Reports and features from the Kent angling scene

The Mortgage peg

2011-07-23T16:26:00.004+01:00

The 3rd match in the Shannons series and I was looking ok on points but needed a good result and for the leaders to drop a few points. Unfortunately the weather forecast was as bad as it could be for me .............. hammering it down all day! Luck was on my side though as I drew what they call 'the comfy peg' which holds fish and is a bit more protected than most pegs with trees and bushes around.

On my way up to the peg Mickey told me to set up duplicate rigs as the peg is very snaggy but my plan was so simple that 2 identical rigs would cover my pole lines and a bomb rod would give me an option to cast to the space I had to my left.

I'm not sure why they call it the comfy peg because you have to be very careful to avoid getting your rig in to those far bank trees and the margins aren't exactly easy to fish. In fact at the last match Mickey hooked a far bank tree with a plummet on his rig and ended up getting the boat out to rescue a top 5 that slipped off while he was pulling back..............quite entertaining really lol.

Anyway, with the rain set to stay all day my main priorities were as follows:

1 - Don't get too wet
2 - Get a top 3 finish
3 - Don't get too wet

So as I said my plan was very simple. I opted to fish mussels with corn as feed. This would allow me to fish a heavy bait targetting large carp and I could ship out easily, push the bait under the far bank trees and ping or cup corn over the top. As the fishing had picked up at Shannon's I decided to ping and spread the feed around a bit. I fed 2 lines across either side of a bush and between the trees and both margins although the margins were not a priority for me. I also pinged pellets about 15m to my left in open water in case I needed the bomd rod to fish the conker.

After an hour I had 24lb which wasn't good but it wasn't a disaster. I wasn't feeding a great deal, maybe a dozen grains every put-in. Due to the recent form of the lake I didn't want to over-feed it and if the fish were there already I shouldn't need a lot anyway.

For the next 2 hours the fishing was steady and improving. It seemed to me that I should up the feed because even with rotating those far bank swims it was still taking a few minutes to get fish there and get a bite. I therefore increased the feed to a whole pouch in both swims every put in and the response was good. During the last hour I probably had 8 or 10 fish between 4lb and 8lb and ended up 3rd with just under 150lb. Jonny Watt did my favourite 'gate peg' justice coming 2nd with 160 odd and the winner came from the damn wall but as he was a guest Jonny and I earnt 1st and 2nd in the points stakes. The leaders are still up there as they also earnt good points but me and Jonny are both snapping at their heals and we can still drop our worst result so all to play for.

So, why have I re-named this peg 'the mortage peg'?

Well firstly, even though I was careful and did not put my rig in those trees, a few carp decided to bolt off and the rig came pinging back sideways in to the tree and I lost a couple of precious NG Floats. I then busted a top kit playing a fish, I wasn't pulling too hard, I think the top kit was just a bit over-worked and had developed a weak point but these fish at Shannons WILL find any weak point in your pole! I got through about half a dozen hook lengths as well so all in all it was quite an expensive day hense 'the mortgage peg'.

Can't wait for the next match but for now I'm having a bit of a break from fishing to enjoy my summer weekends ....................... and make up some more rigs!

Spring League, Nick's Lake 8-05-11

2011-05-10T16:34:00.003+01:00

As I drove to Hartleylands my thoughts were on one thing and one thing only......5 points. I was already 2 points off a maximum after dropping my worst 1 point result so with 4 matches left out of 6 I would need 4 section wins to come anywhere near the top of the league. The competition is harder this year and with my mind not really focused on fishing at the moment I was hoping for a warm, calm day and a half decent peg.........and then the heavens opened and dashed my hopes of a comfortable day in the sun.

As I pulled up the rain had eased and the sun was drying things up. Perhaps there was light at the end of the tunnel. Nick anounced that he wanted to draw his own peg which I thought was probably a good idea just for change so out popped 33 for him followed by a load of moaning and groaning as I whipped out peg 8 which apparently was going to win the match hands down (yeh right, i've heard that one before and with most pegs capable of winning I wasn't as excited about the peg as some seemed).

Off I went around the lake and as I walk up the spit I noticed the wind pushing through the islands right in to my face..............great (not). I stood there and told myself that if I wanted 5 points then I would have to bite the bullet and get the method rod out but as usuall the thought of fishing the method all day for small fish had a more than passing similarity to watching paint dry whilst having your teeth extracted without anaesthetic. I looked long and hard at the island and memories started coming back to me about fishing this peg before in a strong wind and being able to draw the fish away from the island and fishing the pellet wag out in to open water. If I could do this today then I wouldn't have the problem of casting up against a very snaggy island with a very uneven bank in blustery wind. So my mind was made up, the wag it would be with 8mm pellets. The shallow pole didn't get a look in due to the wind in my face (too hard to feed accurately and frequently for my liking) and the method rod stayed in the bag. I did set up a bomb rod which goes hand-in-hand with waggler fishing and 1 margin rig and 1 deck rig for fishing to my right at 11m as a back-up line to rest the other swims.

As I was casting and clipping up I noticed the bloke opposite chucking a waggler up to the same corner of the island so I was now more convinced about my approach because there a few anglers that feed as much as me on the wag and I was hopefull of drawing fish away from the island in to open water where I would have no competition. I needed heavy floats for the job at hand and a number of catapults on stand-by because they were going to get a proper hammering today with the wind problem!

For company today I had a pretty tough section. Paul 'the magician' Kell on peg 4, John 'my peg's crap' Pantry on peg 6 and John Robinson on peg 9 (not sure of a nick name for John yet as he's just a very nice chap without anything really to take the piss out of.............but I'll keep looking! So, with Paul Kell in my section (who can turn a puddle of piss in to a swarming black mass of hungry carp) and 2 other very handy anglers, life was not going to be easy but I felt comfortable that for the first time this year I actually knew that what I was doing was the right thing.

So on to the whole plan then, 2 waggler rods at 12” deep and 24” deep, a bomb rod to fish the conker, a margin rig for under the tree and a full depth rig at 11m. Both pole lines would be fed with corn and fished with mussels and I do recall having a few fish from under the left hand tree the last time I fished peg 8.

Now, as I was chatting to John Pantry just before the whistle, that blustery wind suddenly changed (as it often does here) in to the mother of all gales and my mind uncontrollably flashed back to thoughts of the method feeder...............but only for a split second!

So, the match was started and after feeding my 11m line I began spreading pellets over an area the size of a netball pitch and chucked out the waggler to around 6' off the island. I started catching right away and it looked like I could be in for at least a decent day's fishing. Then I noticed John 'nice bloke' Robinson catching very quickly on the method and quite quickly it was obvious that we were going to be having our own little competition (which is quite nice seeing as you can almost pick each other's noses from pegs 8 and 9).

An hour in to the match and I knew John had more fish than me but he insisted that they were a lot smaller than my fish (which is usually the case here). My clicker showed 15lb in the first hour which isn't too bad as I was still building the swim and gradually fishing further and further away from the island.

At the half way mark I had 60lb on the clicker so was now catching around 25lb an hour which wasn't too bad given the fact that the wind was taking my pellets all over the shop but I was concerned that John was ahead of me and I kept thinking about the 11m line and whether it was soild with good sized fish...........but I told myself 'no' and persevered with the waggler.

Around this time John was concerend about the size difference between our fish and I mentioned to him that it is normal for shallow fish to be larger than method fish here so he gave the waggler a go and he started catching well but eventually concluded that he couldn't keep up with me and was better off on the method. I'm not sure whether I would have preffered him to stay on the waggler though because I can usually out-fish most people on the waggler (I did say MOST though).

Time was now ticking down and during the last hour I was itching to take a look under the tree but still I told myself 'no........no no no no NO'. While I was catching I should stay on it and not distract myself with what 'could be'. Still I was catching regularly and now I was about 20-30 feet off the island corner but I wasn't going to win the match, I simply couldn't keep things tight enough.

With 10 minutes to go then I eventually gave in and stuck a mussel on the hook and swung it under the tree. WHALLOP!.........the float went under and a nice 6lb ghosty was in the net. A couple of minutes to go and WHALLOP!.......... a decent 3 pounder joined it just before the whistle went............worth a look then as 9lb in 10 minutes was my best catch rate all day!

And so the scales came round with the words Paul 'the magician' Kell 141lb written on the board.........BUGGER! I reckoned on 125lb and could see John Pantry had already weighed that in and was now wondering whether I would scrape any decent points at all. My nets went 131lb to my relief and John 'nice bloke' Robinson had my bum hole tightened as he got close.............VERY close, with 128lb. I remember saying to John that those last 10 minutes under the tree swung it for me and gave me 4 valuable points.

So, I still couldn't win my section, I still couldn't draw a nice 'mill pond' peg but yes, at least I can now call him John 'bum clencher' Robinson!!!

Mussels at Shannon's 21-08-10

2010-08-24T13:23:00.006+01:00

Photo courtesy of Keith Ashby

Having only fished this venue once in spring when it wasn’t fishing too well, I was looking forward to fishing Shannon’s in the summer as reports suggested it was fishing well. Being only 30 minutes down the road and a picturesque venue holding plenty of sizeable carp, it is ideal for a change from my usual venues and a chance to perhaps do well on a venue that is quite new to me.

At Shannon’s you can draw various different types of peg from open water, corner pegs, short island pegs and long island pegs so a variety of methods and baits could work although I was hoping for open water so I could use my running line methods. I therefore took 2 pellet waggler rods, a bomb rod, a method rod and my pole holdall. In my carryall I had plenty of 8mm pellets for open water, 4mm pellets if I drew an island peg, loads of corn and half a kilo of cooked mussels plus groundbait if I needed the feeder.

At the draw Bill the match organiser asked me to hold the bag of peg numbers and so I asked for a volunteer to draw mine and was handed peg 12 which is 16m to the island and most definitely not my sort of peg. Looking at it, I had an overhanging tree to the right hand side of the island with lily pads directly opposite and a gap to the left of them. I could see movement in both areas either side of the lilies so decided to feed both with 4mm pellets via a catty. I also had an overhanging tree to my right hand margin which looked promising and rushes to my left that would be worth feeding.

With this number of swims available I decided to ignore the track unless I needed it later and decided to feed both island swims and both margins. Plumbing up, I had around 2’ of depth around 2’ from the island and away from the overhanging vegetation, around 4’ down the middle and about 3’ down the margin under the tree. This was on the near slope but directly under the branches. My rigs for across and in the margins both had NG XT Margin floats with the shot bulked around half depth and laying on a few inches. This would allow me to position the bait on the shelves or lay-on further up the shelves. I also like fishing over-depth in the margins to help avoid foul hookers by keeping the rig line away from the hook and feed bait. I also set up an NG Finesse 0.3g for down the track on the drop in case I needed to fish there. Rig line was Fox Micro Plus 0.18 with 0.18 hook lengths and hooks were Drennan Carp Match for hair rigged bands and Maver MT3 for down the edge. A few blokes have commented that the Finesse seems too delicate for catching big carp but in open water they are a dream to fish with and I have not damaged one yet! They are superb at fishing on the drop or half depth with light baits or at full depth with larger baits, especially when bites might be a bit shy.

My plan was to feed both island swims with 4mm pellets by catapult and feed corn down both margins by hand and this is exactly what I did when the whistle went. My first put-in was to the right hand island swim and it resulted in a foul hooker which proceeded to take me up and down the far bank before the hook pulled as it kited under a tree further down the peg. Then after re-feeding I had another foul hooker which did the same and after 20 minutes I had nothing to show for my efforts. Then finally a carp hooked properly came to the net but neither island swims were fishing well, probably due to the foul hooked fish. I then decided to drop in under the margin tree and had a lump immediately but didn’t get any further indications so I carried on feeding the island swims and the margins and rotated around them all. I also decided to start feeding down the track at 11m to try and bring something to life and I managed a couple of smaller fish there but again nothing prolific.

Things really weren’t going well and by 2 o’clock I only had 33lb registered on my clicker and only an hour and a half to go. This was becoming a nightmare. Having fed the margins all day I was hoping that one of them would come to life as a last resort and the tree to my right looked the most likely. I dropped my rig in and the float buried immediately. It was another double figure lump. My second put-in resulted in another take along with a third. I re-fed under the tree and then tried the left margin to give the tree a rest but didn’t get a sniff.

It was now time to focus my efforts so I dropped the island swims and the left margin completely and decided to feed heavy down the right under the tree while still feeding pellets over the 11m line in case I needed to rotate. The sport continued under the tree and I had about 120lb of fish in 90 minutes. At this point Bill suggested we fish on for another hour which everyone seemed to agree with but it wasn’t such a good thing for me as a bloke had just walked up to me for a chat and sky-lined my margin swim. That was the end of that so I went out to the 11m line and caught a couple there while feeding up the margin again.
I kept trying the margin swim but with no luck until with 15 minutes to go I finally had another fish and managed another couple close to double figures before the all-out was called.
I had 144lb on my clicker and felt I would be lucky to frame with that. After packing away most of my gear I walked around for the weigh-in to see Jonny Watt register 165 odd from the end peg along the damn wall. There were another couple of weights around 130-150lb so I was now feeling the pain of not getting to grips with my peg.

It was my turn to weigh in and I tell you what, 10 of those fish in one net don’t half weigh a lot! After 2 nets I was told that another 20 odd pound would see me beating Jonny but I wasn’t confident that my smallest net would have much in it, probably 3 carp. Luckily though it tipped past the finishing post and I had won my £10 back off Jonny that I lost on the Res a few weeks back.

Back in the car park it turned out I had won with Jonny a very close second......sorry mate!

I must admit to feeling like I fluked this win because margin fishing is a bit hit and miss and normally it is a miss on my usual venues. However, I have been trying the margins a lot lately and it has enabled me to sort out my rig and feeding, I reckon this won me the match as I now have a good feel for catching lumps down the edge. It was a good job I took a dozen tins of corn with me because I only returned with 2 and I used the whole half kilo of mussels and was running out.

For anyone who wants to learn a bit about mussels then drop me a line, they are great in white wine, a paella and also on the hook!

As I said, I feel like I fluked this win. Perhaps I should have started feeding 8mm pellets across, the carp may have been pre-occupied with the 4mm pellets hence the foul hookers. After the match Bill also told me that the peg responds well to paste down the middle but I wouldn’t have thought to try that with all the obvious features around.

Never mind, at least I went home with £60 from the pools, a soggy £10 note from Jonny (and nearly a black eye) and some good experience at catching lumps all day (plus a bad back).

Up next are a couple of ‘Fish To Win’ qualifiers so fingers crossed!

1st matt love ..............peg 12 168lb 2oz

2nd jonny watt ..............peg 3 165lb 8oz

3rd splitshott [greg] peg 10 137lb 12oz

4th squeaky peg 8 137lb 4oz

Teams of 4 Hartleylands Nick's Lake

2010-07-09T10:03:00.000+01:00

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.

Spring League final round - Nick's Lake Hartleylands

2010-06-15T13:08:00.000+01:00

The last round of the spring league was upon us today and with the top 2 probably decided barring a total disaster, the other 3 places from 3 to 5 were still up for grabs, plus of course the individual match payout on the day.

With the weather being warm with clouds and ripple, the fishing promised to be good and there was a distinct buzz at the draw as everyone was hoping for a decent peg. Our welcomed guest Mick the Chippy stepped forward and drew for Nick and myself, I got 26 and I think Nick had 20…………..both worth a few fish although I fancied John Pantry on 32 to take the honours. I have never been drawn up that end of that bank before so it was a bit of an unknown to me but with a reasonable chuck to the right hand island, some open water in front and a decent bush down both margins I felt comfortable for a ton plus. To my left I had last year’s winner Paul Kell with a long chuck to the island but miles of space up the left margin and lots of open water.

My approach was to be 3 fold, the pellet waggler out in front with the wind pushing it towards the point of the island, the shallow pole at around 8m and then a deep margin rig in front of both margin bushes as I had a good 4’ there. No need to go through my rigs as you will know them by now but they consisted of the usual NG Floats in glorious red with the usual line, hooks and shotting style. I set up 2 waggler rods at different depths, 2 shallow pole rigs at different depths and a margin rig plumbed up to suit both sides with the bulk just off bottom. Bait would be 6mm hard pellet out in front and corn down the edge with mussles for the hook.

At the start I fed 5 babies heads on the pole line and proceeded to go out with the waggler and had a fish within a minute………and then a duckling! The ducks soon swarm around you if you are feeding but I put up with them for an hour and had 30lb in the net. I then wanted to try the pole line as there was a lot of fizzing and the ducks were annoying me out by the island. During the next hour I had another 30lb with some nice sized fish.

It wasn’t long before the ducklings arrived again and for the third hour I alternated between pole and waggler to get away from the pesky things but the sport slowed down as I was holding back from feeding to try and allow the ducks to move away while I cast out. I could see that soon I might give up fishing shallow all together so in preparation for this I fed 3 large cups of corn from 4’ off the water down both margin swims.

With about 2 hours left I had 80lb in the net and saw that Paul Kell had started catching well down the edge so out came the margin rig and I proceeded to catch steadily with fish between 3lb and 8lb coming out as well as a few greedy silvers taking a whole mussel!

At the weigh-in I walked with the scales and it seemed that most had struggled to pass the ton mark. I estimated 120lb in my nets and thought it would be tight between myself, Paul Kell and John Pantry. Nick had a reasonable day with around 95lb beating everyone from 9 through to 24. My nets went to 120lb odd but crafty Mr Kell pipped me to the post with his margin fish and put 131lb on the scales.
So, I had to settle for 2nd on the day, £70 in the bank and 6th overall in the league which wasn’t bad after the few rubbish early draws I suffered. So congratulations to the top 5 Mark Smith, John Robinson, John Pantry, Paul Lamb and Nick Gilbert - overall league places are below and I would like to send special thanks to our sponsors GOT Baits who supplied enough prizes for the winners to take a carrier bag of bait home and every other angler getting a freebee. Now it is time for me to focus on the teams of 4 league at Hartleylands and a few opens and qualifying matches for the Fish to Win competition.

1. Mark Smith 87
2. John Robinson 84
3. John Pantry 81
4. Paul Lamb 76
5. Nick Gilbert 74
6. Matt Love 73
7. Paul Taylor 73
8. Ian Carley 71
9. Mark Hathway 68
10. Jeff Driscoll 62
11. Russell Graves 55
12. Colin Wood 55
13. Richard Hall 51
14. Jonny Watt 49
15. Paul Kell 49
16. Kevin Pack 46
17. Mark Nevins 38
18. Stephen Lovell 24

Guest blog by Jeff Driscoll - 2nd from along the spit

2010-06-09T15:15:00.000+01:00

Hathers Tri Forum Match

I recently fished a match on lake 2 ,organised by Mark Hathway which he opened to members of MFS,MD and Nick Gilberts forum sites.There were many familiar faces in attendance and a couple of new ones.

I drew peg 71 which I was not too disappointed with. In a recent league match I remembered some good weights coming from this area so was confident of a reasonable day.

Mark had pegged the lake well giving everyone a spare peg apart from the endpegs.
To my right on peg 73 was Squeaky and to my left on peg 70 was Mutley.After an hour of the match Mutley felt unwell due to the very hot sunny conditions and packed up, so I was left with plenty of space.

My general plan for the day was to try and catch shallow at 10m and feed at the bottom of the shelf at 4m regularly for when my shallow swim died and to feed the margins for late on. I also planned to feed the pellet waggler line as there were a lot of fish cruising beyond the pole line.

For my shallow rig I was using a NG Dibber to 0.16 mainline with a 0.14 trace size 16 b911 banded hook.
At the bottom of the shelf I set up a 0.3g NG Decker to 0.16 mainline with a 0.14 trace size 14 b911.
The margin swim was a MW Slim Power with a 0.18 mainline with a 0.18 trace size 12 Drennan wide gape. All my line was silstar.

