Reports and features from the Kent angling scene: 1st Invicta Match League - Round 5

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: