push. By feeding with my right hand while playing fish and with the pult after I had shipped out, I managed to string together about 15 fish in the first hour. This isn’t exactly bagging up but I was happy with a steady stream of fish and the probability of things picking up later on.

At the start of the second hour I foul hooked a decent fish of around 2lb and so after I netted it I shallowed up to 6”. This brought fish at a faster rate and after 2 hours I had around 32 fish in the net. Things were looking good so I thought I would try out the short line rig and so out it went. The first problem I encountered with this rig is that when you are speed fishing it is easier to tangle a short rig around your pole tip and also it is not easy to slap on the surface and make much of a noise. I caught a few ‘self-hookers’ but the action was not as good so I popped it back on the roost and reverted back to the long line. By the way, the long line was 2’ between pole tip and float and the short line was 6”.

Using the short line had taught me one thing though and that was the effectiveness of having fish self-hook themselves. I therefore adopted a slightly different approach with the long line rig which involved holding the pole so that the line was tight between tip and float and slightly to one side so the tip was not directly over the float. This had a positive result because the fish were more confident with the pole further away from them and also I had plenty of fish self-hooked while I was putting pellets into the pult. The third hour therefore went much like the second with a total of 52 fish.

At this point the sun was high in the sky and the heat was really strong. The fourth hour seemed harder and more slapping and searching out the peg was required. I didn’t want the peg to fizzle out though so I upped the feed rate as much as I could which meant having the pult in my hand permanently. I winkled out as many fish as I could manage but by the end of the fourth hour I only had a total of 62 fish, only 10 had gone in the net during the last hour.

Things were looking up though as my increased feeding seemed to draw more fish in front of me. I looked at my clicker and felt that I wouldn’t hit my 80 fish target at the current rate and estimated that about 74 would be more realistic. I wasn’t going to roll over and play dead though so out went more pellets and more pellets and even more pellets. Using the self-hooking system of holding a tight line helped me because I was feeding so much. At this point a long shadow appeared on the surface and drifted towards my swim. I had already mugged a few off the surface by slapping the pellet down in their pathway but this fish looked nice. I slapped the rig down almost on top of it, there was a huge swirl and then the latex came peeling out. Within a minute the fish was under my feet and I simply played it out until it gave in after about a dozen gulps of air. A nice 6 or 7 pounder was in the net and I was very happy with the boost that it would give my weight!

As the last hour ticked by too quickly, I managed to up the catch rate with my feeding and I was getting closer to my target. With 15 minutes left I had passed my estimate of 74 fish and was going like the clappers. I was landing my 79th fish with one minute to go, scooped it in, chucked out some pellets and shipped out so fast you would think I was throwing a javelin. I hooked a fish right away and as the whistle went it was in my net being unhooked. 80!

It would be fair to say that I was pleased with my performance especially as I did not have sight of anyone else catching at the rate I was. And then in typical fashion Mr. Gilbert ventured up the bank to scupper my hopes as he told me he had 118 Carp!

So as usual I volunteered to help with the weigh-in and was handed the sling, meaning I was about to get soaked. My 80 fish went to 104lb odd which meant that the lump I had helped put me over the ton. Nick weighed in a mental 147lb odd which he had caught at 7m! Damn, if I had done that I could have fed by hand all day and caught more fish. His plan was to start short and follow them out and my plan relied on them not wanting it short. After the match we had a chat about whether you really need to fish to the islands to get a good weight and today has left us wondering whether the pellet waggler is the best method or if shallow pole could possibly overtake it. One thing is for sure though, you CAN catch close in shallow here!

Oh yes, the Preston Pink dibber........well I had trouble getting it to cock and it seemed to either take on water or dipped under when a pellet was very wet. Either way I think it is too light or needs a wire stem to help it cock. Also, the Drennan hooks seemed better than the PR27's so don't expect to find any in the shops around here as someone has gone and bought them all :~)

The results were drawn up with me, Nick and Colin Wood all winning our sections it meant that we would all hold the same league place and only the top 2 could change. So Nick ended up 4th and I was 5th overall and I have to say that I am dead chuffed with finishing 5th as my original goal was for a top 6 position against some very good anglers. I had earned myself another £40 for my ‘pools’ bank account but more importantly I had enjoyed a very good league and met some really decent blokes.

I can't help wondering where I would have finished if I had drawn a decent peg in the first match and earnt more than 1 point! Never mind, it's easy to say 'if only' all the time!