At the whistle I cupped in a ball of fishmeal groundbait at 10m and threw out 2 more on top of it. I then cupped in a small amount of 6mm pellets at height to make a bit more noise. I did not want to put too much in at the start as there was hardly a ripple on the water and I thought conditions could be tough to start with. I then put in a ball of groundbait and a good couple of handfuls of pellets at the bottom of the shelf. I was less worried about being a bit more aggressive on this line as it would be for later in the match.

Whilst I pinged pellets over my shallow line at the start I had a look down the margin with a bit of meat whilst I let everything settle. The reeds on this peg go out into the lake quite a bit and the depth is about 4ft tight to them. I had no indications and did not give it long before having a look on my shallow line. I was not confident of catching in the margin as it just seemed too deep.

The first hour was very slow and I had under 10lb in my net. The water surface was dead flat , which is a rarity at Monk lakes. I could see fish cruising around in small groups but they did not seem interested in feeding. Quite often when fishing shallow you can flick your rig over these fish and mug a few during a session but they just would not have it.

I was feeding 6mm pellets by hand over my 10m line and was varying the amount and timing to try to get the fish interested, but I could only get the occasional take and would then have to vary my depth or shotting to get another take. I had been feeding the pellet wag line also and managed a couple of fish but again things were slow and I was suffering a few bumped fish and missed bites which was probably silverfish.

Squeeky to my right was struggling and Jonny Watt and Trev Little behind me were not doing any better so I was not too worried about the slow start. I had a look at the bottom of the shelf after an hour but the fish had not settled here either so I kept it topped up with pellet and concentrated on the shallow line.

Over the next couple of hours I started to catch Carp and f1s more regularly over my shallow line by constantly changing my depth and feeding and had about 40lb after 3 hours. At this stage a slight breeze picked up just putting a ripple on the surface and the fish seemed to respond better and my catchrate started to improve. I had been fishing a long line on my shallow rig as I felt the fish would not want the pole over there heads in such calm conditions which I felt got me more bites but also a few missed bites but still an advantage.

With an hour and a half to go I had about 70lb and decided to have a look at the bottom of the shelf and foul hooked one first put in. I had a couple of fish and another foul hooker and then a few missed bites. I was not comfortable with the way things were going here so went back out on the shallow line which I had kept feeding and had a Carp of 4lb first put in. I stayed on this line for the rest of the match as my catch rate improved and the fish were of a slightly bigger size than the rest of the day.

The Monk bait limits are not a major problem during a match as I find 8 pints is enough for most situations providing you keep things simple over a couple of lines. The real challenge is taking the right bait and size of pellet to match the conditions on the day.

At the weigh in I managed to weigh in 109lb for 2nd place just beating Matt (off the endpeg flyer) but not managing to get near Wayne on peg 45.

I was pleased with the result on the day but as ever I was still driving home thinking I could of done better.

Jeff Driscoll

Guest blog by Mark Hathway - A Match of Two Halves

2010-06-09T05:19:00.000+01:00

I asked a couple of guys to write a guest blog about recent matches on lake 2 at Monks so we can all see how the new bait limits are being approached with success. Here is the first blog from Mark Hathway:

Matt invited me to write a blog on the latest Medway Trotters match on Monk Lakes 2, so here goes.

Following on from my hard earned 50lbs from p76 on Saturday, I wanted to try a different approach today. I used to fish and do well on matches a few years ago fishing UITW with baits like caster and worm heads but more recently had turned to fishing slop and porridge the ‘Pikey Way’.

I wasn’t fussed what peg I drew and couldn’t believe it when I drew P47, this was the 3rd time in 4 matches on the lake, although P48 was in, P46 was empty which would help. However with Steve ‘Spock‘ Peters on P45 the writing was really on the wall. I won off the peg (47) a month or so earlier catching mainly barbel in the margins, I decided as the lake was calm with the winds promised for later in the match to fish 2 matches. The first 3 hours would be UITW at 6 mtrs and then I was sure I could plunder the Barbel at the end of the match.

I set up 2 x UITW rigs (I’m useless at float names) a short stubby No.3 on a long line and a 4x10 slim float on a short line (0.12), both being set at 2’ deep to a 16 Tubertini 808. I also set a small bulk of No.10 shot about 8” from the hook. This acts as a sort of bolt rig and was something the Raison’s and Gardner’s used to do when they plundered the Willow Park silvers years ago. For the margin two identical NG floats
set to come up the slope on 0.16 and a 16’s 911 hook.

For bait I had 6 pints of maggots and a few 6mm pellets. Starting on the short line at 6mtrs, I fed sparingly with maggot (and odd pellet for noise) and had my first fish an Ide of 1lb after about 10 minutes, the line gradually sprung to life and I started to put F1’s in the net. From what I could see I was keeping up with Spock on the flyer. An hour passed and I reckon I had 20lbs in the net, I saw no reason to up the feed and plodded along nicely, the 2nd hour was similar, more F1’s, odd chub and Ide. At this stage I still hadn’t fed the margin and had used about 2 pints of bait.

In the 3rd hour things drifted way a bit, maybe I hadn’t fed enough, who knows? I did alter things around, using the long line, tapping, splashing etc and still nicked odd fish. At the ½ stage I had 23 F1’s in a net (they weighed 48lbs) and about 15lbs of assortments in the other net. Which included a mirror carp of 4” long that I wanted to show Morgan the fishery manager, he later confirmed it was a survivor of the 2009 spawning.

Into hour 4 and I began to up the feed on both my 6 mtr and margin line, a quick drop in on the margin gave me an early Barbel but then those pesky hand size skimmers got in on the act. I reckon I added a further 20lbs to my nets.

With 2 hours left it was now margin time and to be fair it was solid with barbel (just like when I won off it ) and I caught frantically for the last 2 hours. The Purple Hydro seemed to reduce the playing time, whoever says Barbel don’t thrive in still waters should sit on a nest of barbel at Monks ! A little trick I use is to very, very slowly draw the bait up the slope, as your doing it the fish rip the pole out of your hands, no strike required.

As the match drew to a close I was pleased the way I had fished and really enjoyed the day. I topped things off by beating Spock off P45 with 147lbs to his 138lbs but lost out to Rusty ‘5’ pegs who had 170lbs from the pleasure gardens at P52.

My conclusion is that the bait limit will restrict your feed patterns if targeting different lines and therefore reduce weights, which for fish welfare reasons is ok in my book. Who needs more than 150lbs anyway!

Laters – Hathers

Lake 2, Monks - Hather's forum bash

2010-06-08T10:21:00.000+01:00

Today was a forum match organised by super-model Mark Hathway from across the border in Surrey. Mark is well known around the south east, not so much for his fishing but for his spectacularly disgusting shorts and he rounded up a very good group of 23-24 anglers from various angling forums. The venue was Lake 2 at Monks on a very hot and still day and upon arrival there was talk of it not fishing too well due to the lake being like a sheet of glass. I however was buzzing because of the wonderful weather and hopeful of a good days fishing.

Before the fishing though there was time for an egg butty and a bit of banter with some of the guys I haven’t seen for a while. On board was Justin Case (Paul Law for all those that want to know who jumped in head-first at last week’s Fisho), Squeaky Roller, M T Net and far too many more to mention.

At the draw Mark had organised the pegs according to the anglers that had turned up and for once I had the chance of drawing my own peg as I was not helping with the draw. Out popped 77 quickly followed by the obvious heckling that I was bound to win the watch from ‘that flyer’…………I’ve heard THAT one before lol. For company on 76 I had the match organiser himself which was defo worth a good banter session and behind me Orpington Pete and Bill ‘paste-head’ Gibbins. Nick Gilbert had drawn bobbins at 54 and was well out of the way of any banter………..although all of us over our side of the lake distinctly heard the sound of cracking carbon coming from his lonely corner!

Anyway, on with the fishing: I recently posted a blog about fishing lake 2 in a different style but didn’t mention what bait I was using as I wanted to give it another crack first, so today was my chance to try shallow maggot again and I had 6 pints with me along with 2 pints of 4mm pellet and a small tin of corn as back-up. I also took 1kg of pre-mixed groundbait for balling in and another 1kg dry bag just in case I needed it.

Having never drawn an end peg on lake 2 I wondered whether I should fish around the corner towards the bridge where perhaps all the fish were holding out but to be honest I was very keen to test my shallow maggot theory out which would need to be at about 7m out in front. I therefore opted to do this and leave the corner for later on if I needed it, if the fish were there anyway then I doubted that they would bugger off.

Rigs today therefore were as follows:

An NG Dibber set 2’ deep with a group of no.8 shot half way down
An NG Finnesse set at dead depth out in front which would also do for the corner fishing a couple of inches over depth
An NG XT Margin for fishing towards the far bank around the corner

All rigs had Drennan size 16 Wide Gape hooks to 0.13 tied on to 0.16 Fox Micro+ rig line, the wide gape hooks were to easily take 3 maggots.

At the start I flicked out some maggots to identify the balling zone and threw in 4 jaffas making as much noise as possible. I then dropped my rig in, flicked out more maggots and took a 3oz skimmer on the drop. That must have been the quickest time I have ever landed a fish in a match!

Unfortunately after another skimmer and a couple of small chub things didn’t seem to be getting any better so I upped the feed rate to every 5 seconds. After about half an hour I had my first decent fish which was a Chub of around 2lb followed by another and then a nice 2lb Ide. The first Carp then showed up and things started to tick over nicely.

By the start of the second hour I had 25lb on my clicker and the fishing was becoming steadier with mostly Carp turning up, although it was in fits and spurts rather than continual. By the end of the 2nd hour I had started my second net but things were still steady and not exactly hectic.

A quick glance at my bait tray started me thinking, after 2 hours I was over half way through my maggots and would not be able to make them last if I wanted to keep the bigger Carp coming. Anticipating that I would run out by 3 o’clock I started to feed some 4mm pellets round the corner to my right. I kept the Carp coming out in front but had to maintain very frequent feeding to keep them there.

At around 2pm a breeze turned up and it was coming from 10 o’clock and making it very hard to get maggots out by hand. I persevered for 20 minutes hoping it might calm down but it didn’t. With about 90 minutes to go I decided to drop in round the corner with corn but the float didn’t move. There had been a lot of movement in the far side margin all day but I didn’t want to fish tight to it because I was concerned about foul hooking fish that were more interested in spawning than feeding. For this reason I was feeding in the middle but clearly the fish were not too interested in a few pellets and a bit of corn. I therefore made up 4 large balls of grounbait using up all of my wet mix and stuck 2 round the corner and 2 out on the shallow line to keep some fish there. A couple of handfuls of pellets went round the corner as well and the whole idea here was to draw away any fish that were at all interested in feeding and leave the spawning fish in the margins. First put-in and I had a Barbel, second put-in a foul hooked Barbel, third put in a foul hooked Carp and then another foul hooked Barbel. It seemed that I may have drawn too many fish in so I swapped my top kit from the doubled 8 to a single solid 16 to try and hold on to the foul hookers that liked to shoot off under the bridge. As I continued to feed pellet I began to get a lot more properly hooked fish until eventually I was catching steadily and things were looking ok for the rest of the match. The solid 16 helped to deal with those Barbel and also some very chunky Carp that were showing. In fact I hooked a lump just before the whistle and played it out slowly before slipping the net under the 8lb fish.

It was my job to be on the scales and therefore first to weigh in so I got someone else to shout it and 108 lb 8oz was called. Further down there were a couple of good weights from pegs that I always fancy including 82lb odd from Squeaky and a jammy 109lb odd from Jeff ‘chav jacket’ Driscol who must be man of the match for coming 2nd half way down the spit. I have said many times that you can win or frame along the spit and was pleased that good angling had proven the point today. I ended up with 3rd place and the winner came from peg 45 with 135lb 8oz so well done to Wayne.

So, I have been quite sure for a while now that shallow maggot was going to work well but the only problem is potentially running out if you need to feed hard to get the Carp up. I did have a pint or 2 left which I gave to Hathers because he was fishing another match here tomorrow and fancied trying the shallow maggot approach……………….147lb for 2nd place…………….nice!

Spring League round 4 Nick's lake Hartleylands

2010-06-03T15:06:00.000+01:00

For this match the weather was mild but with showers forecast later in the day. Usually someone draws pegs for Nick and me as we always do the draw together and today the bailiff offered to stick his hand in the bag for us. First out was Nick’s peg and number 17 stuck to his hand. Nick wasn’t impressed and I wouldn’t have been either with the wind blowing down that end and making the waggler difficult to fish. Next out was mine and a rather sweet number 8 appeared, probably one of the best 6 pegs on the lake. I have to mention good old Jonny Watt hear because he likes to draw late and in the last match he had a choice between a flyer and a duffer…..he got the duffer. So today he was faced with the same dilemma…….one flyer and one duffer left in the bag……he got the duffer. I do feel sorry for Jonny as he is suffering from the same fate as I did last year but after my draw today perhaps I have left Jonny to carry the flame. Sorry Jonny, as you said to me a few weeks back “you are better than that” so chin up and give the bag some positive vibes on the Res!

So moving around to my peg, with the wind coming across right to left, I opted to fish the waggler off the point of the left hand island and allow the wind to carry the rig and feed in towards the island. For back-up I had a bomb rod and a margin rig set up to fish under the small tree to my left. For company I had Colin Wood on peg 9 who is a very easy angler to fish next to as he doesn’t mind a chat and is very easy going. We both agreed that the tree was free-for-all and that we should both fish towards the middle branch dangling in the water.

My waggler rigs today were nothing out of the ordinary, just a pair of 7AAA styro floats set at 8” and 18” deep with the usual hair rigs on 0.16 line. The depth under the tree was around 5’ so I opted for an NG Decker with a bulk of no.8s 8” from the hook and set 2" over depth. Corn would be the bait with 3 pieces mounted on a size 10 tied to 0.18.

I won’t bore you with all the details as this match was nothing different to most of the other blogs I have written about fishing the wag on this venue but I will run through how the day went.

From the start I was catching fish, 10 in the first 30 minutes and 20 by the end of the first hour. The second hour was just as good and at the half way point I counted about 50 fish for about 70lb. The only problem I had was a few foul hookers as the fish were really shallow and at one point I counted 6 pairs of pink lips sticking out around my float. The ducks were also a nuisance as nobody around me was feeding to share the attention. I sorted the foul hooking problem out by altering the feed and everything was going to plan as my target was to do 125-150lb for a frame place. Then something happened that spoiled my plan somewhat……….the weather changed dramatically and the fishing died. It became overcast, cold and windy. The temperature probably dropped 10 degrees and the wind was preventing me from feeding 6mm pellets to the island.

I decided to use this as a chance to fish under the tree where I had been feeding corn by hand all day. First put-in and I hooked a lump but the hook pulled after a while. I re-fed and wasted another half hour looking to make up the loss of that fish. After wasting my time I went back out on the waggler line with my bomb and took a couple of fish but it was too slow and I was now freezing cold. With about 90 minutes left in the match I decided to go back to the car to put another layer of clothing on and then focus on the tree and pick off a few lumps to boost my weight but I could only amass 4 in total for an estimated weight of 75lb overall. It didn’t look like many had a good day but somehow I knew deep down that I had muffed the whole thing up by leaving the island. Even staying on the bomb would have seen me pass the ton mark or feeding 8mm pellets and staying on the waggler could have seen me with more.

The scales came round and I weighed in 88lb 6oz for 4th, 17 points and a section win.
Nothing special but the points were welcome and a lesson learnt the hard way.

1st Mark Smith 155-0 Peg 26
2nd Mark Nevins 94-14 Peg 32
3rd Ian Carly 92-10 Peg 21
4th Matt Love 88-6 Peg 8
5th Paul Taylor 87-15 Peg 6
6th John Robinson 86-4 Peg 4

Spring League round 3 Monks lake 2

2010-06-03T14:59:00.001+01:00

The new bait limits enforced at Monk Lakes last year gave me something to think about because the fishing isn’t always about bagging up down there. Sometimes you can do well against the end peg flyers using a lot of pellets (if the fish are having it) but if the fishing is not so good then you really need a back-up plan of smaller baits to catch anything that swims. I understand the desire for bait limits but if you are not allowed to take more than the limit to your peg then you have to either take a gamble as to what to take or find a bait combination that can frame in good conditions or still do ok in poor conditions.

I was talking to Nick Gilbert last year about how poorly the venues were fishing and the new bait limits. We bounced different ideas around and as spring 2010 approached I was convinced that a new approach was worth a shot and with the weather warming this league match was my chance to give it a go.…………… but I’m not going to say what this approach was just yet!

So moving on to the match in hand, the day was overcast with rain forecast and quite cool with a strong wind………..not the best of conditions then. I was also on peg 51 half way down the first bank which is most definitely NOT a noted peg but I am always optimistic if there is a chance of getting them up in the water and the new approach I was going to take should get them up and competing.

I plumbed up in the margins and all the way out to 16m. I chose a depth for a deck rig that would be laying on an inch or two at 8m and tripping bottom at 16m. I also set up an on-the-drop rig with an NG Finesse 0.3g float shotted shirt-button style with a 16 hook to 0.13 line. The preferred shallow rig was an NG Dibber 0.3g set 2’ deep with the same hook and trace. I also set up a margin rig with an NG XT Margin set over depth with a bulk just off bottom and a size 12 Drennan Carp Match for fishing big baits.

On warmer days I would ball in 6 jaffas on the shallow line (around 7m-8m) but today I chose just 3 jaffas to be safe. The distance would be determined by how far I could feed by hand and so with the wind off my back I threw out some bait at the start and plopped the 3 jaffas on top at about 7m. This meant that if the wind changed I could probably still feed by hand.

First drop in with the Finesse rig resulted in a nice 1lb skimmer in the net followed by several of it’s smaller mates. I was feeding about every 20 seconds and kept lifting and dropping the rig. After about 20 minutes I started picking up the odd carp between 1lb and 2lb and an occasional Ide. One of the reasons I started on the deck was that there could well have been Barbel around this area but as it turns out I didn’t have one all day long.

After an hour I had around 15lb in the net and decided that I needed to step up a gear to compete as I had Jonny Watt to my left doing ok and the flyer pegs doing better. I increased the feed amount and frequency to try harder to get them up in the water but was still fishing the Finesse rig to look for indications shallow but not miss out on any fish on the deck.

At the 90 minute mark Jonny admitted to 20lb to my 17lb but I was now getting some indications that the fish were coming shallow and felt that things would start getting better. I then foul hooked a Carp and had a violent take from a 2lb Chub……..so out came the Dibber rig.

My feed rate increased to 15 seconds, with the odd break while I was netting and unhooking fish but basically the takes were rippers in the top 2 feet and I would feed on top of the hooked fish while coaxing it out of the swim and once again after I had broken down. The sport was not consistent nor particularly busy apart from one spell of half an hour when I must have had 10 fish in quick succession. I did feel that my approach was working well though as many anglers were slowing down whereas I was picking up.

At one point I dropped in another jaffa because I wanted to give the swim a rest while I fed another 3 lines in preparation for the shallow line to die off. I fed a jaffa at 14.5m and pellets down each margin and then flicked more bait out on the shallow line before deciding to drop the rig back in. The fish were still there though and I felt that continuing on the shallow line was the best decision.

The sport continued until the all-out when I still had a fish on and my clicker said 73lb. I count pounds at Monks and not fish because of the strict net rules. The scales came round and I weighed in just over 80lb and with the better pegs weighing in between 60lb and 100lb odd, I felt that I had done well beating everyone along my bank apart from Hathers on 47. I think I finished 6th overall for 15 valuable points and perhaps some priceless experience at a potentially good method for bagging and competing with those flyer pegs.

Hathers is running a match on this lake in June so that will be my chance to try this new approach again. Let’s see what happens.

