Hartleylands forum match, Bramley and Peartree lakes

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When the Spring League finishes, Nick usually runs a match open to members of various forums. The match is usually booked across the two small match lakes, Bramley and Peartree, which although have 20 odd pegs each, can really only hold 10 without causing problems of fishing too close together towards the islands. I usually use this match as an opportunity to experiment with a few things as there is nothing much to lose apart from the pools which were being split over the top 2 on each lake with a small section payout as well.

The weather has been very good recently although the past week has seen the odd tropical rain storm however, the temperature had shot up today and we were going to be in for a real scorcher. A few of us were chatting over breakfast about the possible weights and the chance of the lake record being broken on Bramley as we were fishing for 6 hours today. I have never fished a 6 hour match before and to be honest I don’t feel that 6 hour weights should be allowed to count as match records so my main thoughts of today were focused on a big weight and a chance to experiment with a couple of things.

I just want to talk for a moment about what I wanted to experiment with today. Firstly, I feel that in good conditions you need to find the method that puts fish in your nets the quickest. Now that may seem obvious but up until the end of last summer I would reach for my waggler rods before anything else on this venue. Fishing the pellet waggler is a very successful method here along with the method feeder and occasionally fishing down the edge for lumps and anglers usually go with the method they are best at. However, in a couple of matches on this venue I have fed a shallow pole line at around 10m to see if the method could work as well as it does at Monk lakes. When I have done this the fish have always been there at the first put-in which has previously been around 40-60 minutes or so. So one of the experiments I wanted to run today was to see how quickly I could catch shallow at a 7m line. This would show me whether I need to feed and fish to the islands for a while so the pole line can build up or whether I can go straight out on the quicker method.

Something else I wanted to try out in this hot weather was laying down a large bed of feed in a margin swim and see how productive it could be. Given that we are fishing for 6 hours up until about 4 o’clock, the lumps should come in and potentially add significant weight to the nets of smaller fish. I opted to feed hemp with a bit of corn mixed in and fished a new soft hooker pellet over the top. Trevor Price (GOT Baits owner) sent some down as part of the prize hamper for the spring league and told me that they were not on the market yet. They are a large soft dark pellet, probably a 10mm-12mm expander but coated in a slightly sticky white substance that really does look and feel like emulsion. They actually look delicious and would be easily visible on the deck.

So my plan today was to feed shallow close in and down the edge and hopefully not need to pick up the waggler rod at all although I did bring a pair with me along with a bomb rod. At the draw I was given peg 24 which is on the car park end at the point of the first island. It is not a noted peg and even though the weather was hot I would still expect to catch better from the pegs opposite the gap between the islands. I wasn’t too bothered though as I am always quite confident of catching well up in the water at this time of year. By the way, this is now 8 times out of 8 matches that I have drawn Peartree rather than Bramley!

As this was to be a 6 hour match, the ‘all in’ was sounded at 10.15 and I threw some pellets out at 7m and dumped 2 jam jars of hemp down the left hand margin which looked a better option than the right hand margin as I could ship the pole a reasonable distance along the bank and under the branches of a bush. I flicked a few more pellets out at 7m and shipped the pole out with my fingers crossed that I would get a quick response. My eyes were half on the float and half on my watch as I flicked pellets out every 5 seconds. I started off at 18” deep and continued feeding every 10 seconds and slapping every 10 seconds as I usually lift the rig out as soon as the pellet has had time to reach maximum depth. Looking around the lake it seemed everyone was having a slow start and clearly not feeding much apart from Al Loader to my left who was out on the shallow pole as well.

I looked at my watch as I was shipping in my first carp of the day……….. 8 MINUTES !!!
This information will prove very valuable from now on, especially as we have the Nick Puncher Memorial match approaching on this venue and over 100 anglers will be fishing. I need to test this response out more in the future but if today was anything to go by then I know that I only need to fish to the island for a few minutes to pinch a few carp before taking a look close in. By the way, my shallow rigs were the same as they always are and I had a ‘long line’ rig for easy slapping and so that I could flick the rig beyond the pole tip and keep the pole off their heads in these calm conditions. The second rig was a ‘short line’ rig to use if the fish became more confident and started to hang themselves. I also brought some more of those white pellets with me that Nick had mentioned a few weeks ago. I’m not sure if he feels they work any better on the hook than the usual darker pellets but I am beginning to think that they do. They are a little larger than expected for 6mm pellets and the feed pellets seem smaller to me than usual. The white ones do seem to get a bit slippery when wet but they hold together well and stay in the band a bit longer.