Oh yes, as an afterthought I asked Nick if he could work out the league places if it had been done on weight instead of points:
------------------------------------------
1st Nick Gilbert, 2nd Matt Love :~)
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Here are the results and the proper table:
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1st Nick Gilbert 147-12
2nd Paul Kell 112-1 (guest)
3rd Matt Love 104-13
4th Collin Wood 95-12
5th Andy Goldthorpe 90-12 (guest)
6th Kevin Pack 86-1
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League Places
--------------
1 Kevin Pack 333-15 26
2 Andy Silver 332-12 25
3 Collin Wood 290-12 24
4 Nick Gilbert 417-6 23
5 Matt Love 338-9 23
6 Mark Hathway 271-8 21
7 Ian Carley 261-10 21
8 Martin Charnock 156-13 20
9 Trevor Little 205-12 18
10 Tony Clark 216-11 17
11 Jay Lay 198-14 17
12 Mark Holland 186-9 17
13 Russ Evans 229-0 16
14 John Haigh 118-0 15
15 Dennis Price 167-12 14
16 Chris Jones 140-12 14
17 Martin Twine 124-13 14
18 Mark Greenway 53-11 6
19 Jim McDowell 61-13 4
20 Mike Jameson 31-6 3

There are a few opens and one or two other matches coming up soon including the angling forum’s Southern Inter-site Championship so keep an eye out for these over the next few months.

1st Invicta Match League - Round 5 - Nick's Lake, Hartley Lands 25-05-08

Today was a match that I had been looking forward to for 2 reasons, firstly the weather should be pretty good at this time of year making things less peggy than in previous matches and secondly because I could adopt 1 of 2 methods that I am quite confident with, namely the pellet waggler or method feeder.

The forecast was not good though and it seemed that the bank holiday weekend would be dominated by rain and wind. Having switched on the TV Sunday morning to watch out for the weather while loading my car, the forecast was that the rain would blow over and by 10.00 am things should brighten up. I was unsure if the pellet waggler would work well today so the previous night I knocked up some method-mix and some paste.

At the draw we were all looking at the skies wondering if things would clear up or whether we would once again have the choice of getting wet or trying to fish under a brolly!

The draw began with Trevor Little pulling out a peg for me and a peg for Nick. I had 15 and Nick had 35 and I think it was fair to say that I was the happiest although neither of us had a peg that we felt could do well. One of our guests for the day, Nick Coster AKA ‘Bag Up’, drew peg 3 which we didn’t think was particularly good until we all marched off around the lake walking past peg 3 and seeing Carp climbing up the side of the island!

As I arrived at my peg my heart was lifted a little as I saw that I had about a 25 yard chuck to the end of an island and with a breeze from the right I should still be able to feed pellets by catty quite easily. I also recall that Nick had come 2nd on the lake in a big match last summer from around peg 13 or 14 so if the weather were to pick up a little I might do well on the waggler. However, as I was unsure of the weather, I would set up 3 rods, a pellet waggler, a method feeder and a flattened bomb for fishing a conker up the shelf of the island, I also had a top 5 set up for fishing paste down the edge later in the match.

Nick decided to wander round for a chat although I am quite sure he just wanted to make fun of the 3 rods I had set up all having matching Daiwa TDR reels. Nick bought a few Daiwa’s from the USA and he reckons they are at least as good as the TDRs we get over here but cost him only £60 each rather than the £110 each I paid.

As the start of the match approached, the clouds parted and as the sun began to push through I took off my jacket and hoody to cool down. With a few minutes to go before the ‘all-in’ it was like someone had waved a magic wand and I looked at my island swim with a little grin on my face and Nick and I agreed, pellet wag all day long!!!

At this point we were both subjected to a little banter from John Haigh who insisted that he could beat ‘the pellet waggler boys’ with his floating MAP Rocket feeder. A £1 side bet was taken as Nick refused to hear of such nonsense and we all went back to our pegs ready for the ‘all-in’.

By the way, my pellet waggler rod had one of Dave Brittain’s styro wagglers on it for me to try out for the first time. I have fished the pellet waggler before and am reasonably confident with it but last year I was using KC Silverback wagglers which are made from balsa. Dave Brittain had given me a bundle of his own styro wagglers when he stopped over a few weeks back and he insisted that they are more buoyant than balsa and do not dive as much on landing. I also had some of Nick Gilbert’s home made balsa wagglers with me so maybe I would get a chance to compare them.






As Nick called the ‘all-in’ I fired out 2 pouches of 6mm skrettings and chucked out the styro waggler to within a foot of the island. I put the rod down to pick up the catty and the tip went straight round nearly pulling it off the top ring of the keepnet (I always put the rod down at an angle so the tip goes round just like using a feeder rod). The first fish of the day was in the net followed by another and another and so on. The sport continued so rapidly that I hardly had a chance to feed. The normal feeding pattern for this method would be feed, cast, feed, bite, retrieve, feed, land fish, feed, cast and so on. I was getting so many fish though that all I could manage was feed, cast, grab rod, retrieve, feed, land fish, feed, cast. I suppose it just felt like I wasn’t able to feed enough but the action was so fast maybe I shouldn’t have been too worried.