Sam's Silver Fish match 17-10-09

2009-10-18T11:09:00.000+01:00

With this being my last planned match of the year until the Xmas fur & feather matches and having recently written about my “year of hell”, I was hopeful of a good days fishing and looking forward to going for something other than carp. With 25 booked in and most of the lake taken plus the recent cold spell and bitter wind, we were unsure how the place would fish. Last year Nick ran a silvers match here which I won from peg 11 by finding some decent skimmers and small bream so my plan today was to target them to build some weight up.
After a good nosh-up at the local golf club, we met everyone at the draw and Vince Gould kindly volunteered to draw my peg as I was helping Nick with the draw. Out popped peg 11 which I hadn’t realised was the peg I drew last year until I looked at the pegging plan. Not that it mattered much because having only fished here once for silvers and once for carp, it hardly gave me any inside knowledge other than the skimmers can bulk your weight up.
At my peg I noticed the water level was down a foot or two which meant I was sitting high above the lake which wasn’t ideal. I also had a cold breeze in my face which would make my main line of attack difficult as it involved feeding maggot by hand. Last year the Roach and the few skimmers and Bream I caught all fell for shallow maggot at about 8m and this was how I intended to fish today. However, before I dropped a bait at 8m I also planned to chuck out a cage feeder a few times and also drop in some groundbait at 13m to see if I could draw some proper Bream in.
The whistle went and I shipped out 3 balls of brown and white crumb laced with hemp and corn on my 13m line. Then out went the cage feeder 6 times loaded with the same bait. The seventh cast then had a hooklength attached with a small dendra tipped with red maggot. Within a minute the tip received a tug but I struck too soon and missed the chance. This proved to be the only decent bite I had in half an hour of trying. Around me a few blokes were catching odd small Roach so I wasn’t worried just yet.
My next move was to drop in over the 13m line while loose feeding maggot at 8m to build up a few confident fish in front. Half an hour on this proved worthless so it was time to see what I had at 8m. The first few drop-ins resulted in some hand-sized Roach which was a start but the fish were clearly reluctant to come up too far off the bottom. Having plummed up the area I knew that my 13m rig would be good to fish over the 8m line so I fished on the deck at 8m but still feeding to get them up in the water. The rig had one of Nick’s deck floats on at 0.5g fished shirt-button style so I would be able to detect any bites on the drop. However, it turned out that they just wanted the double maggot bait lifted and dropped within the last foot of water to encourage a bite.
As the match went on the wind in my face became stronger and feeding by hand became a problem. I was catching skimmers and Roach steadily so I wanted to maintain the little and often approach as much as possible. I therefore picked up a pole catty and clipped a sprinkle pot on to my top kit. This would mean that I could feed almost as often as I could by hand but I would also have a constant trickle of maggot dropping over the float. There are some big Chub in this lake and I wanted to keep the bait falling through the water as much as possible to see if I could draw one or two them in.
As the match progressed I heard that Roy Gudgeon had around 15lb of Roach in his net and was catching one a bung. With Nick on the opposite bank apparently doing ok and Bill Gibbins next to me snaring a few I was under a bit of pressure. I tried to up the feed a bit, it was clear that the fish didn’t want to come shallow so I saw no harm in feeding heavier and less often. This would give me more time to concentrate on the float and lifting the rig and may encourage bigger fish to get their heads down. It worked and the skimmers began to look more like Bream and I also snared a couple of decent Perch. With about 2 hours to go the bites tailed off so I stuck on a few sections and followed the fish out. I ended up at 13m but had to switch to a standard catty as the small one couldn’t fight the head wind. I was now fishing over my groundbait line and the pole was being battered by the gusting wind that was now changing direction a lot. Fortunately the deck floats that Nick Gilbert makes are so stable that I didn’t need to fish over-depth or use a bulk near the hook length. I managed to maintain the same lifting and dropping process with the shirt-button rig and began to up the feed amount even further.
My 4th hour proved to be the best with a 4lb slab, a couple of 2lb skimmers and a 3lb Tench all going in to the net. I now felt that I was competing for 1st place and hoped that the better sport would continue. With an hour left I must have been one of the only blokes around the lake to NOT have hooked in to a Carp. I saw a number being caught that were close to or over the double figure mark and were taking some time to land on the light gear being used. The bites were drying up and I feared the worst..............BANG, carp on! I played it for about 5 minutes before the hook pulled.
It took me a while to get the peg back in order and I stuck another couple of skimmers in the net approaching the last half hour of the match. The peg went quiet again and after 5 minutes it happened again...........WHALLOP! This time the fish was bigger and my double 5 slip was being tested to it’s limit. This was the last thing I needed as I was fighting for 1st place and now wasting time playing perhaps the biggest Carp of my season. I tried hard to get it in to netting range but the fish was just too powerful and heavy. With 5 minutes to go the hook pulled and my rig ended up tangled around my top kit. Without a spare to grab and only a few minutes of the match left I decided to drop my cage feeder over the 13m line and pray for one more slab to increase my chances but alas, they just didn’t seem to like groundbait................weird!
The whistle went and it was clear that most had struggled for anything other than Roach with the odd bonus skimmer or Perch and nuisance Carp. Roy Gudgeon put a very challenging 21lb on the scales but fortunately the needle some how pushed around close to 25lb when I weighed in. This proved to be the best weight and FINALLY a decent result to finish my season on.
Last year I caught mainly Roach with a few odd bonus fish. Today I caught a decent number of bonus fish with the odd Roach thrown in. I like this venue, 2 wins out of 2 might have something to do with it but it is peaceful, attractive and you never know what you are going to catch next!

Tackle used:

NG Decker 0.5g no eyes, 5 rubbers, dotted down
No.8 shot grouped in pairs shirt button style with 2 no.10 droppers on hook length
0.14 Fox Micro rig line
Size 18 B510 pre-tied to 0.104 hook length
Preston Slip no.5 doubled down top 2
3 pints of red and white maggot laced with turmeric

The Year of Hell............

2009-10-11T17:13:00.000+01:00

Last year was my first full season back into fishing after a break of 15 years and having caught up with modern baits and methods I felt ready for some action. As it turned out I had a pretty good season fishing around 24 matches and picking up in 16 of them including one or two wins and plenty of 2nds. My biggest envelope came from finishing joint 1st in a 2 day festival but was knocked down to 3rd on weight. I had fished a good cross section of opens, league matches and forum matches and felt that I had done ok. As I don’t fish much in winter I was really looking forward to spring and the start of Nick Gilbert’s Spring League consisting of 6 matches at Hartleylands and Monk lakes, kindly sponsored by Got Baits and with some decent anglers fishing it. Most of my success during this season came from fishing shallow, either on the waggler or the pole although I did need to fish the method a bit and of course the pole on the deck where it would prove more fruitful than fishing shallow. I also fished maggot on the waggler and pole on occasion and I do like a bit of maggot fishing.
The first match of the season was the start of the Spring League and was fished across Bramley and Peartree lakes at Hartleylands. I finished 2nd behind Nick but won my section which gave me maximum points and a good start to my campaign. I then went on to take 4 points from the 2nd match which was a bit disappointing but the draw was pretty bad so I couldn’t complain too much. From here on though, the pegs I was handed were very poor, summer hadn’t arrived yet and the field was strong so perhaps with poor pegs to fish I should have been more thoughtful about the methods I chose. As an example, the method feeder is a banker at Hartleylands all year but particularly in the cooler months. I suppose my results fishing shallow last year influenced my decisions as I wanted to do even better with it this year. Never mind, if there is one thing I need more than anything else it is knowledge of how these venues fish over a number of seasons and in different conditions and you only acquire this knowledge by knuckling down and doing your time!
After the league finished (I think I only finished half way up the table) we had the usual forum match across Bramley and Peartree lakes at Hartleylands which most of the league anglers fish along with a few mates from other forums. If you are an aggressive positive feeder then the last thing you want in a match is another aggressive positive feeder pegged next to you. Normally I end up with Nick Gilbert somewhere close by but fortunately he drew Bramley and I drew Peartree. This gave me a good chance of a lake win as most anglers would probably fish the pole or method and I felt the weather was now right to win by fishing shallow.
As a part of my learning cycle on these venues, I really wanted to know how quickly I could get a shallow pole line going so I decided to use this match as an experiment. I already know you can catch right away on the waggler but fishing shallow close in was still something I hadn’t played with much on this venue as I usually focus on the islands. I also decided to give the margins a fair chance but only if my main approach died on me.
As it turned out it took exactly 8 minutes to get my first fish shallow at about 7 or 8m so this would be valuable information for the future. Although summer had arrived and conditions looked good, the place still fished under par but 101lb won me the lake and I felt that my season had now started given my failure in the league.
I then fished one of the regular Pad’s Army opens at Monk lakes and as usual drew a mediocre peg that nobody would have fancied over the end peg flyers. I went straight into shallow pole mode after balling it in and was winning the match with 138lb right up to the last 2 blokes to weigh in and I was then knocked down to 3rd. Not bad, most anglers would take that on any 60 peg open but I don’t mind admitting to driving home a little disappointed.
From this point on though, everything went totally pear shaped. I started to draw really naff pegs again and it seemed that every venue I fished would switch off on the day I was there. Not just for me but for everyone. Even the 100+ peg Nick Puncher Memorial match at Hartlylands was weird. I drew the Res which I was dead chuffed about but the lake just didn’t fish. It turned out that the previous day there was a match on the Res with a couple of 200+ weights coming out and this just seemed to kill it whereas on Nick’s lake there were over 10 ton plus weights.
This was the way my summer continued........relentlessly.........every single match I fished I drove there praying that the venue would fish properly. It got to a point where I wondered if I should assume that the next venue would fish bad and go there to fish negatively but optimism always got the better of me.
I think I fished around 15 matches on the trot without ANY of them fishing properly. Winning weights would be lower than expected and most of the field would struggle for anything close to expected weights. What made it even more frustrating was the fact that these venues seemed to fish ok the week before or the week after. It was as if a constant change of air pressure was following me around wherever I went.
We then got into the Fish to Win qualifiers run by John Bell. This is a brilliant injection of decent sized matches with a final where the winner would take home £3000 at Lake John near Waltham Abbey. You needed to finish 1st or 2nd in any of the qualifiers to get there so the chances were not bad given that I entered 4 of them, 2 at Monks, 1 at Hartleylands and 1 at Wylands.
Needless to say my run of bad draws and poor conditions saw me pack up early at the first match, weigh in bobbins in 2 of them and manage only a 6th at Hartleylands from what was my best draw for a very long time. Unfortunately the wind was in my face and I had to fish the conker bomb and margins all day to put about 88lb on the scales.
Somehow I managed to qualify for the section winners match at Monks but the cost and the time of year would just make it too much of a gamble so I chose not to fish it.
With summer over and autumn well under way I only have one more match at Sam’s Lakes in Headcorn to fish which I am really looking forward to as it is a ‘silvers only’ match and I have had enough of carp for this year. After this I will be visiting my local rivers a bit as the nettles die down and then I have a couple of Xmas matches to fish. Maybe I will be persuaded to get out more this winter.
My thoughts at the moment though are focused on planning ahead for next year. I intend to trash all of my rigs in favour of new floats that Nick Gilbert is making for me and making up more rigs to cover more eventualities. A lot of my rigs need trashing anyway because they have been used once or twice and I want to start next season with a box full of pristine rigs and plenty of varied hook lengths. Nick is also working on one or two new patterns including a new dibber that should be even better than the last one so keep an eye out for his new range.
Lastly, I want to finish off by saying thanks to a few people. Firstly to Trevor at Got baits for sponsoring the Spring League, to Morgan who manages Monk Lakes for taking the time to chat at matches and discussing the new rules with me, to John Bell for putting the time and effort into bringing us an exciting competition and of course to everyone I fish with that makes the day more fun than just catching a few fish. I would also like to mention the Match Fishing Scene forum that is about to celebrate it’s first birthday. The moderators and administrators have done a great job creating what I think is the biggest source of information and communication in the world of match angling. If you haven’t already joined then it will be the best fiver you ever spend!
Let’s hope I have something else to write about before spring arrives and here’s hoping that the fishing next year get’s back to what it was in 2008!

Hartleylands forum match, Bramley and Peartree lakes

2009-06-29T14:19:00.000+01:00

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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!

Evening pairs match, Sam's Lakes Headcorn

2009-06-29T14:15:00.000+01:00

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I’ve never fished an evening match before but the idea of avoiding the mid-day heat and enjoying the cooler hours and potentially better evening fishing was appealing. Nick needed a partner and knew how much I like this venue so we drew at 4 and fished from 5 until 8. I’ve only fished this place about 3 times and the match today was on the bottom lake that I have only ever fished for silvers. Usually everyone fishes for the carp but I wasn’t sure of the stocking density. They also seem to be caught mainly from around the group of islands to the right and not in open water. Continuing with my year of bad draws I pulled out peg 5 which was in no-man’s land with only open water and Lilly pads close in to my left. Nick, who I am slowly begging to think is a magnate (no, not that sort of magnate) drew a peg in the middle of the island cluster but without an island chuck. Without knowing if Carp would dominate this match, I took 3 pints of maggot with me as this place is stuffed with silvers as well as the usual carp gear and a box of mixed pellets, meat and corn.

At the start I fed a couple of jam jars of the mixture by the Lilly pads and chucked out a conker bomb clipped up at the same distance as my pellet waggler which was about 40m. I fed 8mm pellets over the top to draw them up but didn’t have anything but liners for half an hour.
Next out was the waggler and I began to catch fish between 2lb and 8lb but not as quickly as Nick who was apparently catching them one-a-bung. I rested the swim about half way through the match and had a look by the Lilly pads but there was no sign of life down there.

During the course of the match I was feeding maggots 10m out at about 2 o’clock. The swim was absolutely swirling with fish but I didn’t see anything bigger than a few ounces and all the while I was putting carp in the net I wasn’t about to fish for silvers.

To cut a short story even shorter, I weighed in 40 odd pound of carp which was 2nd on the lake and Nick had around 100lb.............in 3 hours! Good enough for a win and a lovely evening’s fishing.

Monk Lakes 1 & 2 - Pad's Army charity open

2009-06-21T11:27:00.000+01:00

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These matches seem to be quite popular and are drawing anglers from further afield. In the car park I was approached by a guy that sounded Scandinavian, (sorry mate I didn’t ask your name but thanks for coming over). He recognised me from my blog and told me how interesting he finds it and also Nick’s blog. We had a good chat and then went up to the draw. Out came peg 61 for me and I was relatively pleased to be on the left side of lake 2 and half way up the spit. It could have been better but at least I was in with a chance if the fish were in the mood.
Arriving at my peg I found a youngster to my right called Ross who helps out at Monks and has recently been selected for the England Juniors squad (or something impressive like that). We had a chat once we were all tackled up and he is going to do well for himself.
Now at this point the weather was looking a bit suspect, chilly, cloudy and not many gaps in the cloud cover but there was a good breeze (as usual) and I hoped it would push the clouds over quickly. My hopes were met and by the time the match started it was turning in to another sunny June day.
I decided on 4 rigs, 2 of which would be based around my usual shallow approach at this venue. Both rigs had “Matt’s Slappers” made by Nick Gilbert, one was a long-line rig for slapping hard (about 4’ from float to pole) and the other was a short line “hang ‘em” rig for the self-hooking method. Next was a margin rig, I had a good depth and lots of reeds so a short Gilbert diamond went onto this one. Finally, as I had a spare 20 minutes I decided to stick on a deck rig for out in front (just in case) and this had a long Gilbert diamond on it. Hopefully neither of these rigs would get wet but sometimes the margins can work well if you need to rest the main line or it dies all together.
I took some hemp for down the edge, cheaper than my favoured caster approach and I wanted to see if it would work just as well. The main bait though would be 6mm hard pellets although I did take a box of different pellets with me to try as a change bait. They seemed to work well but I will keep these pellets secret for the time being just in case it was a fluke that they worked better than the usual ones. Something I did notice today was the size of my main feed pellets. They seemed a lot smaller than the “secret” pellets I took. The feed pellets this year seem darker than last year and I am also wondering if they are a bit smaller for some reason or maybe the “secret” pellets were just a bit bigger, maybe 6.5mm.
On with the match then and as the horn sounded I balled in 8 jaffas of method mix with a packet of yellow pineapple Atomic Cloud mixed in at around 8m. After flicking a few pellets over the top I shipped the pole out and connected with a 2lb carp immediately. You know that feeling when you start catching straight away? Well in the first 5 minutes I had 5 carp in the net, rock n roll!
Things didn’t remain at this speed for long though and within the first hour I had around 20 fish which was still ok given their size. Now something I have noticed this spring is that every match I have fished the sport has taken a dive around mid-day and sure enough as I was beginning to suspect that I could do the double ton, the bites dropped off. I spent the next 2 hours altering depth, changing the pellet type, changing my feeding pattern and going a bit longer. This was not wasted effort though as I was still putting fish in the net, just not quite as quickly. I continued with this but had to fish at 10m for bites and needed to chop and change which hand I was feeding with in order to get the bait out to the right distance. With the breeze today it was hard to reach 10m with my left hand so often I was holding the pole in my wrong hand in order to feed with my right hand. I have done this before and it works fine but just takes a bit more energy and can get quite tiring.
After a lot of chopping and changing I settled on one specific depth and feed rate that seemed to work best and this entailed throwing quite a few pellets out every few seconds. The fish seemed to respond better to a more positive approach.

During the 4th hour the fishing seemed to pick up again and I had a good spell but the bites still dropped off after a while. I decided to put on one of my alternative pellets and this seemed to work well. I maintained my feed rate and worked hard until the final hour when I had the fish swirling and boiling in front of me. In fact, they were responding so well I managed to get them back to 8m which was great because I could lose a section and go back to the easier fishing and feeding with my left hand.
I stuck a third net in now as I didn’t want to risk having too much in them and now the fish were coming one a bung and I was rocking. My thoughts of a frame place had disappeared when the bites tailed off at mid-day but I was now putting about 1lb of fish in the net every minute! Then disaster struck and 15 minutes before the end a decent carp managed to get under my nets and I had to remove them all from my spray bar in order to save the fish and get my rig back. The fish had shed the hook on to one of the nets and I lost a good 10 or 12 minutes fishing time when the bites were coming fast. I managed another few fish before the end of the match and estimated around 110lb which I felt would only be any good if the lakes had fished hard. That dry spell at mid-day seemed to mess my chances up and maybe I should have gone down the edge but I was reluctant to do this when I was still catching out in front.
There was something else that I felt spoiled my chances today and that was lack of preparation. My new job consumes so much time that a Saturday match means I have limited time to prepare on Friday evening. One thing I forgot to do last night was check my hook length boxes and I realised that I only had a couple of 14’s tied to 0.18 and a few 12’s tied to .18 as well. I would normally use a 14 to 0.16 or 0.18 if the fishing is frantic and I like to change my hook length when the hair becomes twisted or kinked. I therefore had to fish the second half of the match with 12’s tied to 0.18 which was far from ideal.
I wandered over to the far bank of my lake and there was a weight of 115lb on the board already and I was convinced that had beaten me. Word on the street was lake 1 had fished bad and 102lb had won it but I thought I had more than that in my net. As the scales came along my bank a bloke weighed in 124lb and I knew that I was now stuffed and was regretting my lack of preparation and that mid-day dry spell.
As I took out the third net that I put in it seemed quite heavy and went about 40lb. I was now worried that I may have put too much in my other nets but they were close to 50lb each and my total was 136lb which surprised me. A few blokes were chatting to me along the bank and a couple of them belong to Total Fishing. They were nice blokes probably from Surrey I would think as they mentioned waters from over that way.
Young Ross next to me pulled out his nets and put a very respectable weight together, I think he had around 50 or 60lb which is good going among the field of experienced adults on the pond!
As we walked along the bank a few blokes were asking me how I fished the match and it was apparent that nobody had caught down the edge. Maybe I made the right choice by staying on the shallow line? Then at the end of the spit there were some heavy nets but fortunately they only went 125lb keeping me in the lead. I heard a few blokes moaning that they hadn’t caught well on the back of the spit and people began to assume I had won it.
I decided to take my gear back to the car at this point and as I returned there were only 4 left to weigh in towards the bridge. One bloke had 200lb on meat down the edge and another had 150lb. Bugger!
So I was knocked down to 3rd place and went home with only a small trophy and £50. Never mind, at least my run of bad draws seems to have evolved into average draws now!
There are few things that I was pondering on today and I need to investigate these during this summer.

