On the day of the match I awoke to a dull overcast morning and as I pulled away in my car the snow began to fall. I couldn't believe my eyes, it was as if mother nature herself was determined to ruin every match in this league!
Arriving at Monk Lakes I spotted a few familiar faces hanging out by the cafe so I ordered up some teas and a double egg butty for my brekky. Slowly but surely the rest of the rif-raf arrived for the draw which was to be held by lake 1 with Nick sitting comfortably in his car and a steady queue forming at the door. I did the honours with the draw bag as Nick collected the money and wrote down the peg numbers.
Leading up to this match, the hot pegs seemed to be 23, 24 and 25 (in that order) with most pegs along that bank producing good weights. There had been a bit of banter between Nick Gilbert and Mike Jameson regarding their drawing ability and so they both agreed to draw for each other. It appears that neither of them is prepared to admit to a tad more luck at the draw bag than most of us! In went Mike's increasingly chilled hand to almost certainly draw out peg 23 for Nick but it wasn't to be as peg 29 came out. Not a bad peg being along the favoured bank but by no means a flyer! Nick then slid his hand into the bag, held his breath for fear of confirming his 'golden touch' and drew out 25. Not bad at all and definately proving that he has as much skill at the draw as he does catching fish!
The draw continued with every other peg in (to spread things out a bit) and as the queue began to wittle down it became apparent that peg 23 was still in the bag. Not one for being optomistic, I fully expected it to go very soon however I have no superstitions, nor do I care when I draw my peg, first / last, it's all the same to me. The last man in the queue popped his hand in knowing that he had a 50/50 chance but fortune was on my side today as he left 23 in the bag for me. This brought about the expected banter along the lines of 'if you don't win from that peg then you must be a proper Noddy' however, I was just pleased that the growing wind would be on my back and I wouldn't have 'big snow' blowing into my eyes.
As you can see from the image below, 23 is an end peg by the aerator and the fish seem to cling to that bank more than the others. So there was myself on 23, Mike on 25 and Nick on 29. Behind me I had Trevor Little for company on peg 22 and I felt really sorry for him as he sat there contemplating having snow blown into his face for the next 5 hours!
Arriving at my peg I was faced with a few decisions to make. I had come prepared for a 2 prong attack, first was to fish maggot on the waggler due to the cold weather and the fact that my last match here in December was dominated by the waggler and I did well coming third. My second and 'back up' method was a pole line where I wanted to try out a combination of strawberry Atomic Cloud with strawberry corn and 4mm pellets with some expanders as well. I also brought a bomb rod just in case I needed to scratch for points in a poor section.
Having drawn peg 23 though, I needed to re-consider my approach. Firstly I would need to fish as close to the rope on the corner as possible (pegs 22 and 23 are roped off to prevent fishing too close to the aerators) and secondly I would have to fish a very simple and comfortable method due to the wind and snow making things quite difficult. I decided that I didn't need to fish too far out but more to the corner of the peg so the waggler wasn't necessary but the side wind would make fishing the long pole quite difficult. I therefore set my pole up to plumb for any changes in depth but found a very consistent 4' wherever I dropped in. This meant that whether I fished at 6m or 13m I would still have the same depth and so I opted to fish 10m but about 3m to my left where the wind wouldn't be too much of a problem. This meant that I was probably fishing about 8m out from the bank at that angle. I then needed to decide on the bait and because the weather was very cold I didn't want to ruin a good peg by taking any chances. I had 3 pints of red and white maggots with me laced with turmeric and although I wouldn't be able to feed by hand, I could still manage reasonable accuracy with a catty. I also clipped on a Fox toss pot in case I needed to trickle maggots over my float and also set up a cupping kit in case I needed to try out the corn & cloud approach.
I only set up one pole rig today and I knew exactly what rig that was going to be, I also had a couple of duplicate rigs in my box in case I needed them. The rig I chose is very reliable and simple and I was certain that it would work well. It consisted of a 4x14 Carpa Chimp float which has a wire stem for stability, not too long for 4' of water but it also has quite a thick tip enabling you to 'trip' bottom in a tow and also dot it right down and still be visible in the ripple and the snow. This was rigged on to 0.13 main line with a 12" 0.12 hook length and a size 18 B611. Shotting was again very simple, 1 no.6 under the float as a marker, 2 no.6 bulk 2' from the hook and a single no.8 dropper 12" above the hook. I decided that using no.8 shot over the whole rig would have been better but wouldn't change it unless I needed to. The rig was attached to a match kit with no.8 latex through the whole kit, I wasn't expecting anything of size today and I didn't want to bump any of the smaller silvers in the lake.
So, with my waggler rod set up just in case and 1 rig for the pole set up, I decided to go for a walk and a chat. As I got up from my box and the protection of my brolly I realised just how bad things were going to get today as you can see from the photo below (spot the snow flakes):
After a wander and a nice hot cup of tea, I sat back down to double check that everything was ready for the off. At this point Mike Jamerson and Nick Gilbert decided that it must be time to wind me up a bit by walking over and agreeing that anybody could win today off my peg. Mike offered me some advice which was to 'keep it simple'. Little did he know just how simple I was going to keep it!