So in the first hour I had about 20-25 fish in the net and was going strong. I could see John to my right catching but not as quickly and Colin to my left was lobbing out a method feeder and catching a few. The sport continued into the 2nd hour and I was still having trouble feeding enough. I was just nervous that the fish were coming so quickly that they might disappear if I couldn’t hold them there with enough pellets going in. At one point I knocked my catty into the drink coz my rod was nearly pulled in but I had another 5 on stand by which was good because soon I busted the elastic in catapult number 2. Another time I was rushing so much I picked up a 11/2 lb carp out of the net and dropped it back in the lake having missed the keepnet! Things were frantic to say the least.

By the end of hour 3 my clicker read 82 fish. Now I was aware that the average size of fish was probably a little smaller than I would have expected. You normally need 80 fish for 100lb here but my guess was the average weight would be 1lb therefore giving me 80lb of fish so far. I was however very confident that I would be doing well because I just couldn’t see how anyone could be catching faster than me, it was just too frantic. Even though I had 82 fish in the net I still could have had more because I had probably pulled out of 10 fish in the first 3 hours. I’m not sure why, I was using a longer hair than normal because this had been recommended to me but this seemed to work well having hooked more fish than I would normally expect. Maybe the PR27 hooks I was using were not so sharp or even blunting after a few fish. I had been warned about this before.

The sport continued however but just a little slower as by the end of hour 4 I had 97 fish split between 2 nets. My average had gone down from 27 fish an hour to 24! At around this time disaster struck as I landed a fish together with a birds nest attached to it and my rig was trashed. I don’t think I have ever tied a rig so quick in my life! I think it took me about 4 minutes to put on a new float, shot it and attach a new hook length and this included stopping every 30 seconds to feed the swim. As I was rummaging through my waggler tray I decided to put on one of Nick’s balsa wagglers to try and compare the performance with the styro waggler I had been using.
At this point I also decided to chuck a 3rd keepnet in because it doesn’t hurt to be careful and ensure the fish are looked after. I was absolutely sweating my nuts off by now with the speed of everything and the fact that the sun had been beating down all day.



So on with the fishing. The 5th and final hour saw a down-turn in the action. I wasn’t getting many rod benders and not hitting most of the dips. I tried casting around the peg and picked off a few fish further out from the island but it seemed that the best plan was to get closer to the island so I started chucking the waggler so far that it would actually hit the side of the island and bounce back down into the drink. This worked but of course it wasn’t every cast that was as accurate as this. Often I would have to bring the rig back in, re-feed and re-cast to get it closer.

At the end of the match my clicker registered 109 fish so I only managed a further 12 fish in the final hour. I thought that if I was lucky I might have 120lb but deep down I knew that my fish were small and I didn’t set my hopes higher than 100lb. The scales moved around the lake with Nick Gilbert weighing in a very impressive 117lb for 80 odd fish from an un-fancied peg. It sounded like he struggled for the first few hours and finally managed to steel some fish from adjacent pegs. Nick asked me how I did and I told him that I had 109 fish but they were small. He looked a little shocked and was convinced I had 130lb but I refused his estimate. So at my peg several weigh-ins were totted up to give me a grand total of 111lb. Russ Evans on peg 9 had about 107lb and it was looking like I had 2nd place behind Nick until it got to our guest for the day who had chucked out a method feeder on peg 3 and weighed in very nice 125lb. It was clear that the top end of the lake was now fishing well due to the weather and I suppose I was a little disappointed to come 3rd but at least I won my section giving me maximum points and 5th in the league, not bad considering that after the disastrous 1st match I only had 1 point and was joint last out of 20 blokes!

By the way, with 2nd, 3rd and 4th places going to the pellet waggler, I’m not quite sure what happened to the floating feeder boys :~)

So once again I look back with hindsight and wish I hadn’t lost those 10 fish and dropped one back in the pond instead of the keepnet. I think I will change the type of hook I am using for the hair rig and see if my results get better. Also, I don’t really think I had long enough to make a fair comparison between the styro and balsa wagglers but I will say that I was very happy with the styro but maybe I need a little more time to judge properly.

Another issue that I still have to resolve is the same problem I experienced a few weeks ago at Monk lakes fishing shallow. The hair on my rigs suffers kinking after a while and I probably changed my hook length 6 times during today’s match. Below are photos of before and after!


Before:



After:



I tried taking up a couple of suggestions but they didn’t work so my plight for perfection goes on……………………..