Firstly, when I ran out of size 14 hook lengths and used 12’s instead, I was still getting plenty of fish, these are the hooks I use for bigger fish and the hair is about 10-15mm long. I was under the impression that this was too long for small carp but it didn’t seem to affect the bites-to-fish ratio. Perhaps a longer hair is better or at least not worse than a 5mm hair!
I was also using doubled 8 slip today but when netting the fish I still had to stand for the 2lb and 3lb carp. Even though I have reduced the amount of slip in my kits by adding Dacron, I think I might have to bite the bullet and cut my top kits down and use much less in them. Doubled 8 should be able to handle anything really and doubled 6 should be fine for the smaller carp. Now where is my hack saw?
Another point to note was that the “secret” pellets sunk quicker than the usual ones but nearly all my bites came when the rig slapped the surface so maybe the sink rate did not matter much. In fact, I think it is entirely possible that because I feed and then slap, the pellet was catching up with the feed instead of falling on top of it. Maybe I am just imagining it though but I will pursue this thought further. Also, the fish seemed to like the “secret” pellet more, perhaps it made no difference but the fishing just got better and there is a rather unique feature about these pellets that may have something to do with increasing bites. Again I will have to dabble more with this before I send you all off on a mission to waste your cash on a lost cause!
I have to say that although my hopes of a win were trashed at the last hurdle, the best thing about today was the number of blokes that approached me for a chat. And good luck to Ross pegged next to me, you had me worried half way through the match! I’m not sure if you need any help with your fishing but if you want some advice on fishing shallow then just ask me next time and I will help you as much as I can.
Let’s hope this weather holds up and gets better, there are some good matches and festivals coming up and I don’t want another summer of fishing spoiled by the weather!

The rivers and streams of Yalding

2009-05-24T21:46:00.000+01:00

When I was just over 2 years old my parents moved from middle Kent to suburban London and that is where I spent the next 37 years of my life. My Dad would bring me ‘back home’ for a bit of river fishing now and then but as I grew into my teen years I became more interested in the local lakes where Roach, Bream, Tench and Crucian Carp offered better sport. More recently, I moved out of suburban London and back to the heart of Kent and started to explore the rivers that surround the village. It's a bit like having a holiday every weekend as all of these rivers and streams are between a few yards and 1 mile of my cottage. The Beult in fact is just a few yards away and this photo was taken last winter from my front door. The river is just out of sight at the bottom of the pathway.

And this is the Beult at the end of the path but this time in summer:

There are Roach, Chub, Carp, Dace, Perch.........and some nice Bream too:

Walking out of the village is a gravel stream on the way to the Medway and Teise about ½ mile down the road...........I haven't seen any fish in it as it's only a few inches deep but I bet there's a few Trout or Grayling around somewhere!

And this is the Teise just before it meets the Medway. I fished this stream a bit further up last winter with a mate and we had some nice Roach and Chub around the 10-14oz mark, all in about 18" of water.

And this is a nice lumpy Perch in the Teise.............the stripey thing just under the bank, probably a couple of pound in weight. I've seen some nice Chub taking food off the surface here but it's not easy to fish this stretch unless you pick a week day when the families with kids and dogs won't be playing in the stream.

And this is the Medway itself. Quite deep and slow. I've not fished it for over a year but there are some nice Roach and skimmers plus Chub and Carp around. The banks are nicely cut and you can fish the moorings after October.

I've not fished these rivers much, just a handfull of times but this winter I think I will keep some maggots in the fridge for those frosty weekend mornings!

Fishomania 2009 qualifier Monk Lakes

2009-05-18T09:49:00.000+01:00

Having only returned to angling recently, this was the first time I had entered a Fisho qualifier and out of the 2 venues I went for I was lucky enough to receive a ticket to Monk Lakes on my doorstep. With probably 6 pegs that could possibly win, I went with little hope of framing but the day would be fun as a lot of anglers I know were fishing this as well.

At the draw I waited for a few mates to dip their hands into the bucket but very few good pegs were coming out. Nick Gilbert drew 34 which isn’t worth diddly and then my hand went into the bucket. Now the chances of drawing a flyer are about 1 in 20 and the chances of drawing next to your mate are about 1 in 60. Yep, I drew peg 33 on lake 1 which is worth even less than 34 as it is only half a peg being tucked up in the wrong corner with the side bank halving the amount of water you can fish in. To top it off, another mate Jeff drew 36 so we were all on the worst lake, on the worst bank and up the worst end………….oh joy!

Arriving at my peg I found that things were even worse than expected, the fishery had closed the inlet to the lake for precautionary reasons and the water level was down by several inches thus I have now named that peg ‘The Beach’ due to the fact that you could see the lake bed sloping up to the left hand bank a metre or two out. This also gave me no margin depth therefore limiting my options even further. To cap it all off, the weather was cold, overcast and there was no prospect of it warming up during the day…………oh joy!

Luckily Nick had got me 4 pints of maggot the day before just in case the weather turned and so all the pellets, paste and groundbait stayed in the carryall. Well mine did anyway but ‘Big Guns Gilbert’ balled in 6 babies heads at the start which I am sure entertained some of the blokes sitting around the lake carefully placing 4 micro pellets into their pole pots!

My approach was going to be a little more subtle than balling it in and to Nick’s amusement I attached a Fox sprinkle pot to my ‘out in front’ top kit and then proceeded to set up 2 margin rigs just in case any fish decided it would be a good idea to feed in 8 inches of water!

Now for anyone else reading, the rest of this blog could sound very dull however, the day was actually fun with lots of banter, various mates coming along for a chat and the occasional offer of a cuppa. So there is not much to say other than I focused on a maggot line at 10m, going longer later in the day and used the sprinkle pot and catty to feed. I used a Gilbert diamond pole float which is extremely stable, 0.16 Fox Micro with a 16 B611 tied to 0.12 and double maggot (red and white).

At the weigh-in, Nick had a quick look inside his net and after close inspection found some fish in the bottom.

Fortunately my maggot approach earned me a few more fish to put 37lb on the scales which was 3rd in section from the duff end of the bank. At least I had won a quid off Nick and had a good day!

Pole floats - using rubbers instead of eyes

2009-04-23T12:29:00.000+01:00

For a while now I have been asking Nick Gilbert to make my floats without eyes. This includes glass stem deck floats as well as dibbers but here I will talk about the deck float.

On the long deck floats I use 4 rubbers on the stem and 2 on the tip and if you can find the right diameter silicon then you can make the end rubbers tight and the middle rubbers a bit looser to make sliding the float up and down the line easier. I also ensure the bottom rubber is around 10mm plus so it over-hangs the stem a little to keep the line under the stem and not to the side and it also provides more grip. I use 2 rubbers on the tip in case 1 splits and also so that I can slide one up to the tip if I want to, perhaps for paste fishing when you want absolute direct control of the float.

The reason I only use rubbers is that you have less components to suffer wear and tear, especially in snag pits and it reduces the chances of tangles and hook-ups, especially in windy conditions. I have even used this set-up with back-shot when the two top rubbers are at the base of the tip and find that I prefer this to any rig where the float has eyes. Let's face it, we don't need eyes on stick floats do we?

No doubt there will be those that insist having eyes is better but for Carp and larger silvers on days when bites are plentiful, I find using rubbers is simple, reliable and saves time.

GOT Baits ISK League round 2 – Monks lake 1

2009-04-20T13:24:00.000+01:00

Sometimes there is little you can do to frame and even to win your section but in a league that is all about points then you can at least try to do something about getting the most out of your section and out of your peg. Today was a hard, cold day on a fickle venue that usually fishes well through the warmer months but can be harshly affected by conditions. Raised high and with no protection from the elements, the match lakes at Monks can suffer with howling winds and bitter cold even though down in the car park things seem quite calm.

So today I pulled up into the car park and met a few of the lads by the café. Within minutes I was regretting the fact that I had only worn a pair of shorts and a fleece and before long I was rummaging around in the car for a pair of waterproof trousers I thought I had lurking around. Thankfully they were there as my legs were beginning to turn a worrying blue colour and we all know that I don’t do BLUE! Having discussed the weather prospects, I visited the on-site shop and bought 4 pints of maggots as the only bait I had brought with me were hard sinking pellets and a few worms.

At the draw I pulled out peg 13, an end peg but up the wrong end, on the wrong side of the lake! For company to my right was Johnny Watt who also insists on buying red gear so our corner of the lake looked like a poppy filed with red luggage and clothing all over the bank. To his right was Rusty and being a good shallow angler I expected him to try and catch up in the water which might help me out to determine whether it was going to work. In other words, if I see him catching shallow then I know that I need to give it a go.

Today was going to be tough to call. Would it warm up a bit? Will they feed shallow? Should I focus on points and small baits? Where in my end peg should I fish? Will the wind become stronger and ruin any long pole line? How much tow will there be? I needed to do some serious thinking! I set the pole up and shipped out with a deck rig and plumbed up. At a comfortable 8.5m I had a very shallow 3’ so on went another section where I found 3’ 6” and decided to fish here for 2 reasons. Firstly, if the wind became any stronger and I fished further out then I would risk not being able to fish the swim I had fed. Secondly, if the fish come shallow then I would want to fish fast and easy and 10m is about the limit for feeding with one hand and slapping the rig with the other, especially if it is windy. So my decision was made to fish an easy length where I could fish up or down comfortably in the strong wind blowing from the right.

Towards the corner of the lake to my left, I also had an inviting line of reeds with a depth of around 3’ along the edge. My previous experience on hard days at Monks has taught me that feeding down the edge can rescue your position, especially later in the day when everything seems to have died out in front. I have had success feeding both caster and small pellets but using half a Dendra on the hook. A constant feeding pattern of a good handful every 5 or 10 minutes seems to attract and hold some decent fish. Given that this feed rate works out a bit expensive with casters and a waste of money if you don’t use them, I now opt for pellets unless it is winter and I know the fishing will be hard. Pellets need to be small but micros are too small for windy days so I opted for 2mm although 3mm would have been better in the wind. I also took some hemp for the same line as there are plenty of Barbel in the venue and I doubt either the Barbel or Carp would mind it going in as well as the pellets.

So, I now had 3 options in 2 swims. The margin, the 10m line with maggot on the deck and the 10m shallow if possible. I also brought with me a pair of pellet waggler rods and a bomb rod. I took out one of the waggler rods to fish either of 2 lines. Firstly out in front thinking that if it was a nice day then some of the bigger Carp could be hanging out in the middle and secondly I had the left hand bank which isn’t pegged and although shallow and featureless, there could be Carp there having been ‘walked up’ the bank.

Top kits were set up with doubled 8 slip for the shallow rig, doubled 6 Slip for the margin (I am currently trying this ‘doubled slip’ fashion thing) and then standard 12 latex for the maggot rig.

All floats today are made by Nick Gilbert, a dibber, a 0.6g Diamond for out in front and a 0.4g short Diamond for down the edge. The tow will be harsh and these fibreglass stemmed floats will be very stable. Although the shallow rig and margin rig were tied to 0.20 Fox Micro, I did step down to 0.14 on the maggot rig (for anything that swims) and a B911 hook.

Nick blew the whistle at 10.30 and I threw 2 handfulls of hemp and 2 of pellets down by the reeds and shipped my maggot rig out with a toss pot full of maggots. I didn’t want to use the catty at first as the wind would blow the maggots all over the place and although I usually feed a lot heavier than 1 toss pot every few minutes, I decided that it would be best to keep things tight in the wind.

After a few lifts and drags the float dipped and a nice carp was in the net. Another pot full and another few minutes later Carp number 2 was on it’s way in. Things were looking steady and after half an hour I had 5 fish for about 6 pounds which although is not good going for this place, it was steady and promising.

The steady sport continued up to the end of the first hour until I detected that the swim could do with a rest. Having fed the margin regularly, I decided to take a look so re-fed the maggot swim and ship half a worm down the edge followed by a handful of hemp and pellets. After a wait of 3 or 4 minutes the float slid under and a nice 2lb Carp came in. I re-fed the maggot line and shipped another half worm down the edge but the tip remained above the water with no further indications. I therefore decided that the margin swim needed longer to settle and went back out onto the maggot line where there were a few blades and the odd Carp and Ide waiting for me.

Hour 2 went by with smaller fish going into the net and bites slowing down. I estimated 15 proper fish and some bits for around 15lb. Another look down the edge brought me a small Tench and one more Carp but I had to swap between lines to string a few bites together. As time wore on, the sun came out and although the wind was still strong I noticed Rusty catching quite well on a shallow rig so it was time to give it a go. For 20 minutes I pinged pellets out to 10m and slapped and tapped all I could but to no avail. I just couldn’t buy a bite and was now worried that I may have over-fed the maggot swim with pellets. A look on the maggot rig provided little other than a few bumped blades and an odd Ide. Things were now looking grim!

I re-fed the maggot line to get them back onto the smaller bait and started feeding more heavily down the edge thinking that I might need to make the swim work better for me during the last hour or so. A quick look earned me another Carp around 3lb which was VERY welcome but still I could only draw one fish at a time from the swim.

Around the 4 hour mark I decided to take a chance and chuck the pellet waggler out just in case there were some nice fish sitting out in the middle. The sun was quite warm now but the wind was still cutting but I thought it was worth a look. 20 minutes of pinging and re-casting brought me nothing but 1 jerk on the tip which was probably the hook pulling from a foul-hooked fish.

With about 45 minutes left of the match I needed to decide what I was going to do with the time. I looked up the bank to assess what I thought my section had caught. Johnny next door was having a rough time and I was sure I was beating him. Rusty next to him was way ahead but the next 2 pegs along seemed not to have caught a great deal. I made the call and opted to ensure that I got every ounce of fish in the net that I could and try hard to take a section 2nd. I wanted to feed heavy with maggots but still be accurate so I brought the 10m maggot rig in to 5m and started feeding by hand. It was the time of day that fish expect the margins to get fed with unwanted bait and so maybe I could kick-start a new line.

Within minutes I was picking up blades and the odd Ide and I was hammering the bait in. Half a handful every 30 seconds or so and this was bring me bites but mainly from small fish. I kept this going until within 10 minutes I decided to look down the edge for one more decent carp. After a couple of minutes I missed a bite but sat there until the last minute hoping for a last bite…………..and it came. The whistle went and I called ‘fish on’ and gently played a 2lb Carp to the net. I guessed at 30lb overall but it is difficult to be accurate with so many small fish in the net.

There was plenty of groaning around the lake and a few guys approached me to report their stories of woe. I was expecting Nick to have winkled out a few but he walked along the bank with his head held low. The flyers would probably have done ok but it seemed that most other pegs had struggled. Me? I was just clutching on to the possibility of 4 points and luckily I got them having come 2nd in section.

A hard day’s work it was and I am not too disappointed that I have to miss the next fixture which is on notorious lake 2 at Monks. Seeing as we are able to drop our worse result though, I might just have chosen the right match to miss as the final 3 are all at Hartleylands where things are far more interesting and the weather probably a lot better.

So I will leave the league now for a few weeks being join 1st on 9 points but when I return I shall be half way down the table at least with a lot of climbing to do. See you then!

1 Collin Wood 60-12 Peg 23
2 Nick Allen 59-7 Peg 36
3 Dennis Price 57-14 Peg 22
4 Rusty 57-00 peg 16
5 Russ Evans 53-10 peg 24
6 Squeaky (guest) 51-0 peg 31

League Placing

1 Ian Carley, 5-4, 124-8 9
2 Matt Love, 5-4, 107-1 9
3 Nick Gilbert, 5-3, 133-13 8
4 Collin Wood, 3-5, 110-9 8
5 Dennis Price, 4-4, 105-1 8
6 Nick Allen, 3-5, 103-1 8
7 Jonny Watt, 5-3, 95-5 8
8 Mark Hathway 4-4, 69-15 8
9 Russ Evans, 4-3, 104-3 7
10 Jeff Driscoll, 4-3, 82-14 7
11 Russell Graves, 0-5, 57-0 5
12 Paul Kell, 0-5, 44-4 5
13 Pete Allen 2-2 63-11 4
14 John Haige 2-2 33-1 4
15 Chris Jones 3-1 27-6 4
16 Brian Pink 2-2 19-15 4
17 Trevor Little 2-1 81-6 3
18 Paul Slater 3-0 39-7 3
19 Al Loader 0- 11-10 2

GOT Baits ISK League round 1 - Hartleylands

2009-04-13T09:31:00.000+01:00

.…………..and so my 2009 season begins, with the first match of the GOT Baits ISK League held at Hartleylands on Peartree and Bramley lakes. With new stories to be told, new lessons to be learnt and hopefully more pools money in the bank than last year, I was looking forward to some fine weather and fine fishing. Arriving early, I found a few anglers already there and soon the car park was full of handshakes, banter and £1 side bets. The draw was made and I had 8 on Peartree which although was not in the gap between the islands where I would have wanted, it was a half decent peg with a 4AAA chuck to the island.

Once at my peg I started getting the gear out rigged with various weapons of mass destruction:

2 Milo 11’ Light Waggler rods both with 3lb line on TD-R2058 reels and rigged with 4AAA Nick Gilbert balsa wagglers and hair rigged pellet band to a 14 Drennan Carp Match on 0.16 Fox Micro.

A Milo New Era 11’ bomb rod with a ½ oz flat bomb to 6lb line on a TD-R3012 reel and a 3’ tail with a hair rigged pellet band onto a size 10 Drennan Carp Match on 0.18 Fox Micro.

A top kit with one of the dibbers I designed and made by Nick Gilbert on 0.20 Fox Micro and with a hair rigged pellet band to a 14 Drennan Carp match on 0.16 Fox Micro.

A top kit with a KC Carpa Cocker on 0.20 Fox Micro set at 3’ to fish paste down the margin, with a size 10 Drennan Carp Match on 0.18 Fox Micro.

Both kits had doubled Slip in them as I wanted to try the system out and I had doubled 6 in the dibber kit and doubled 8 in the paste kit.

I also brought a method rod with me but it stayed in the rod bag as I doubted I would need it. I did however bring with me a new piece of kit that I thought would make feeding easier and help keep my catapult safe. It was a Preston bowl that sits in a frame off a box leg and the bowl is deep and can be angled to sit closer to my leg and hand.

I thought this would make life a bit easier and also save the odd catty from taking a swim. I also bought 2 new Drennan catapults to try out. I’m not sure what they are called but they have a black conventional frame, strong black elastic and a stiff mesh pouch. They looked like they would survive easier and tangle less.

Given the good weather we have been having and the fact that the air was humid although not exactly warm, I was convinced that a shallow approach would do well and so my plan would be to feed 3 lines. Firstly the waggler up to the island which always produces from the first chuck, then a shallow line at 8.5m and finally a paste swim down the right hand margin among a clump of reeds.

Bait for the day would be a bag of paste mixed with Pineapple Atomic Cloud along with 15 pints of 6mm hard sinking pellets and a few red maggots. I like the bright fluorescent colour that the yellow Atomic Cloud gives and if there were any lumps down the edge I felt that they would easily find the paste!

So I was ready for the whistle and had a few new things to try out, the Preston bowl, the doubled Slip and the Drennan catapults.

At the sound of the whistle I fed 3 pouches of 6mm pellets up to the island, a small handful on the pole line and 4 hand fulls down the margin at 4m. Another pouch went out to the island followed by my waggler and as I reached for more pellets the tip went round and Carp no.1 was in the net. A good first half hour followed with another 7 fish in the net and on target for the 15 per hour average I had set myself to win the section and maybe even frame.