It was time for the whistle and the start of a 5 hour grueller so out went the rig with double red maggot followed by a pouch of curried maggots and I proceded to ease the rig through the column to match the fall of the loose feed. Within about 30 seconds the float slid under and a nice F1 was under control and soon in the net. The action continued with another few F1's and then the Ide and Chub arrived for a 'look in'. This was ok with me given that their weight was not far short of the F1's with all fish going 6oz - 12oz. Feeding was a little difficult to say the least though as the wind was making it difficult to keep the pole still and even more difficult to keep the maggots within a tight area. Usually I am keen to spray maggots and attract fish into the peg but considering we seem to still be in the depths of winter I wanted to keep things a little tighter.
With a small pouch going in with every put-in and another to top it up if I hadn't had a bite for 2 minutes, the fish came steadily although I had started to pick up some Tench including some very small specimens of around 3 or 4oz. This was beginning to bug me as I knew that anyone with plenty of Carp in their peg wouldn't have to catch as regularly as me to do well.
With about an hour gone and around 10lb in the net, I decided to do something to increase the size of fish I was catching but I didn't want to change the bait I was feeding in case things went the wrong way. I am very conscious of not changing too much if I am catching well! I therefore decided that it was worth trying to feed tighter by using the toss pot and to use 3 maggots on the hook. I had noticed that varying the hook bait from 3 reds to 2 reds and a white and then 2 whites and red had drawn quicker bites and sometimes from slightly larger fish. They can't really be that clever can they? So out went my toss pot half filled with maggots which were cupped in over my float and I then lowered the rig slowly over the top. Bingo! A good Carp was on and this was followed by a few more before the Tench came back along with some skimmers. My reaction to this was to feed even heavier and so this time I loaded the toss pot up to the top and cupped in again. The float sailed away and the latex came shooting out of my pole as a very decent carp took off. For about 10 minutes I played out the fish in front of me, it's head was down and my match kit and no.8 latex was coping well but not worth the risk of rushing things. Finaly I felt the fish slow down a little as it drew closer and come up in the water. I wasted no time as I lifted it's head to the surface, drew my top 4 upwards and slid the net under it first time. It's amazing how hard a fish can fight and then if you get your timing right you can net them quickly and without fuss. A lovely Mirror was unhooked and gently lowered into my keep net, I would say it weighed 3lb - 4lb and well worth the 10 minutes it took to land even though I had received one or two shouts to 'hurry up and get it in'!
The sport continued steadily with a full pot going in every time and even a Barbel making an appearance at one point. With about 4 hours of the match gone, my fingers started to get a little cold which isn't surprising given that I was shipping out a pole every few minutes which had a good layer of snow on it! Thank God for the neoprene fingerless gloves I bought before Xmas!
Although I kept up the feed rate, the smaller fish were now returning and I was slowly convincing myself that the weight in my net wasn't going to be enough because a lot of my fish went only a few ounces. I began to get very low on maggots at this point but decided that I would rather run out than cut down on the feed so I maintained a full pot every chuck and settled for whatever I could hook. It was quite amazing that not once had I shipped the pole back without a fish on the end and I had used 3 pints of maggots and nearly all were fed through the pot. I guess it shows you just how many fish I caught and how many of them were quite small because I estimated 25lb - 35lb in my net.
The whistle blew to everyone's relief and the gear was packed away as quickly as possible. On his way round to get the scales, Nick asked me how I had done and guessed that he had 35lb - 45lb in his net. My heart sank as although I hadn't really noticed how everyone was catching I was rather hoping for a decent result.
The scales moved around the lake and Nick put a very impressive 38lb 4oz on the scales to go ahead in our section. As I pulled my net in I guessed that maybe I had a bit more than I thought, perhaps 40lb even. The needle settled on 44lb as I contemplated a possible win given that all the usual good pegs had weighed in. Back at the car though I was told that Mark Holland on peg 10 had weighed in a very unexpected 49lb and so I had to settle for second place but at least I would earn maximum points to help me with my league position.
One of the main reasons I record these match reports is so that I can reflect on how I fished and look back over previous matches. Maybe today I should have had the balls to go with the Atomic Cloud with corn and pellets to get the bigger fish, or maybe I should at least have tried feeding 4mm pellets with an expander on the hook. Who know's, maybe I will be more risky next time?
Ist Mark Holland 49-0 Peg 10
2nd Matt Love 44-0 Peg 23
3rd Nick Gilbert 38-4 Peg 29
4th Kevin Pack 37-0 Peg 6
5th Dennis Price 31-0 Peg 31
6th Trevor Little 30-0 Peg 22
League Places
1 Andy Silver 102-8 9
2 Mark Holland 90-9 9
3 Kevin Pack 85-14 9
4 Nick Gilbert 100-12 8
5 Ian Carley 80-6 7
6 Mark Hathway 74-2 7
7 Collin Wood 51-12 7
8 Matt Love 53-1 6
9 Trevor Little 44-11 6
10 John Haigh 44-5 6
11 Martin Twine 33-8 6
12 Martin Charnock 27-8 6
13 Jay Lay 55-13 5
14 Dennis Price 45-7 5
15 Chris Jones 27-11 4
16 Mark Greenway 22-9 4
17 Mike Jameson 31-6 3
18 Russ Evans 27-9 3
19 Tony Clark 16-7 3
20 Jim McDowell 38-11 2
Match 3 is at Hartleylands Peartree lake in 2 weeks so let's hope the weather will turn and we can fish more comfortably again!
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