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
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