The second half hour went much the same as the first with another 8 fish in the net and I was constantly feeding the shallow pole line so my work rate was high and I was pleased that the sun was not too warm. My back was aching a bit though as the Preston bowl was slipping down the leg of my box and I was bending down to reach the pellets. Although I had the correct attachment inside the clamp, the clamp just wouldn’t tighten enough to grip the leg so a bit of a re-think will be needed here!

During the 2nd hour things became a little erratic, picking up a fish close to the island then needing to drop away, going deeper, shallowing up, holding off the feed, feeding heavier and so on. It seemed that there weren’t the volume of fish there that I had hoped but I was still catching and wanted to carry on feeding the pole line a bit longer before going over it. By the end of hour 2 I had only 26 fish in the net and was falling behind my target so I decided to rest the waggler swim and go over the 8.5m line. First put in and the float went under and the doubled 6 came peeling out of the top kit. Within seconds I realised I had hooked a big fish but it took the Carp a bit longer to realise this, the Slip was soft and began to act a bit like hollow where it just keeps going and you cannot control the fish. Off it charged and the Slip just kept going. I know my top kits are long but I thought there would be more power in the system than this! 15 minutes later and an 8lb Common was netted, hooked perfectly in the lip. I re-fed both swims and immediately swapped the rig over to my trusty 14 solid! Note to self: try using less Slip and make up the distance with something like Dacron that doesn’t stretch!

Back out on the 8.5m line and not a sniff, I think the Common had probably swam through the swim several times holding a sign saying “get the hell out of here”!

More pellets went out to the island then and out went the waggler and another 2 fish were in the net within as many minutes. This didn’t continue though as once again I had to mess around with accuracy, depth and feeding pattern to string some bites together. By the end of hour 3 I had 35 fish and decided that it was time to have a look down the edge while I rested the waggler line yet again. Out went the paste and I sat quietly expecting a nice big lump to come along for some dinner……………but no, not a sniff!

Back out on the waggler then and a few more fish came to the net but it was still slower than I was use to. It is only mid-April though and I had noticed that the general size of fish was bigger than last year so maybe I wasn’t doing too bad. I couldn’t see anyone else on the lake catching much although Nick Gilbert was lurking somewhere down the bank behind a bush and was probably winkling out a few fish.

With the fish seeming to be a bit cleverer than last year or just not in the mood for a proper nosh up, I ended hour 4 on about 42 fish and still couldn’t get a sniff down the edge or at 8.5m so it was all about the waggler line now. I picked up the bomb rod and it suddenly dawned on me that I forgot to mix up any stiff paste to fish the conker so all I could do was fish a banded pellet. The tip flew round but again I could only pick up odd fish here and there. This was very frustrating as I felt that the conker could have saved the day and I was extremely angry with myself! So my last hour consisted of picking up fish on the waggler or bomb and I ended with 48 in the net for what I felt would be 70lb-80lb.

The scales came round and Nick had whooped me putting 103lb on the board. I registered 79lb and won my section. The other lake fished even worse and left me with a 2nd overall but with a very welcome 5 points in the bag. Seeing as I have to miss 1 round, the points are extremely valuable.

Today was quite interesting for me as I managed to learn a few more things about this place, the fish and also the new tackle I was trying out. I still have a bit of work to do before I am really happy with the way I fish this place but maybe next time I will be better prepared and the winter cobwebs would have been swept away.

Results:

1 Nick Gilbert 103-13
2 Matt Love 79-9
3 Ian Carley 78-14
4 Jonny Watt 73-14
5 Jeff Driscoll 63-6
6 Russ Evans 50-9

League Placing

1 Nick Gilbert 5 103-13
2 Matt Love 5 79-9
3 Ian Carley 5 78-14
4 Jonny Watt 5 73-14
5 Jeff Driscoll 4 63-6
6 Russ Evans 4 50-9
7 Dennis Price 4 47-3
8 Mark Hathway 4 44-8
9 Collin Wood 3 49-13
10 Nick Allen 3 43-10
11 Paul Slater 3 39-7
12 Chris Jones 3 16-14
13 Trevor Little 2 48-8
4 Pete Allen 2 23-3
15 John Haige 2 19-5
16 Brian Pink 2 9-11
17 Rusty (on Holiday) 0
18 Alan Loader (forgot about the match!) 0

Feature: 'Up in the Air', chapter 1

2008-12-12T14:47:00.000Z

When I got back into fishing again last summer after a 14 year break, one of the first methods I targeted was fishing shallow. Going back to the days when commercial fisheries first started sprouting up, we would use a gallon or more of maggots which was expensive but productive. These days of course we have pellets that are cheaper, make more noise and target the Carp and bigger silvers like Barbel, Chub and Ide (yes, the Barbel also come shallow to compete for the food).

I thought I would write this article to document my first year of modern shallow fishing, open up some of my findings to general debate and also perhaps to offer help to anyone who hasn’t tried shallow fishing much, so here goes:

Firstly we need to explore the principal of fishing shallow. I have heard people say that for every Carp on the surface there are 20 on the deck and therefore that is where they fish, on the deck. Contrary to popular belief however, the idea is not to target fish cruising on or near the surface. It is in fact a method to draw fish up in the water where they will compete heavily for food and pay less attention to which particle they swallow. I have fished many matches in poor conditions where I have caught better than those around me by catching at half depth or shallower and the reasons are because of the feeding pattern and finding where the fish are comfortable to feed. So let’s explore the concept of making the fish feed where you choose and then why getting them up in the water is an advantage:

Firstly, if you are good at paste fishing and enjoy the method, you will no doubt be dump feeding to keep the fish hard on the deck. This is because you do not want line bites that will waste your time, pull the hook out of the paste and result in foul hookers. You are therefore in control of where the fish feed. With shallow fishing the concept is the complete opposite and you are forcing the fish through the attraction of sound and their desire to compete for food to come up and start grabbing at anything that resembles a tasty snack. The benefits of this tactic are that you can attract fish from a wide area often poaching them from your neighbours and that you get more feedback from the swim enabling you to alter things to suit the ever changing situation.

Let me say at this point that I am not suggesting fishing shallow is better than fishing paste, there is a time and place for every method but I do feel that the majority of match anglers opt for paste because you are usually fishing on the deck and that is where they feel comfortable fishing.

Having noted the benefits of fishing shallow and the reasoning behind the method, let’s now look at 2 of the simplest styles of shallow fishing that I have concentrated on this year. Namely the pellet waggler and the pole & dibber, both of which I use on my local waters that contain a large head of small to medium sized Carp. For this reason I will focus mainly on this style of venue rather than the deeper waters that have fewer fish but larger specimens.There have been many articles written about the pellet waggler so instead of running through the basics of the method, I would like to talk more about rigs, depths and feeding.

The pellet waggler – I am a great believer in keeping things simple. I would rather have the ability to feed correctly than a complex rig and also on my local waters the fish range from 1lb – 3lb on average so I see no need for anything other than a conventional waggler style set-up. I will therefore use either a styro or balsa waggler (both un-loaded) that is short and dumpy and just large enough to chuck at whatever range you can fire pellets. Normally a 3AAA or 4AAA float will be fine as I mainly use 6mm hard pellets but I also carry 5AAA and 6AAA for windy days and 8mm pellets.There has been much hype about styro-foam as being the best material however, I have compared them to hand made balsa models (both made by Nick Gilbert) and we concur that neither dives more than the other and the flight is very similar so long as the grade of balsa used is the lightest and most buoyant.

There are other styles of float that I will occasionally use including loaded Puddle Chuckers and thick Carp wagglers both made by Drennan. You are best to glue the base of the float into the plastic peg as they can come flying off but these floats can help in strong wind or deeper water.The styro and balsa wagglers are fitted using a float adaptor although the style with a hole in the silicon base can split with loaded floats so I also carry the type with a swivel and silicon sleeve. Shotting is simple with a bulk around the float with heavier shot closest to the float and smaller shot either side to help secure them. A typical arrangement for a 4AAA waggler would be 1 AAA either side and 2BB either side of those giving a total of 2 AAA and 4BB which equates to 4AAA. The smaller shot are easier to move and have less chance of pinging off the line plus using more shot helps to create more of a ‘slap’ on the surface.

Reel line for me is simply one of the cheap bulk lines you can get like Mr. Crappie, Sundridge Force or Mullarkeys own brand. They tend to be more of a floating line than a sinking line which helps and they are reliable and strong. I will usually use 3lb but may go up to 4lb for larger fish. If you can’t land a bonus 8lb Carp on 3lb or 4lb line in open water then something is wrong! For hook lengths I use Fox Micro in 0.14 – 0.18 and usually 6” in length.I have tried a few hook patterns, most of which have ended up in the bin with only the Drennan Carp Match surviving. I find the Drennans bump far less fish on the strike and you lose far less through hook pulls. These have a 3.2mm Gardner pellet band tied into a small loop and hair rigged to them. I use 2 lengths of hair that allow either a 6mm or 8mm pellet to be ‘a pellets’ distance below the bend. Having the band in a loop helps to prevent the hair going curly through bagging and allows the pellet to hang more naturally bellow the hook bend rather than getting misshaped and hanging half way up the shank.

Lastly, I use a very light and short rod with a nice soft through-action to cope with lunges under the tip. Most pellet waggler rods I have seen are more suited to larger fish but for 1lb – 3lb fish then my Milo ‘Steve Gardner’ Light Waggler Rods are perfect. I hear the 11’ Preston Carbonactive is also well suited. The rods are paired with TD-R 2500 reels.

Moving on to depth and feeding, the first consideration is clearly the weather and if it has been continuously warm then my rigs will be set at 6” and 12” deep (I usually have 2 rods set up). First chuck will be with the 12” rig and I will take things from there. In less than perfect conditions I will probably set up 2 rods at 12” and 24” deep as sometimes the fish prefer to hang out mid-water and often you can catch close to the surface without seeing a single Carp there all day long. The reasons for changing depths are obviously due to catch rate, foul hookers or trying to pick off larger fish. Another point to mention here is that often I am fishing up to a feature where the depth is less than in open water and in fact fishing 12” deep might only be 12” or 24” off the bottom. This depth can only hold a limited number of fish but feeding with a catty spreads the feed around and enables you to hold fish over a large area and also to be selective about where in the swim you cast.

So let’s look at feeding now in more detail: we have already established that feeding often is key here because this is fundamental to getting the fish up in the water but I am always surprised at how few anglers feed often enough. I have seen countless anglers fishing the pellet waggler and only feeding every minute or so when my definition of ‘often’ is to feed with only 5, 10 or 15 second intervals. Even when I am playing fish I will still try and maintain a frequent pattern by shoving the butt between my knees to free my hands.If conditions are hard then I will still feed often but just cut down to 3 or 4 pellets at a time where the quantity on a bagging day will be nearer to a dozen. Of course in perfect conditions the fish will respond immediately and you may not have to alter your feeding pattern for 2 or 3 hours but often this year the weather has been less than perfect and you may find that you have to feed a lot to force the fish to take notice or to come into your peg.Sometimes it does pay to stop feeding altogether and just chuck out your waggler a couple of times, it can pay dividends to also rest the swim for a while but maintain the feed rate so that the fish build their confidence again. I usually have a margin swim primed for this where it is possible to pick up some bonus lumps on paste or meat every now and then.

As well as considering what the fish are doing, you also have to consider what the anglers next to you are doing as well and if they are fishing the waggler then you need to check if they have a better or worse chuck, and a better or worse cross wind. If you know your neighbours then you can also judge how well they can fish the method and how much they are likely to feed. It would not be uncommon to need 8 pints against good shallow anglers where 6 pints might have done the job fishing next to anglers fishing alternative methods. I will always take at least 10 pints with me and expect to use at least 6.While we are talking about feeding, it is important to mention where you cast as you can often pick up bonus fish or improve bite ratio by chucking outside of the feed area or just up to the edge. Often it pays to get tight to features to maximise bites but if you can pick off the larger fish that are wiser and hang off the main feed then you don’t need to catch so many! There are some other tricks to consider if bites dry up but I will leave those for now or I will end up writing a book instead of an article.

Lastly, perhaps I should mention that when feeding, my rod is always laid across my lap and the top of a keepnet allowing an angle to cushion any takes while my hands are on the catty. I reckon on a reasonable day 25% of my fish will hook themselves and pull the rod round. In fact, I am considering training myself to feed while still holding the rod. It can’t be any harder than using a catty while holding a pole and it is just a matter of muscle memory and habit, just like the way you learn to hold a golf club properly.

The shallow pole – having enjoyed my first attempts with the pellet waggler, I soon moved onto the pole and to a certain extent I find this even more enjoyable for a number of reasons. Firstly I will usually fish it quite short (7m – 11.5m) into open water which allows you to come in or go out much more than fishing a waggler up to an island and secondly because the whole motion process of feeding and casting is quicker, smoother and easier to handle without breaking your feeding pattern.

If you saw the rigs I use then at first glance they look extremely basic but although simple in construction, they are actually precisely refined to perform exactly how I want them to. Firstly the float is not one that you can buy in the shops. I have wasted money on a number of styles of dibber only to find that they are too big, too small, too light or too fragile. I therefore sent my float-making mate a design that I felt would be much better. After testing a few prototypes we have now arrived at a design that I think is perfect. It is constructed from balsa with a short, thick glass stem to cock it down to the base of the tip but with a straight-ish tip just long enough to take two Gardner pellet bands and the weight of a 6mm or 8mm wetted pellet. The idea of the pellet bands is to avoid the use of an eye that can create tangles and pull out but also they are far less likely to be cut by the line than standard large diameter float rubbers but I use two just in case one does cut. The float is about 50mm-60mm long which is ideal and also just heavy enough to slap around.

Main line will be between 0.16 and 0.20 Fox Micro with a lower diameter hair rig hook length identical to the ones I use for the pellet waggler. Shot will be a single no.8 directly under the float to act as a ‘stop’ and also enabling me to take it off if I want to use a bit of paste or if the water becomes choppy and I need more tip showing. Lastly, I will have two lengths of rig made up on winders. Firstly a short-line rig where the float can be between 6” and 12” from the pole tip and secondly a long-line rig where the float can be between 24” and 36” from the pole tip. These rigs enable me to fish very shallow or at half depth but also they perform in two different ways. The short-line rig acts as a ‘hanging’ rig where the fish hang themselves and you simply see the elastic streaming out of your pole and the long-line rig can be used to flip the rig over the pole tip when slapping and also to keep the pole well off their heads.

Moving on to the gear on the bank, you will usually see me set up for speed unless the wind is very strong and I will have a single V roller behind me and at an angle and use the mouth of a keepnet as a pole sock. Shipping back, breaking down and freeing my hands up is made easy and the angle of the pole roller enables me to swing hooked fish away from the swim as soon as they are hooked and draw them in well away from the rest of the fish. This is a speed method on my local venues and I need to ensure that I give myself as much fishing time as possible.My bait choice will nearly always be 6mm hard pellets for feed and for the hook with 4mm a possibility on harder days. The range I can feed at by hand is fundamental to the distance I fish with this method. If I can feed at 10m with my weak hand while holding the pole with my strong hand then I will fish at about 8m allowing me to go longer if I need to follow the fish out. If I need to fish longer or if the wind turns into my face then I have learnt to flip the pole into my weak hand and feed with my strong hand swapping back only to slap the rig or to play fish. I can probably gain one or two meters extra feeding distance with my strong hand although having the pole in my weak hand is slightly less graceful, but hey, I’m in it to catch fish not look good!

Feeding is similar to the way I described for the pellet waggler although it is now possible to be more precise with accuracy and frequency. As soon as I have hooked a fish I will throw pellets on it’s head to keep the other fish busy. As soon as I have drawn the fish away from the swim I will feed again and then again when I have broken down, again when I have netted the fish, again when I have slipped the top kit back on and again before slapping the rig back in. By this time the fish have forgotten all about one of their brothers being hooked and are ready to climb up my pole.

Having talked about the ‘bagging’ side of the method, there are also days where the fishing is rock hard but a shallow approach will still beat a deck approach. A couple of times this year I have done well catching 35lb to 45lb of small Carp having fed 6 pints of pellets and catching between 12” and 24” deep in 4’ or 5’ of water. Proof that the method can force fish into feeding and you don’t have to fish on the deck to get bites.One or two other interesting points spring to mind as well. I recall an open I won at Monk lakes around June time with 114lb of Carp……a couple of Tench…… and a Barbel……all caught fishing 6” deep! It seems that getting the fish into feeding mode up in the water works on otherwise regarded ‘bottom feeders’. I also won a small match at Sam’s Lakes in Headcorn catching silvers on maggot and when I came shallow in the last hour I had a few large skimmers and proper Bream at half depth. I am sure I would not have caught these fish shallow if I wasn’t hand-feeding maggots every 5 – 10 seconds.

I am quite sure I have left out a lot of detail here and that most of the contents will be nothing new to anyone reading it but I hope that anyone who wanted to learn more about a shallow approach will benefit from this and that it may spark a few thoughts among others.

Shallow Bream at Sam's - 11/10/08

2008-10-27T11:44:00.000Z

Sam’s lakes just south of Headcorn form an idyllic picturesque venue consisting of 2 lakes with around 30 pegs on each and run by a very nice chap called Mike. Nick Gilbert had organised this Maggotdrowners match and today we had about a dozen pegs booked on the bottom lake for a ‘silvers-only’ match as the carp here are too few to give everyone a good days fishing in a match situation and also there is a good head of silvers here with some stonking Chub!

As is usually the case when I fish a match with Nick, I got drawn next to him but his platform projected about 2m further into the lake than mine which I thought could be a problem for me. I therefore decided on a 13m line to draw fish from the distance he was likely to be fishing and also an 8.5m line for loose feeding by hand. I set up rigs for fishing over-depth with corn and maggot at 13m, over-depth with maggot at 8.5m and also a shallow maggot rig.

When Nick called the all-in I stood up holding my pole and balled-in 4 jaffas at 13m. I then began flicking maggots over the 8.5m line and fished double maggot for a while but without much joy. Both sides of me were catching skimmers and small Roach steadily so maybe I had spooked my peg with the jaffas but I was sure things would settle down for me. I changed to single maggot and the reaction was surprising as I was now getting quick bites but I bumped the first 6 fish. Maybe the B611 hooks I was using were too tough but I was hoping for a few of those big Chub!

Eventually I started to connect with the bites as I waited for them to develop more and soon I was catching up with my neighbours. After about an hour I decided to take a look on the 13m line as Mike the owner had passed by and mentioned that he had put a load of Bream in the lake up to around 6lb. 10 minutes later I had a bite and a 12oz Crucian came to the net but that was it so I went back to the maggot line.

By constantly flicking out a few maggots every 10 seconds and tweaking my rig I managed to increase the catch rate and also there were now some nice sized Roach and skimmers showing. By the third hour I was sure that I was ahead and Nick’s swim seemed to die off so he chucked in some groundbait to try and spark some life into it. Shortly after he hooked into something big and although we were both hoping that it would be one of those nice Chub, it turned out to be an F1 of about 4lb. He soon had another and then finally a nice 2lb Chub came out for him.

At around the start of the fifth hour I started picking up some nice sized skimmers and decided to up the anti as I thought I might have fallen behind. I had 4 pints of maggot with me and had fed 2 pints in the first 4 hours. I decided that I would feed the remaining 2 pints in the last hour to see if I could get those bonus fish buzzing. So in went about 30 maggots every 5 seconds and out came the shallow rig. I was determined to get me some nice fat Chub!!!