Anyway, after my 8 minute wait for the first fish I started bagging and had 20 fish in the net within the first hour, including the initial 8 minute wait where I could have had a few on the wag as well. The fish were all very small though, around the 1lb mark rather than the usual pound and a half. Things slowed down a bit during the second hour but adding a section and keeping up the feed I still managed 35 fish by the 2 hour mark. The conditions were now extremely hot and the lake was dead calm so I decided to sling 2 handfulls of hemp down the edge and rest the shallow line a while.

On went a large white expander and as soon as the float settled under the bush it shot under and the doubled 8 slip came peeling out of the pole. Unfortunately I couldn’t have any spare sections attached behind me due to a bushy tree to my right so I had to hold on with only 5.5m in my hands. I managed to reach for another section to add on while the fish steamed off and soon a nice plump 7lb carp was netted. I began to think I had made a good call by feeding heavily under that bush.

Another pellet went on but the float was just bobbing around from small stuff nibbling it. This is a problem at HLF as there are a lot of tiny silvers that will attack a soft bait and I therefore opted to re-load the jam jar in an attempt to draw more carp in to push the silvers out.
Back out to the shallow line then and the fish were queued up waiting. I continued to catch and began to slip the fish into a second net having put 40 in the first. Again though things eased up and although the fish were all at the depth I wanted them, they just seemed more interested in basking than feeding. I stuck another dozen fish in the net by the 3 hour mark before resting the swim again.

I had been feeding handfuls of hemp down the edge every 20 minutes to make a bit of noise and to hold the bigger fish there so it was now time to take another look. A few missed bites then resulted in a couple of small carp so it seemed the very few larger fish were up for it today. I stuck a couple more jam jars under the bush and went out shallow again.
By the close of the 5th hour I had about 75 fish and was quite disappointed at their size and that the hot conditions seemed to spoil the chance of a big weight. I was sure that 150lb – 200lb would be on the cards but with 75 fish I would be lucky to get close to a ton!
Altering depth was not an option as I was pricking them as I lifted the rig. The fish were all up at 12” and quite a few were cruising around my swim. I did manage to mug one or two of them that seemed a little closer to 2lb but they just weren’t that fussed on eating even if the sound of the pellets was drawing them in.

My thoughts kept tempting me to go down the edge again and try to put some weight together to compensate for the smaller fish but I kept thinking back to this fixture last year where I decided to fish half the match shallow and stay down the edge for the second half as an experiment to see if the lumps would build a better weight. Looking around the lake I was unsure how close certain other anglers were to my weight as I had seen a couple of blokes catching reasonably well. What if their fish were bigger than mine? Should I stay shallow or go down the edge? Finally I made my decision as I really wanted to give the margin swim a reasonable chance to prove itself to me and the final 45 minutes was devoted entirely to the bush.

So, in went 4 handfulls of hemp and out went the rig. Every time I hooked a fish I chucked another handful down there to settle them. I lost 2 more lumps due to not having enough pole behind me to cater for their runs but I stuck at it in the hope that I would be able to tame one or two. Unfortunately most of the fish were just around the 1lb to 2lb mark so it seemed that even down the edge it was only the small fish that were interested.

Fortunately a bit of cloud cover started to pass over, I was really hot and fishing for 6 hours in this heat left me hoping for the final whistle. It came and I was passed the scales to do the weigh-in.
I finished on 82 fish for an estimated 100lb and the scales showed 101 odd. A few weights in the 80’s and 90’s were recorded but it seemed my disappointing day had won the lake. Bramley had fished a bit weird as well but the weights were a little better. Nick won the Bramley match with 123lb so we both went home £65 better off and I left with some valuable information about this place and how the weather can affect the fishing.

My next match will be the Nick Puncher Memorial 100+ open. Fingers crossed for a good draw!