Teams of 4 Hartleylands Nick's Lake

Now that the spring league is over and I managed to claw back some good points to show a half respectable 6th position, it is time for myself and Nick to join the plight of the NG Floats team who have already fished 3 matches in the series and are quite low in the points table.

With one match every month through to October, perhaps there would be a chance to pick some points up and move the team higher in the league. This would be quite a challenge though as this is probably one of the toughest fields of anglers you are likely to meet in the South East.

The matches on Nick’s lake are all pole-only due to the tight pegging and the rules banned anything longer than 16m, floating baits, pole feeders etc. It is a basic pole-only match. This can present a problem because if you can’t draw fish within pole range then you have few options. I therefore prepared 3 lines of attack which would be shallow out in front, corn down the bottom of the near shelf and corn in the margins.

Envelopes were drawn by each team captain and we then pulled out our individual pegs, mine being 21. I think I have drawn this peg a couple of times already this season and I knew there were a few fish there but I would have been targeting the island back then, I wasn’t sure how the peg would handle a pole-only approach. However, the weather was hot and lake’s form was spot on so I had no trouble proceeding with my plan to ball it in and fish my socks off. The only change I made to my plan when seeing the peg was to forget the swim at the bottom of the near shelf because the bank-side bushes meant I would be fishing quite a way out from the margin anyway.

So, with 2 shallow rigs and 2 margin rigs set up I proceeded to throw 6 babies heads at 8m on the whistle which I think quite surprised the paste anglers either side of me who were cupping in a few pellets. I also decided to cup some corn down both margins just in case the shallow line didn’t respond. Normally I would leave feeding the margins until the half way point but being pole-only I really needed a back-up plan from the start.

15 minutes in to the match I hadn’t had a bite although the water was fizzing and I was feeding pellets every 5 or 10 seconds to get them up. The paste anglers were taking a few fish each but I wasn’t too worried as it usually takes 10 or 20 minutes to get the fish shallow here in open water especially if you have balled it in. Clearly the fish are on the deck but soon would be coming up to take the pellets.
Sure enough after 20 minutes I had my first fish and registered 20lb in the first hour by which time the paste anglers had slowed up which is what I expected. I have often wondered if I should start on the deck and take a few before the fish come up but I am reluctant to risk foul hookers that would spook the fish instead of building their confidence.

The sport continued through the day with around 25lb going in the nets every hour while those around me were struggling. The only angler I could hear catching was the guy on flyer peg 23 which is without doubt the best shallow pole peg on the lake but I couldn’t see what was happening elsewhere. I suspected 150lb plus would be needed to win but my clicker was showing that I would probably finish with 100lb plus.

Given that my shallow line was producing and apart from the odd quiet spell the sport was consistent, I chose not to fish the margins as my concentration on feeding out in front would have lessened. This is probably the first time this year I have been able to fish one line for the whole match and although there was a chance of some lumps down the edge, I didn’t want to risk it. The steady catch rate of my shallow line might mean valuable points.

As the whistle went I was playing a fish which was soon netted and my clicker registered 120lb. The scales came around and Mark to my right weighed in 49lb. My fish went 129lb 15oz, to my left was around another 50lb and then peg 23 had about 156lb. Nick on 9 had 129lb odd but didn’t beat my 15oz lol. Then Derrick Gladwin weighed in about 133lb so I had to settle for 3rd place, a £40 payout and we walked away with something like 25 points out of a possible 28, not bad.

After the match I was chatting to Nick and he was able to keep the fish coming all day on the shallow pole as well but had odd quiet spells. I told Nick I was thinking about topping the swim up half way through the match with a few more balls. Nick said he chucked in a small ball half way through to try and kick-start the swim again and it worked. Maybe next time I will take a chance and ball it again half way through to see if it improves the overall weight.

Today I was using the following:

NG Dibber set 2’ deep, shot under float, hair rigged band to 14 Drennan Carp Match on 0.16 to 0.18 Fox Micro +

NG Dibber set 1’ deep, shot under float, hair rigged band to 14 Drennan Carp Match on 0.16 to 0.18 Fox Micro +

Frequent feeding was the key (every 5-10 seconds), slapping got more bites, tapping caught the odd fish.

The next match on 10th July is the same lake, same rules so let’s see what happens.