Now I have to admit that although my intention was to get those bonus fish feeding franticly and coming up in the water, my target was Chub, big Roach and maybe some skimmers but my first ‘bonus’ fish turned out to be a 2lb bronzed back skimmer otherwise known as a Bream (at 30 inches deep)

I’m sure I heard someone complaining that if 4lb F1s don’t count then catching Bream shallow don’t count either :-)

During this last 1 hour period I had a couple more proper Bream and a few large skimmers having shallowed up to 2’ and this added significantly to my weight. It was a shame that the all-out was called after 5 hours because this is probably the most enjoyable days fishing I have had this year, a nice change from catching Carp even though the weight would be low by comparison.

Nick grabbed the scales and various weights were recorded around the 10lb mark, Nick took his net out (and ditched the 4lb F1s) and his weight then registered 16lb 3oz. My little encounter with those Bream and one or two dog Roach settled the needle on 22lb 8oz for a great day’s fishing and a couple of traditional pound coins to add to the kitty.

This place is great and I hope we can have another silvers match here again soon!

Shannon's, Tunbridge Wells 14/09/08

2008-09-16T11:11:00.000+01:00

Although time prevents me from doing this much, sometimes it is quite useful to watch how someone else approaches a match and as I didn’t have much on this weekend I thought I would take a drive down to a venue that I have never seen before and see how Nick Gilbert was getting on. I only intended to stay for an hour or so but ended up waiting for the weigh-in as things were becoming quite interesting……..in more ways than one!

As Nick hadn’t fished the place before, he was after some advice leading up to the match and the word on the street was that paste was the method and that nobody had managed to do well fishing shallow there. Perhaps the challenge was on then……….

I arrived about an hour or two into the match to see Nick on peg 18 fishing the tip. As I approached him he lifted into a nice Carp and I unfolded my speci chair and took my place behind him. Soon a nice 2lb Carp was in the net and Nick told me that he had 1 on paste, a few shallow but the conker bomb seemed to be working better, pinging pellets over the top.

He re-baited his hair rigged pellet band with an 8mm skretting, wrapped it in paste so that it was about the size of a small sprout and flicked it out about 30m followed by around 8 pellets every 30 seconds over the top. Within 3 or 4 minutes the tip was twitching and another pull round brought fish number 10 to the net, again around the 2lb mark. Although the average size of fish here is said to be 5lb, Nick only caught a handful that were any larger than 3lb or 4lb while he was on the bomb but the sport was consistent and nobody else seemed to be catching much.

As I sat and watched Nick’s tip we were chatting about the possibility of catching shallow as there seemed to be quite a few fish in his peg. Then Nick pointed out the fizzing where he was feeding pellets which indicated the fish were rummaging around on the deck. The tip pulled around sharply and Nick grabbed his 10’ Shakey and proceeded to strike towards the nearby tree and slapped the tip against a protruding branch! This time it was clear that a decent sized fish was on and as it came closer he grabbed his landing net and proceeded to stab the fish several times in an attempt to net it! The fish clearly woke up at this point and gave a better account of itself but Nick won the battle having subdued it and a nice 4lb Carp was added to the keepnet. Nick joked that he was not putting on a good display of ‘how to net a fish’ and I chuckled to myself recalling the first time I saw him fish on Peartree last year and trying to land an 8lb Carp by chasing it up and down the margins with his net!

The sport continued as did Nick’s feeding although I was unsure where Nick’s far bank marker was as I had noticed that sometimes he would cast at 11 o’clock and sometimes he would cast at 10 o’clock. Also some of his casts were 25m and some were more like 30m or so. I then saw him ping pellets out about 5m further than where his bomb landed and he turned round and said ‘whoops, that wasn’t very close was it’? I laughed and told him that he should have said ‘I am spreading the feed around and searching the whole swim with my bomb to pick off bigger fish from the outside’. We had a chuckle and then his tip flew round again and once more Nick struck the rod straight into the tree. Another few fish later and his clicker indicated 18 Carp although his Shakey was taking more of a beating than the fish!

As the day wore on and the pellets kept going in, we began to see signs of fish close to the surface. I was itching to see him pick up the waggler rod and then as he pinged out a few more pellets there was a swirl followed by a few fish mouthing on the top. He placed his bomb rod onto the roost (a bush to his left), picked up the waggler rod and gave it a tug to free the rig from his roost (bush). ‘What’s the chances of mugging that fish first chuck?’ he asked as he flicked out some pellets and cast his home made styro. ‘Your chances are probably quite good if you cast the float somewhere close to the fish’ I replied as his waggler landed about 4m left of the pellets and the fish. He brought it in, re-fed and re-cast, this time a bit closer but still not on the money. The third cast was right in the middle of the swim and right on top of a very accurate pouch of pellets and the float sailed away as soon as it hit the water. There is nothing quite like mugging a decent fish off the surface! You see it, feed it and cast your bait onto it’s head and then WALLOP! Great stuff! The fish was probably 5lb plus and it was like watching a kid on Christmas morning, he couldn’t wait for his next present!

Another few fish later and the sport was as good on the waggler as it was on the bomb. Another take and as Nick was unhooking the fish he snapped his hook length in the net but 20 seconds later his rod was ready. As he picked it up the reel line got caught on his pole roller and then a bit of untwisting was required. Another couple of fish and his rig came in totally tangled, a new one was ready within a minute. Pellets were going all over the shop, his casting was unpredictable but the fish were coming in nice and steady.

This sport continued for a while and the clicker read about 28 fish before the bites became fewer and less easy to hit. Nick was striking at dips but couldn’t connect. We discussed the possible reason for this as a lot of blokes say that the dips are silver fish but we disagree. I have my own theory that I explained to Nick and this is it: when you are fishing shallow the hook bait gets to it’s maximum depth very quickly. If a carp sucks the pellet in the pellet will be stopped by the resistance of the float and therefore the dip you see is not the pellet going into the fish’s mouth but simply being sucked towards the fish. We agreed that going deeper would help but I also had a theory that the carp here might be a bit stupid having not seen the shallow approach much. I had a bet with Nick that if he went a bit deeper, left his float in place and just pinged 3 or 4 pellets over the top continuously then he would get proper takes but should not strike at dips, simply leave the rod alone and either grab it when the tip goes round or lift it when the line begins to get pulled under the surface. Most Carp take on the splash but I reckoned they would take a static, suspended bait. He gave this a go!

First chuck and the float was dipping so Nick struck. He laughed because he was supposed to leave the rod alone. Again the float dipped and again he struck. I suggested that he should keep his catapult in his hands therefore needing to put it down before picking up the rod. Next chuck and the float dipped, dipped again and then on the 3rd dip it stayed under and the line began to quickly sink beneath the surface. Nick lifted and there was a good fish on the other end. He turned around and saw me with a bit of a smirk on my face!!!

Again he tried the same thing and it was working. Simply leaving the float alone, not twitching, not striking at dips, just letting it sit there and continuously pinging pellets over the top and waiting for the float to either stay under or for the line to start tightening.

This continued for a while but the sport began to slow up. We both agreed that more feed was needed and larger pouches were now going in. The clicker read 37 fish and although Nick wanted 40 it was not to be as the whistle went to signal the end.

As I said earlier, I only intended to stay a short while but when you are sitting behind someone and discussing the tactics and changes and seeing the end results it is just too interesting to leave and I am glad I stayed to the end. There is nothing like bouncing ideas and theories off of someone else who enjoys fishing the same methods and watching Nick is also quite entertaining!

As the scales came around the clip board was showing about 80lb winning but Nick had far more than this. 37 fish at an average of about 4lb should have given him about 150lb but he was happy with the 139lb that he registered to win with a good margin.

It has been said before that Nick is a bit of a haphazard angler and I must admit that I was chuckling a few times seeing those pellets miss the mark by a few metres or the waggler being cast too far left or the tip ending up in a tree but you have to hand it to him, he does alright and we had a good laugh today.

Stones Kent Masters 2 day festival - September '08

2008-09-08T12:35:00.000+01:00

This weekend is the Stones Kent Masters 2 day festival which will be decided on section points and I put my name down along with Nick Gilbert who won it last year.

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

Hawkhurst pairs match 23/08/08

2008-08-26T21:28:00.000+01:00

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This was another well organized match run by Vince Gould from the Maggotdrowners forum with the added twist that partners would be drawn at random after the main draw for peg numbers. Partners would be on opposite banks and no pair would have 2 end pegs. I have only fished this puddle once before on peg 18 and drew exactly the same peg. I was pleased to find out that my partner for the match was to be Peter Morton although he does have a tendency to wander around and take photos for a while but being a decent chap he let’s me steel some for these blog reports!

For company I had Bill Gibbins to my left and Trevor Little further down the bank, opposite was my partner with Paul East next to him. I could see some banter flying around today, especially as across on flyer peg 1 was Nick Gilbert with Vince opposite him on the even better flyer peg 20!

The weather was the best we’ve had for a week or two and the sun was breaking through a few odd clouds and warming us all up nicely. During the previous week the match record had been broken with over 500lb of fish so today was going to be a nice and simple shallow pole approach with a few hundred pounds likely to win it. I therefore set up 2 identical shallow rigs with the dibbers Nick Gilbert had made for me, set at 6” and 18” deep, a margin paste rig with a K C Carpa Margin Cocker and a paste rig for 8.5m in front with a normal K C Carpa Cocker.

As the match started I put a couple of handfuls of 6mm Skrettings down the left margin under a bush, started to throw some out at 8.5m and then slapped the deep shallow rig over the top. 10 minutes in to the match and I hadn’t had a touch although Bill next door had 2 or 3 fish. I deepened the rig and by the first hour I had 3 fish in the net. Looking around the lake it was clear that very few were catching and it was remarkably slow. I went deeper still by adding line to the top of my rig and fished around 3’ in 6’ of water and picked off the odd fish but something was just not right about the place.

After about 90 minutes I decided that my efforts to draw fish up were not going to work and it was also clear from what others were catching that it was going to be a day for scratching around for bites. I decided to put out the deep paste rig and had 1 carp after a few minutes but then nothing. I also looked down the margin but didn’t get a touch. I think you can see that putting in 4 nets was looking like a bad idea!

For the next few hours I swapped between rigs and swims in order to pick off odd fish but my problem was that I had fed so many pellets to get them up in the water that it was hard to buy a bite but I managed a couple of nice 4lb samples to cheer myself up.

The winning weights were low with the best being 38lb. I managed 32lb 12oz for 5th and Pete and I managed 3rd in the pairs. This was yet another disastrous day, probably the third match on the trot that has fished very poorly. Maybe if we all fished with pole pots and small baits we would have done a bit better but who goes to Hawkhurst with that in mind? I am certain that the changing climate is the cause of the problem. Still it was a good day out as always with a great bunch of blokes and the banter was definitely flying around. I did manage to win a couple of £1 coins off some mates as a small consolation but I am hoping that luck is saving itself for the next few matches where some big money is up for grabs at Stones.

Southern Intersite Championship 2008 - Monk Lakes 1 & 3

2008-08-04T11:36:00.000+01:00

There are several angling forums on the net and every year a few of them compete against each other for the ultimate prize of being the best team. There were 4 teams of 10 taking part this year and I was fishing for the Maggotdrowners team along with some of the riff raff I have fished with over the past year.

Vince Gould was organising the whole event and Nick Gilbert was the team captain and venue expert. The Maggotdrowner’s aim in these events is to keep up with tradition and come last so there was never any pressure on the day although Nick was running a super-pool which would be rather nice to have a slice of.

Having had a week of hot weather, we were all a bit concerned that the morning was very overcast and blustery. The pressure would have dropped considerably but I was still confident of a few fish and would stick with my usual shallow approach with one or two back-up methods on standby. Some of the blokes here have travelled a long way and have never fished Monks before and I offered a bit of advice to some of our team members. Anyone on the wrong end of lake 3 would need to scratch around for fish and anyone on lake 1 would need to be aggressive and steel fish from the end pegs or be aggressive if they drew an end peg.

So at the draw most of us were hoping for either the flyers on lake 3 or a decent draw on lake1. I pulled out peg 19 on lake 1 and had Nick Gilbert opposite me on peg 3. I also had Mark Hathaway a few pegs to my left and behind me on peg 24 was Matt Nutt in our team and he came over for a chat. He said that he would prefer to fish shallow so I suggested that he should ball it in and fish aggressively to draw fish away from flyer peg 23 to his left.

Apart from a couple of team members that had drawn well on lake 3, we didn’t look to have very many decent pegs so we would have to work hard for good points. I had already decided to fish aggressively and formed 6 large balls of ground pellet and crushed hemp to ball in at the start. I set up 2 shallow rigs with a new hand made dibber that I had asked Nick to make so this would be the first test for it. I have not seen a decent dibber in the shops so this was to be the ‘perfect’ shallow float. I also set up an ‘on the deck’ rig for my 7m shallow swim and a paste rig for the same line as well as a paste margin rig and an ‘on the deck’ margin rig. My plan would be to ball it in at 7m and fish shallow but would have the deck rig and paste rig ready if they wouldn’t come up. I would fish 6mm Skrettings shallow, 6mm soft hookers on the deck and ground expander paste. I also chose to feed 2mm pellets to my left and right hand margin swims and would fish either paste or Dendra over the top. I have had success here using worm in the margins for better stamp fish and was confident that I could pick up extra weight here if I needed it.

So when the whistle sounded I balled in the groundbait, fed the margins by hand and went out with the shallow rig set at 12” deep. For the first 10 minutes I concentrated on feeding 4-6 pellets every 5 seconds to get the fish up quickly. I watched across the lake to see if anyone was catching close in. I know Nick usually fished the margins early on while his shallow line builds up but I didn’t see him land a single fish so I stayed on the shallow rig and kept feeding. During the first 20 minutes I had a couple of dips but soon decided to go deeper and set the depth to 18” and started to catch small Chub. Soon the Carp were having a go and by the end of the first hour I guessed at less than 10lb in the net but was probably ahead of everyone else that I could see.
I noticed that my swim was fizzing and so either the fish were churning up the bottom or the hemp in my ground bait was causing it. As I was not exactly bagging on the shallow rig I decided to take a look on the bottom with a soft hooker. After 10 minutes I had one small Chub so had a look on the paste rig. Neither the soft paste or stiff paste could buy me a proper bite, just liners and nibbles so I went back out with the shallow rig as I had kept feeding the swim little and often. I seemed to be catching the odd Chub and Carp but felt that these were just fish that I was managing to draw up shallow. The thought occurred to me that maybe they were ‘mid water’ so I added a foot of line to my rig and slid the float up until I was now 2’ deep. Immediately I picked up Carp at a better rate and things started to look better as everyone else around me seemed to be having a very rough time.

This didn’t last for long though as during the third hour the peg just died. I also noticed that Nick had set up a waggler rod so things must have been tough over on the far bank. I had kept feeding the margins and it was now time to utilize plan C and on went a Dendra which I dropped into my left hand margin which looked the more ‘fishy’ of the 2. I didn’t have a sniff so I dropped the rig into the right hand margin and immediately had a Golden Tench around 12oz. Another drop in saw another Golden Tench come to the net but the swim needed a good handful of pellets after every fish. Soon I needed to top up my bait box as I was catching well. I recall a match earlier in the year where I got through about 4 pints of casters in the last hour and a half just by plundering the margins and this seems to be a good trick on this lake. I kept putting in handfuls of the 2mm pellets and the fish started to get bigger. A few Carp obliged and then came along the Barbel until the whistle went and I took my time landing the last fish which was probably my biggest of the day.

There was a lot of moaning around the lake as it seemed that many had struggled. I wondered how the aerator pegs had fished because I was sure that I had beaten every other peg on my side of the lake. The scales came around and weights went between 6lb and 30 odd. I reckoned on 38lb in my net but the scales pushed round to 48lb 8oz which I was pleased with but not for long as the aerator peg weighed in 70lb.

The back half of lake 1 seemed to fish better with a few weights around the 60 – 80lb mark. Matt Nutt weighed in exactly the same as me fishing the same method and lake 3 produced the expected ton plus weights but how would we fair in the points stakes?

Back at the café the guys rounded up and told stories of woe. Trevor Little had run out of paste having bagged up for the first 4 hours, Peter Mortan had done well but got beaten by a small margin and the rest had similar stories to tell. It wasn’t looking good and as the results came in it was apparent that we had failed miserably to come last and had to settle for 3rd place with Angling Forums taking top spot. Well done lads! All I could achieve was 2nd in section and another £10 for my pools bank account but I did manage to beat everyone on my side of the lake apart from the flyer aerator peg 22!

Lake 1 fished very poorly indeed and I can only put it down to the sudden change in weather. The following day it fished much better so I guess the fish had settled down by then.

The dibber that I was trying out performed well, better than anything else I have tried although I have asked Nick if he can make them a little bigger and heavier as they tended to get caught a little in the surface tension. The use of 2 pellet bands as top rubbers worked very well as they are very stretchy and the line doesn’t cut through them, nor are they so tight that the line cuts into the float when you slide it up and down. I am sure the next batch will be spot on!

Oh, I forgot to mention the red shoes! Everyone knows I fish in red so I thought I would tempt a few jokes seeing as it was going to be a day full of banter. I think some of the other teams were more worried about the shoes than my fishing ability but the distraction seemed to work lol!

Forum match on Bramley & Peartree lakes, Hartleylands

2008-06-30T14:45:00.001+01:00

Today I am fishing a small match on Bramley and Peartree lakes at Hartleylands which Nick Gilbert has organised for members of his forum. Over the past few weeks we have been trying to think of a way to catch more fish on Peartree or to catch bigger fish in order to work out how to break the lake record in a 5 hour match. Normally I would reach for the pellet waggler on this venue because if you are good at the method you can usually frame and even win a match here. However, the last match I fished here was won on shallow pole (by Nick) at about 7m and I came 3rd fishing shallow pole at 11.5m. The shorter line was better because of the time you save and this was to become my choice for today together with fishing spicy meat down the edge for some bigger lumps. 15 turned out for the draw so there was going to be a lot of space for us however as Trevor Little pulled out our pegs for us it turned out that Nick would be fishing alongside me again. I had peg 18 and Nick had 16. Although it is always good fun fishing next to Nick, I think we both feel a bit miffed when we get drawn together because we both know we will be attacking the swim and end up having to share the fish, usually 60/40 in his favour though!

Upon arriving at my peg I realised that I had a very nice island peg with a short chuck and the wind behind me. This was crying out for the pellet waggler and I’m afraid my previous plans went out the window as I changed my mind and decided to start on the waggler to put some fish in the net, then feed the short line with pellets and also dump in a load of meat down either margin. The other reason I decided to start on the waggler was because I had recently bought 2 new 11’ Milo rods that I was dying to try out and had one of them set up shallow with a styro waggler. Along with this I also set up a meat rig for tight to the left margin and a meat rig for fishing down the shelf to my right. I then set up a shallow rig with a Scone float that I wanted to try out.

With my kit all sorted out and a few familiar faces around the lake I decided to go for a walk and found Mike explaining his floating feeder set-up to Jay. Nick and I decided to leave him to it as we walked back contemplating the wind direction and how it might effect the match.

When the whistle went I dumped in the meat and catapulted some pellets over to the island. As I rested the rod on my net to pick up the catty again, the tip flew round and fish number 1 was in the net within a minute of the match starting. After fish number 2 I called over to Nick that I was now in love with my Milo rod as the action was so soft it was a dream to use. About 20 minutes into the match Nick shouted over “how many you got now then?” and I replied “6”. Then after 30 minutes it was “9” and so it went on until I had 20 fish inside the first hour. This catch rate is typical with the wag on this lake so I wasn’t hammering it but at least I seemed to be ahead of everyone else.

During the second hour the wind picked up and started to push my float around when I was casting. Several times it ended up in a bush that was poking right out of the island and several times I snapped my hook length pulling for a break. After about 5 or 6 hooks I realised that I was in trouble because I had run out of hair rigs tied to my new Drennan Carp match hooks. I had begun to use these recently due to problems with hook holds using the PR27 pattern and my mind was definitely made up now as I lost about 5 fish in the second hour. I had made up for this however as a switch from 6mm to 8mm pellet brought me some slightly bigger fish.

As the third hour came around I had about 54 fish in the net and was probably ahead of everyone else. I mentioned to Nick that I hadn’t seen any activity on my pole line and he pointed out that although he was catching, the fish were only at half depth and his catch rate was the same as it was on the waggler which he also started on. My original plan was to drop the waggler and go out on the short line to put fish in the net faster but I was reluctant to do this as I was doing well on the wag and the fish didn’t seem to be coming quicker for Nick closer in. I continued on the waggler while I tried to make my mind up and was also dying to see if there were any lumps on the inside meat swims. Fate made my mind up though as once again a gust of wind grabbed my waggler and chucked it into the bush. I lost the whole rig on the pull and couldn’t make up my mind whether to rig it up again. I decided to pluck up the courage to throw the rod up the bank and picked up my cupping kit to top up the meat swims.

First put in and the float started to dip up and down which I put down to line bites. I wasn’t worried though because I was fishing about 4” over depth to allow for this and just waited for the float to sail away and soon it did just that. A nice 4lb fish came in after a short battle and I then dropped back in but didn’t get a sniff for a while. It turned out that the dips were also being caused by silver fish as I lifted a 1 ounce Roach out that had it’s lips glued onto my 10mm cube of meat! It fell off and I cupped in another large pot of meat and this was followed shortly by another 4lb Carp.

This sport continued but it was all too slow. I was hooking about 1 fish every 20 minutes and my weight was not increasing as much as it would have on the waggler. During the last hour I hooked a proper lump which decided to charge off and stretch my 13 hollow to an alarming length. After 10 minutes the 8lb fish was in the net and for the second time today I had decided to change something about my tackle………..to chuck away the 13 hollow and put something else in my 2 strongest power kits!

By now I knew that I had blown the match because Nick had put about 30 fish in his net in the final hour but at least I had worked out something on the day. I think that fishing for lumps down the edge should be done for 5 or 10 minutes at a time when you are resting a shallow line and it should be your shallow line that provides the bulk of your weight.

At the weigh-in Rusty put around 125lb on the scales from Bramley taken on shallow pole and Nick notched up 117lb. Trevor Little did well on paste though with 90lb and surprisingly I came 4th overall and 2nd on the lake with 88lb………….if only I had stayed on the waggler I might have stood a chance! Never mind, I would rather try out something new at a small match and be better prepared for the bigger ones!

So off I went with another £20 in my pocket and as I was waiting for the bath to run at home I emptied about £50 worth of PR27s into the bin and got out the 2 power kits fitted with the 13 hollow ready to be stripped down and rigged up with something a bit less stretchy! I will have a few busy evenings getting ready for my next match on the Reservoir!

My secret river swim and a day's pleasure fishing.........

2008-06-23T13:11:00.001+01:00

I don’t do a great deal of pleasure fishing, just the odd trip to one of the local rivers for a bit of proper fishing instead of catching stockies for 5 hours. The season has just started and today the weather looked good and I didn’t have a match on so off I went at 8.15 in the morning armed with the bare minimum of tackle and my floppy Gortex hat to keep the sun or rain off my head.

Outside my front door is a footpath and 50 yards down this is a rarely fished free stretch of the Beult which I visited a few times last season. I had a couple of good days fishing there catching Roach, Chubletts and Perch trotting a little stick float down this narrow but picturesque river but the only time I went for something bigger on the feeder I ended up losing it to a clump of nearside reeds that the unknown culprit buried itself into. And so today’s main objective was to find out what the bigger fish are and how many of them inhabit this stretch.

My hopes were high because as you can see from the photo, this place looks like a proper fish haven and is rarely fished by anyone apart from the odd schoolboy with a lead and tin of corn. The only doubt I had was due to the possible lack of any fish moving in and out of this section because at one end is a water wheel that everything has to go through and at the other end is a shallow ford under the medieval bridge in the village centre. Now last year I saw a Common Carp around the 10lb mark cruising across this ford and this spring I saw some large skimmers drifting around in the sun-warmed shallows so maybe, just maybe, there were some nice fish to be had if I could find them.

One of the problems with fishing a natural venue that is not fished very often is finding an accessible swim. There are probably 6 or 8 swims along the bank but I could only get to a couple through all the nettles. I settled on the same swim where I lost the mysterious lump last year and proceeded to put together my 12’ MACH 3 Medium Feeder rod with a 2oz carbon tip and a medium plastic cage feeder with a size 14 eyed B911 tied to a 12” tale. My bait bucket contained about 4 pints of freshly prepared hemp mixed with a pint of casters, a tin of corn and half a pint of 6mm pellets. This was all mixed up the previous night so the concoction had time to soak and ferment a little……………..yum! I also had some Dendras for hook bait and a bit of dry groundbait in case my aforementioned concoction did not hold well in the feeder. The groundbait was 60% brown crumb, 20% white crumb and 20% crushed hemp. Last year I had tried a mainly groundbait attack for the bigger fish but this brought a lot of nuisance fish in and so this time I wanted to focus on using particles.

So, I set up my comfy carp chair (a bit different from my usual seat box), filled the feeder with bait, popped 2 Dendras on the hook and tipped it with corn and chucked it 25 yards downstream where I had hooked the lump last year. The mysterious fish in question didn’t really feel massive, just quite powerful and very determined to bury itself into the near bank reeds and nettles before I could get it within netting range.

After a few minutes the tip began to bob up and down a bit and then pulled over nicely enabling connection when I struck. The fish darted around a bit and made a good account of itself considering it was only a 10z Chub but at least it was one of the species that I was hoping for. Another similar sized Chub came along soon after and this continued until the tip slammed over and I hooked a fish that headed straight for the near side cover and buried itself in the reeds and nettles. Not again I thought! This was followed by a succession of small Chub but alas, the monster fish did not arrive.

I then started to get bites that were slower but I just couldn’t hit them. I decided to step up to a size 12 hook and increased my tail to 2’ hoping that the fish would have more time to take the bait before feeling any resistance. This worked a treat as the next fish was a 12oz Skimmer followed by it’s brother.

By now I was casting every 5 or 10 minutes which meant that a good bed of feed was going down but without over feeding the swim. The feeder I was using was working ok because it had teeth on the inside of the cage that helped to grip the mash of particles together.

The next few fish were all still Skimmers and then the swim died for a while, no knocks, no nudges, no liners. Had I caught everything in the swim? Had I spooked them off or had something bigger moved in?....Nod…nod...yank! The tip flew round and immediately I felt the familiar pull of a slab hugging the bottom and wondering what the hell was pulling back. River Bream are stronger than still water Bream because they need a bit more muscle to cope with the flow but this one obviously hadn’t ever seen a hook before because it was going bonkers! Well, bonkers in slow motion anyway! I carefully coaxed it up stream and after a bit of messing around among the near side Lillie pads I slid the net under it and admired the bronze beauty with a huge grin of contentment across my chops. 3lb, 4lb at a push.

Although I had achieved my aim of catching something a bit meaty on this river, I was not at all convinced that this was the species that snagged me up last year. A Bream just wouldn’t have the time, muscle or cunning to head for the nearside cover!

I quickly re-loaded the feeder, chucked it to the same spot and within 5 minutes the tip bounced over and another slab was on………..for about 10 seconds. This Bream was bigger and headed straight upstream and into a sunken weed bed whereby it snapped me up at the hook. Not cunning my arse! I was using 6lb reel line and 5lb Fox Micro trace so my only thought was that my hook tying hadn’t been too good. This sort of thing shatters my confidence a bit and I start wondering if all the hooks in my box were tied badly. On went a new trace then and back out with the feeder. 10 minutes later and the tip bounced round………………..and I hooked another slab………………….and the line gave way at the hook end. Bugger! Now I was really disturbed about this. I had tied some hooks using a knotless knot but without a hair, just the knot and I wondered if this knot slips too much if you haven’t got a hair dangling under it to take the slack up.

Now that my confidence in my pre-tied hooks was zero and I was a little suspect of using hi-tech line, I resorted to tying a spade end B911 with 3lb Maxima. I chucked the feeder out and as I settled the rod on the rest I heard an almighty splash over my feeder. As I looked up all I could see was the wake on the surface and wondered what hell it was. 10 minutes had passed and all I had was a couple of tiny knocks so I cast out again and the same thing happened, a big splash but I didn’t see the fish. Another cast and this time I kept my eye on the landing zone. The fish swirled and although I didn’t see it very well I am quite sure it was a Pike probably chasing the small fish that were giving me the little indications.

The sun was high in the sky by now and I was beginning to feel a little bit sleepy and after I munched on a couple of vegetarian sausage rolls I did something that I have never done in the whole of my 40 years on this earth…………….I brought the feeder in, popped the rod on it’s rest, pulled my hat over my eyes and slid down the chair ready for a nice snooze.

Having not seen a soul all day, I awoke to the rustle of the leaves as the breeze started to get a little stronger. I looked at my watch and decided to have another couple of hours fishing before heading home and so on I went, hoping that Mr. Pike had buggered off by now.

First chuck out and the tip went over to the pull of a nice 12oz Chub, good I thought, I was a bit fed up of Skimmers and only wanted slabs, Chub and whatever fish I kept losing to the near side cover. The Chub got a little bigger and then I hooked one around the 1lb mark and it headed straight for the nettles and reeds. I managed to pull it away and net it but something twigged in my head. Another chuck and another Chub of the same size and again it headed straight for the near bank nettles. Now this might not be rocket science but I am willing to bet that the fish I have lost to those nettles and reeds are bigger Chub, maybe not massive but big enough to take you on a merry dance towards a nice place to snag you up. It definitely wasn’t the Bream and I hadn’t caught much else that could have been responsible so I decided it must be Chub.

On then with my plight to hook said beast! Unfortunately the next hour only saw a few Chubletts and Skimmers come to my net. The Bream had buggered off, the Chub were getting smaller and then I went and did something else that I haven’t done since my Dad last tackled me up with a Peacock quill at the age of about 7 years old……………..I caught a bloody Eel! Damn, I hate Eels. They are ugly, difficult to unhook and only Noddies catch Eels so this was the signal for me to pack up, go home and get settled down to watch the footy.

I was quite happy with my day though, my understanding of this beautiful river was getting better, my catches were getting bigger and best of all…………you never know what you are going to catch next. Maybe that 10lb Common I saw, maybe a Tench if the rumours I hear are true? Who knows? I will just have to come back again soon!

1st Invicta League Round 6 on Peartree & Bramley Lakes, Hartleylands 08/06/08

2008-06-10T13:26:00.000+01:00

It only seems like a few weeks ago we were all looking forward to this league but today is the last match that will decide the final positions. After the first match and terrible conditions, I was lying very close to the bottom but with some hard work and better weather, I was in 5th position going into this match but with little chance of a top 3 finish due to the points situation. My target at the start of the league was to finish in the top 6 and so this would still be my aim and I would therefore need good points today to keep the other anglers from overtaking me.

This match was ‘pole only’ and ‘float only’ which prevented me from fishing the pellet waggler which is the method I would always go for on these lakes in summer. I was unsure of the potential success of fishing shallow on the pole but this would be my main line of attack with paste in the margins as a back-up plan. My target for today would be 80 fish for around 100lb which I felt would be good for a pole only match seeing as you can get 100lb to 150lb plus on the waggler.

Because I was helping with the draw, one of the guys pulled my peg and out came peg 5 on Peartree. To my left and in my section was Mark Hathway and Kevin Pack which meant the company would be good but the competition would be hard but I was dead chuffed with my peg as it was one of my preferred choices being between the islands. Even though they are well out of reach with a pole, it may be possible to draw fish from the open area and also in the last match a few weeks ago, that area produced well.

The weather has been a lot warmer around here lately and apart from some odd days of rain, a shallow approach has been producing well. As I arrived at my peg I could see some fish on the surface but I was still uncertain how well a shallow approach would work on the pole. My mind was made up though and I decided to try 2 different rigs on a shallow line at 11.5m and just have 1 margin rig set up for later in the match. The 2 shallow rigs that I wanted to try are a little different to the ones I have been using, I wanted to experiment with a different float pattern and also weigh up the difference between a long line and a short line between float and pole tip. The new float pattern is a Preston Pink dibber that has a hole in the tip so that the line passes through the body. The float is very light, just needing a single number 6 shot under it and the weight of a 6mm pellet to cock it. I also wanted to try the Drennan Carp Match hooks out and see if I bumped or lost fewer fish with them so I had a few hair rigs tied up with them on instead of the PR27's I normaly use.

The experiment with the long and short line would be to determine if more fish are caught with the ‘self hooking’ short line or if the long line caught more fish because the pole is further off the surface therefore reducing the risk of spooking the fish. I know it may seem risky experimenting with new things in a match situation but you don’t learn much pleasure fishing because you have no competition to measure your success by and the water is not under pressure.

My bait choice today was simple then, a shed load of 6mm skrettings and a pint of paste made from ground expanders. I also had some worms and corn with me but only because they were in the bag from my last match.

While I was setting up, I had to think about the distance that I would fish out shallow. If we were at Monks then I would start at about 7m so that I could feed easily by hand but I wasn’t sure if the fish would come that close in at Hartleylands. I could have fished at 10m and still fed by hand although it gets a bit hard at that length either using your weak hand or swapping the pole over to your weak hand and feeding with your strong hand. Also, I wanted to draw fish from the gap between the islands so the closer I fished to it the better. I therefore settled on 11.5m as a happy medium between ease of feeding, speed and drawing fish and I would feed by hand when playing the fish and after netting it and feed with a pult when the pole is shipped out.
So upon hearing the whistle, I threw out a couple of handfuls of pellets at my 11.5m line and then shipped out 2 large cups of pellets down my left margin under a small tree. Another couple of handfuls of pellets out on the long line and I then shipped out the pole with the long line set 12” deep and slapped the rig on the surface. After 3 slaps the elastic pulled out and a nice 1lb Carp was in the net and my ‘clicker’ got it’s first push. By feeding with my right hand while playing fish and with the pult after I had shipped out, I managed to string together about 15 fish in the first hour. This isn’t exactly bagging up but I was happy with a steady stream of fish and the probability of things picking up later on.

At the start of the second hour I foul hooked a decent fish of around 2lb and so after I netted it I shallowed up to 6”. This brought fish at a faster rate and after 2 hours I had around 32 fish in the net. Things were looking good so I thought I would try out the short line rig and so out it went. The first problem I encountered with this rig is that when you are speed fishing it is easier to tangle a short rig around your pole tip and also it is not easy to slap on the surface and make much of a noise. I caught a few ‘self-hookers’ but the action was not as good so I popped it back on the roost and reverted back to the long line. By the way, the long line was 2’ between pole tip and float and the short line was 6”.

Using the short line had taught me one thing though and that was the effectiveness of having fish self-hook themselves. I therefore adopted a slightly different approach with the long line rig which involved holding the pole so that the line was tight between tip and float and slightly to one side so the tip was not directly over the float. This had a positive result because the fish were more confident with the pole further away from them and also I had plenty of fish self-hooked while I was putting pellets into the pult. The third hour therefore went much like the second with a total of 52 fish.

At this point the sun was high in the sky and the heat was really strong. The fourth hour seemed harder and more slapping and searching out the peg was required. I didn’t want the peg to fizzle out though so I upped the feed rate as much as I could which meant having the pult in my hand permanently. I winkled out as many fish as I could manage but by the end of the fourth hour I only had a total of 62 fish, only 10 had gone in the net during the last hour.

Things were looking up though as my increased feeding seemed to draw more fish in front of me. I looked at my clicker and felt that I wouldn’t hit my 80 fish target at the current rate and estimated that about 74 would be more realistic. I wasn’t going to roll over and play dead though so out went more pellets and more pellets and even more pellets. Using the self-hooking system of holding a tight line helped me because I was feeding so much. At this point a long shadow appeared on the surface and drifted towards my swim. I had already mugged a few off the surface by slapping the pellet down in their pathway but this fish looked nice. I slapped the rig down almost on top of it, there was a huge swirl and then the latex came peeling out. Within a minute the fish was under my feet and I simply played it out until it gave in after about a dozen gulps of air. A nice 6 or 7 pounder was in the net and I was very happy with the boost that it would give my weight!

As the last hour ticked by too quickly, I managed to up the catch rate with my feeding and I was getting closer to my target. With 15 minutes left I had passed my estimate of 74 fish and was going like the clappers. I was landing my 79th fish with one minute to go, scooped it in, chucked out some pellets and shipped out so fast you would think I was throwing a javelin. I hooked a fish right away and as the whistle went it was in my net being unhooked. 80!

It would be fair to say that I was pleased with my performance especially as I did not have sight of anyone else catching at the rate I was. And then in typical fashion Mr. Gilbert ventured up the bank to scupper my hopes as he told me he had 118 Carp!

So as usual I volunteered to help with the weigh-in and was handed the sling, meaning I was about to get soaked. My 80 fish went to 104lb odd which meant that the lump I had helped put me over the ton. Nick weighed in a mental 147lb odd which he had caught at 7m! Damn, if I had done that I could have fed by hand all day and caught more fish. His plan was to start short and follow them out and my plan relied on them not wanting it short. After the match we had a chat about whether you really need to fish to the islands to get a good weight and today has left us wondering whether the pellet waggler is the best method or if shallow pole could possibly overtake it. One thing is for sure though, you CAN catch close in shallow here!

Oh yes, the Preston Pink dibber........well I had trouble getting it to cock and it seemed to either take on water or dipped under when a pellet was very wet. Either way I think it is too light or needs a wire stem to help it cock. Also, the Drennan hooks seemed better than the PR27's so don't expect to find any in the shops around here as someone has gone and bought them all :~)

The results were drawn up with me, Nick and Colin Wood all winning our sections it meant that we would all hold the same league place and only the top 2 could change. So Nick ended up 4th and I was 5th overall and I have to say that I am dead chuffed with finishing 5th as my original goal was for a top 6 position against some very good anglers. I had earned myself another £40 for my ‘pools’ bank account but more importantly I had enjoyed a very good league and met some really decent blokes.

I can't help wondering where I would have finished if I had drawn a decent peg in the first match and earnt more than 1 point! Never mind, it's easy to say 'if only' all the time!

Oh yes, as an afterthought I asked Nick if he could work out the league places if it had been done on weight instead of points:
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1st Nick Gilbert, 2nd Matt Love :~)
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Here are the results and the proper table:
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1st Nick Gilbert 147-12
2nd Paul Kell 112-1 (guest)
3rd Matt Love 104-13
4th Collin Wood 95-12
5th Andy Goldthorpe 90-12 (guest)
6th Kevin Pack 86-1
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League Places
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1 Kevin Pack 333-15 26
2 Andy Silver 332-12 25
3 Collin Wood 290-12 24
4 Nick Gilbert 417-6 23
5 Matt Love 338-9 23
6 Mark Hathway 271-8 21
7 Ian Carley 261-10 21
8 Martin Charnock 156-13 20
9 Trevor Little 205-12 18
10 Tony Clark 216-11 17
11 Jay Lay 198-14 17
12 Mark Holland 186-9 17
13 Russ Evans 229-0 16
14 John Haigh 118-0 15
15 Dennis Price 167-12 14
16 Chris Jones 140-12 14
17 Martin Twine 124-13 14
18 Mark Greenway 53-11 6
19 Jim McDowell 61-13 4
20 Mike Jameson 31-6 3

There are a few opens and one or two other matches coming up soon including the angling forum’s Southern Inter-site Championship so keep an eye out for these over the next few months.

1st Invicta Match League - Round 5 - Nick's Lake, Hartley Lands 25-05-08

2008-05-27T08:46:00.000+01:00

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:

After:

I tried taking up a couple of suggestions but they didn’t work so my plight for perfection goes on……………………..

1st Invicta League Round 4 - Monk Lakes 1 - 18/05/08

2008-05-21T07:49:00.000+01:00

Having won my last match at Monks (although it was on lake 2) I would have been quite confident of doing well today but the weather had been poor during the week and match weights here yesterday were very poor indeed. Yesterday I fished a match on lake 2 but the day was so hard and uneventfull that there would be little to write about other than to say that the only way I could catch was to lob out a method feeder!

At the end of yesterday's match I decided that I would need something other than pellets today but the only natural bait I had was 1/4 kilo of worm. Luckily one of the guys at yesterday's match had several pints of casters on him so I bought 4 pints in the hope that today I could catch on worm or caster.

At the draw I pulled out peg 5 which was at least a short walk if not an average peg. To my right and in my section was the league leader Mark Holland and also in my section was Mark Hathaway so things were not going to be easy! At my peg I set up the following rigs:

1 A Maver Margin float to fish the inside at the start
2 A K C Carpa Chimp for my 10m line
3 A 'Scone' shallow float in case I could get them up in the water
4 A 4AAA Peacock waggler

As I was setting up my gear the weather was not looking too bad although the wind was blowing like merry hell and at Monks you are about 15' up in the air so wind can play a very important part in a match by affecting presentation! The further up the bank you went the more choppy the water became and even though I was only 5 pegs along, it looked like presentation would be difficult.

Having finished setting my gear up the clouds thinned out a little and as the sun pushed through and warmed us up a bit I noticed the distinct figure of Russ Evans taking things easy by having a quick snooze by his peg.

When Nick called the 'all in' I fed a handfull of casters in the margins each side of me and shipped out 2 cups of casters with a golf ball sized lump of green Swimstim on my 10m line. I picked up the margin rig and tried out both margin swims while flicking a few casters over the top. After about half an hour all I had managed was a few small Ide and so I shipped out another cup of feed to the 10m line and picked up the Carpa Chimp rig. I realised right away that having the rig set at dead depth was just going to allow it to be pushed through by the wind and tow so I increased the depth by 6", put on a back-shot and took off my bottom number 10 dropper.
I had the shot spread out to fish on the drop so that I could detect if the fish were coming up in the water but the wind was still dragging the rig so I moved all of the shot down, spread it out over 12" and ensured that the bottom 2 no.8's were dragging bottom. This slowed the rig up a little and I manged to put a few fish in the net but only skimmers and the odd carp.

With about and hour and a half gone I estimated around 5lb in the net so things were not going well. To my right Mark Holland was managing a few carp and easily beating me. I was keeping my eye on him because he is leading the league and nearly always fishes the pole so I was interested to see what his approach would be.

By now I couldn't buy a bite on the 10m line so I added a section on and started to ping casters over the top. This brought another couple of fish but again it went dead. I looked over to my rod holdall and contemplated getting out the method feeder that I had caught on the day before but to be honest this seemed far too drastic. I therefore picked up the waggler rod and fished out at 20m but the wind just made feeding a nightmare. I looked once again at the rod holdall but just couldn't bring myself to sit on the tip for the rest of the match!

I had a re-think and because the wind was really howling and making presentation very poor as well as making it hard to hold the pole, I decided to feed a line at 6m with soft expanders and also feed caster heavily into the margins in the hope that fish would turn up later in the day. Half an hour on the 6m line didn't even produce a touch so with an hour and a quater to go I picked up the margin rig again and dropped in with half a worm. I had less than 10lb in my net for sure so I was now desperate!

As soon as the float settled it slid under and a nice 1lb Ide was in the net, then another, then a 1lb Barbel, then a 1lb Tench and it kept going and going and going. I was now building up a nice weight and the Barbel really switched on along with the odd carp. I looked at my watch and saw that I had an hour to go, I then looked at my casters and saw that I had about 2 pints left so I went for it 'big time'. A pinch of casters at every drop in and a handfull as soon as I had hooked a fish and drawn it away from the swim.

This continued until the end of the match and I estimated around 23lb in my net. I thought that I might have had more than Mark Holland who I didn't see land a single fish for the last hour or so. I helped Nick do the weigh-in and as we got round to my section it turned out that I beat Mark and also 2 other guys with a very reasonable 33lb 10oz. Only Mark Hathaway beat me in my section with a massive 60lb net which also won the day so I won the £20 section money by default and took home 4 points out of a maximum 5. I was VERY happy.

Monk Lakes charity open 10/05/08

2008-05-12T12:25:00.000+01:00

Finaly the sun had arrived. We seem to have skipped spring and gone straight into summer and the weather has been good for over a week now. Things were therefore looking up for this open match as not only could I enjoy the warmth but the fish were likely to be shallow as well.

I arranged to meet Nick Gilbert at the draw and also bumped into some other familiar faces, one or two of them well known for big weights on this venue.

We paid our money and drew pegs, Nick on 36 and me on 74. Not good! Nick was up the wrong end of lake 1 and I was on the wrong side of lake 2. I had paid into the superpool so my first thought was that I had just wasted a tenner! I did offer to swap pegs with Nick but he wouldn't hear of it and so I unloaded my gear and walked to my peg. As I was setting up my gear, Dave Baptist came up for a chat and told me he was on peg 47. Great, one of the best anglers here is 2 pegs up from an out-and-out flyer! It was going to be a foregone conclusion, 22 or 23 would win lake 1 and 45 - 47 would win lake 2 with any of these taking the overall coin.

Now I don't mind saying that when I came back to fishing last year, I needed to catch up very quickly with new baits and methods and I have tapped Nick for a lot of information over the past few months. We often talk about pellet waggler tactics and also fishing shallow on the pole so I guess I am more confident fishing shallow than fishing paste or pellet on the deck. Also, I think fishing shallow is a very attacking method and can beat other methods on it's day and today looked perfect for it, so shallow pole was going to be my primary approach with a couple of paste rigs as a back-up plan.

I plumbed up at a distance that I could easily throw pellets and found around 4' at 8.5m and set a KC Carpa Cocker at that depth. I also plumbed up along the margins and found about 2' and set up a shallow KC Carpa Cocker as well. Then I set up my main rig which was a 0.2g BGT Dibber-lite set to around 12" deep with the shot grouped right under the float.

All of my rigs consisted of 0.16 main line and 0.14 hook length with PR27 hooks tied with a knotless knot, the shallow rig having a hair rigged 3.2mm Gardner pellet band on a 16 hook and the paste rigs having a size 12.

For this match the organiser signalled a 15 minute pre-baiting period and so I sat there throwing pellets out every 10 seconds until the horn sounded for the all-in. Out went the rig and I continued to chuck out a few pellets every few seconds to trigger the fish into feeding up in the water and began to plop the rig in every few seconds. The guy to my left started to catch in the margins straight away and as I was only catching around 1 fish every 10 minutes I felt an urge to drop into the margins while still feeding my shallow line. I chose not to though. I didn't want to take the focus off of my shallow swim because I thought it would need 100% concentration. I also thought that his margin swim would probably dry up anyway and hopefully by concentrating on my shallow swim I could get it boiling later on.

So with the first hour over I had about 7 fish in the net and things weren't going very well at all. The guy to my left probably had 20 - 25 fish but it looked like things were slowing down for him. At about this time I decided to start slapping the rig harder on the surface and this seemed to trigger a better response. Bites were coming quicker and I put around 15 fish in the net in the second hour, including 3 Ide and 1 Tench!

Half way through the match I was comfortable that my peg was now fizzing and the guys either side of me just couldn't keep up. I foul-hooked a carp and immediately shallowed up to 6", actually it was probably 8" because the float and the loops must have been 2" on top of a 6" trace. This gave me more line between the float and the pole and now I began to really motor. I was slapping the rig hard left and right and feeding every 20 seconds or so and this seemed to keep the fish coming. After 3 hours my tally was up to about 40 fish and most of them went just over a pound so I wasn't going to win it but maybe I could frame on my lake.

The 4th hour was much like the 3rd but maybe a bit slower, now and then I even stopped feeding and just kept slapping at odd fish cruising past. I must have mugged about 6 fish off of the surface! Steadily I built up my weight and the fish seemed to get going again in the last hour until for about the last 15 minutes I was probably catching 1 fish every 2 minutes. So I finished on 1 Tench, 3 Ide and 68 Carp for around 80 - 90 lb.

The scales moved around the hot pegs and so far the top weight on my lake was 100lb and 7oz. The guy to my left weighed in an impressive 80lb and I thought that I must have more than him and when the scales got to me I was surprised to see a total of 114lb against my name on the clip board. It looked like I was going to win my lake.

As I walked back to the car with my gear someone told me that Nick had weighed in a very decent 112lb from his peg so it looked like I would be taking a £1 off him. When I caught up with Nick back at the cars he was adament that he had the highest weight on his lake and that the end flyers had not produced. Sure enough back at the tent it was confirmed that I had won overall and ended up taking home the 1st place pool money, the 1st place super-pool, a bottle of bubbly, a trophy and I even had the cheak to win a nice watch in the raffle. Nick took 2nd place overall and won his lake so he went home with a few quid as well although he might stop giving me advice if I'm not careful! Actually, I forgot to ask him if he went into the superpool!

So this was a good day indeed with a few decent scalps taken off of a very unfancied peg! In hindsight, I was glad that I did not get distracted by someone catching more than me on the inside, I made the right decision there. I also learnt a few things like slapping the rig hard and having a longer line above the float. One thing I do need to get sorted out though is the fact that the hair seems to coil up after a few fish and I needed to change my hook length about 6 times. I was also hitting about 1 bite in 6 or 8 at times and I need to understand if this is normal or is there something else wrong with my rig? I am worried that maybe my hairs are not long enough and so I think I will tie some up longer for next weekend as I have 2 more matches to fish at Monks!

Fishomania qualifier - Monks Lakes - 23/04/08

2008-04-28T12:04:00.000+01:00

The Fishomania qualifier for my region was to be held at Monk Lakes near Staplehurst in Kent but unfortunately I didn't have a ticket and I wasn't on the 'official' reserve list. I decided to go anyway and stick my name down on the 'unofficial' reserve list in case there were a lot of anglers not turning up and therefore room for some 'strays'. Even if I couldn't get in, I would still hang around for the day to see how some of the blokes I know got on and to maybe pick up a few hints and tips along the way.

As it turns out I couldn't fish but to be honest with the 'flyers' all taken and the weather looking un-inviting, I was quite happy to leave the kit in the car.

A few days previous to this event I learnt that Dave Brittain was looking for a B&B in the area so I offered to put him up on the Tuesday night because I live close to Monks and he could also follow me down there and maybe pick my brains about the venue. After I found out that I wasn't going to be fishing I asked Dave if I could sit behind him (being a top notch angler and all) and he kindly allowed me to nestle down on my net bag close by.

As everyone began to sort themselves out I noticed that Jon Arthur was on the opposite bank to us (the jammy so and so got in on the reserves) and a few guys from our Invicta league were also present, Colin Wood, Russ Evans, Trevor Little and Mark Greenwood, although none of them were on a noted peg.

For the past 2 years peg 113 has won this event and peg 45 was likely to do well also. In any event it would almost certainly be an end peg and more than likely a peg next to an aerator. Below is an aerial shot of these pegs and the 2 that Dave and Jon drew. You will notice that the winner is also indicated, a bit of a surprise really as the previously mentioned pegs did not meet with expectations. At least this gives hope to us all at future events, knowing that it's not ALL done and dusted at the draw bag.

As I settled down behind Dave, a light drissle began (in true Kentish style for match days this year) and I watched everyone either trickling, cupping or dumping bait in. Dave began by shipping out 2 cups of pellets to his 13m line and 2 cups of hemp and caster at 5m as well as a few down the edge. On the other bank I noticed a guy who must have shipped 6 or 8 large cups of bait out to his long pole line, I don't think anyone explained to him how Monks had been fishing recently!

Within a few minutes the guys along our bank towards the higher numbers started to catch and odd fish were coming out here and there. Dave's first came at around 10 minutes into the match, shortly after Jon's. It was a slow start and I was not surprised given the form of these lakes recently (the weather seems to have delayed the usual improvement of spring time sport). With perhaps an hour gone the guys near me would be lucky to have 5 fish each but the higher peg numbers down our bank were fishing a lot better.

As the rain became harder, I decided to go back to the car and grab my brollie and had a chat with the Sky reporter on the way round. The fishing was hard everywhere apparently, with the 'flyers' not fishing as well as expected but reports of fish coming out in other locations.

Back with Dave, under my brollie and sipping on a hot brew, I settled down while he had a look on the short line. One fish later and it went dead! Back out on the long pole and loose feeding maggot, he was now getting indications but not connecting with many. With a few fish topping and the possibility of the indications being liners, he picked up his pellet waggler rod and tried fishing shallow for a while but still no joy.

Back on the pole line and with a few tweaks and changes to his rig, Dave was still struggling but working hard for each and every bite. Jon on the far bank wasn't exactly bagging either but both were probably ahead of anyone up the poor end of the lake.

Dave, being the decent chap that he is, was quite happy to have a natter during the match and we were discussing various reasons for the poor sport. It was clear that the fish were shoaled up down one end (which is common knowledge on this venue, especially in the cooler months) but there must be fish around because there were still odd bites, liners and fish topping. We concluded that perhaps the fish were sitting off the feed in the middle and Dave decided to break down his pellet waggler and rig up a conventional peacock insert. This is a method that can work well here in winter, in fact I fished a match in December and came 3rd, the top 3 weights all being caught on the maggot waggler!

This swap in tactics put a few more fish in the net, nothing spectacular but more than I could see coming out from anywhere up our end. It wasn't long lived though as after a short spell of odd fish the bites dried up and it was back to the long pole line.

Another trip to the on-site cafe brought no real news apart from 113 not bagging up as expected. I also heard that 45 was not in and even 46 and 47 were not doing as well as expected and the rumour was that peg 134 was seeing most of the action.

Back to Dave and it appears that he was now rocking and rolling having put a small Tench in the net while I was gone. We had discussed the possible need for light tackle the night before and because the fishing was now really hard he proceeded to make up a light rig with a 0.12 hook length and started to fish beyond his original pole line at 13m. A few slow dips and lifts suggested again that there were fish in the area but it wasn't until the 2 extensions went on that a few fish started to grace the net. Now fishing at 16m and pinging maggots out at the rate of about 8 or 10 every minute and sometimes quicker to trigger a response, bites became a little more frequent and the action started to pick up a little. During the last 20 minutes the catch rate was probably a fish every 4 or 5 minutes which was the best sport all day up our end of the lake. Jon on the opposite bank had started to catch as well but probably didn't have as much in his net. A couple of Daves fish were carp well over the 1lb mark and he probably had 3 or 4 more fish than Jon anyway.

At the weigh-in it was clear that Monks really had fished poorly for such a prolific venue but there were still some decent weights going up to 100lb with the winner up the bank on peg 134 managing 137lb. Jon had managed to scrape together 17lb odd and Dave pushed the scales past the 18lb mark.

It was unfortunate that some of the first-time visitors to this venue had a bad first day and I hope they return again some time because although the end pegs usually dominate, it is possible to beat them in the summer and at the very least you do get a good net of fish. Even on an average peg half way up the bank you can manage 50 - 60lb but the recent conditions around here really have delayed the start of spring!

At least I had a good day though, it never does you any harm to watch rather than fish and it definately helps to see if a decent angler does things any different to yourself. Next year I hope to get on to the list myself and hopefully the sport will be a bit better.

1st Invicta League Round 2 on Monk Lake 1 06/04/08

2008-03-27T10:37:00.004Z

During the week leading up to the second round at Monk lakes, the weather was warming and we enjoyed a lot of sunshine and milder temperatures. Spring was definately in the air and even though the forecast was for rain or snow at the weekend, none of us could actually believe that the mild spell would pass so quickly.

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!

Pre-league practice match, Nick's Lake, Hartley Lands

2008-03-10T17:00:00.000Z

It's Saturday 8th March and 9 of us are fishing a little knock-up on Nick's Lake at Hartley Lands with 'any method' rules, apart from no floating baits. Some of us will be fishing the Invicta league that starts next weekend on this lake and we want to try out a few methods and also see if the fish will come shallow.

Leading up to today, there have been differing opinions as to which pegs will be good or bad and at one point I mentioned that I would like to draw peg 9 as last weekend it looked good with fish topping by the islands and peg 9 has two islands available to fish. As everone was eager to fish with the howling wind off their backs, Nick settled on a group of pegs that should make comfortable swims for most although the other guys wanted peg 6 and 8 in as well for some reason. These two pegs would be facing the wind!

At the draw everyone seemed happy that they had pulled out a peg with the wind behind them and then I stuck my hand in a pulled out peg 9...... yay! Being the event organiser, Nick drew last and pulled out peg 6, I was not the least bit jealous!!!

Given that some of the guys here today are also fishing the Invicta League and just want to play around with a few methods, it seemed likely that anyone could win the pools money. We proceded to our pegs with the wind building up and the clouds looking a bit ominous.

I had never fished Hartley Lands before in the winter or spring and so my main objective was to ascertain whether maggots would catch the carp or if pellets would be better and I also took some light and dark expanders and a bag of corn. I set up 4 rods to try different methods as follows:

13' Drennan Floatmaster with a Drennan loaded bodied crystal on 3lb main line with a 0.14 hook length and size 18 PR27 hook.

11' 6" Drennan Series 7 pellet waggler rod with an unloaded Drennan crystal pellet waggler to 3lb line and a hair rigged pellet band on a size 16 PR27 to 0.14 hook length.

10' Drennan Puddle Chucker method feeder rod with 4lb main line with a small method feeder with a size 16 PR27 hook and a hair rigged pellet band to a 6" length of 0.16 line. This was attached to the rig via a Korum quick change bead.

9' Shakespeare Wand with 4lb main line and a running maggot feeder with a size 18 PR27 to a 12" 0.16 hook length.

All of the reels were my trusty Daiwa TD-R models with the smaller 2058 models on the float rods and the larger 3012 models on the feeder rods.

I settled down with everything prepared and prayed that the weather would be kind.

As I had a bit of time on my hands I had a wander around the lake to chat to a few of the guys. To my right on peg 8 was Jay who had drawn exactly the same peg as last week.

And then next to him on peg 6 was Nick who was not looking forward to fishing for 5 hours with the wind in his face, I think he drew the worst peg of the match!

Around the corner were a few guys from the Maggotdrowners forum that we fish with every now and then, a good bunch and full of banter. Peter and Vince seemed to have their own little battle of witts going on and I understand that Vince beat Peter last time out and so Peter was looking for revenge. As Vince had brought his whistle along, he blew for the start and we all got our heads down to brave the ellements.

I picked up one of my cattapults and began spraying maggots to the end of the island, baited up with double red and chucked out the waggler. It was soon apparent that the wind was going to be a problem because although it was helping me to get bait to the island, it was also pushing my float off course when casting and there were a few overhanging bushes to watch out for. I quickly decided to clip up and cast to the right of the island and let the wind take the rig in towards the bushes and then allow the clip to prevent it from going any further. I'm not exactly fond of clipping up as I have seen more anglers chucking rigs into bushes because they rely on the clip too much and also because when you put the rod down at a slight angle to allow for 'pulls', you tend to pull the rig away from the feature. Far better to learn how to cast properly and pull the rod around with the bail arm open and then close it when the rod is down ready to grab your catty! Today was different though as a good low chuck was needed to get through the wind and the clip just gave me a bit of security against lobbing it too far. Also, in winter the carp are less lively and it was unlikely that I would need to worry about 'giving' line on a take.

The first hour of the match for me was painful, all I could catch were tiny Roach and not a single sign of a carp. I had been spraying the island with half a pouch every minute but this did not feed off the Roach nor did it induce the Carp to feed. I therefore upped the feed rate to a full pouch every 30 seconds and soon after I was into my first Carp. The sport was still frantic with the Roach but at least Carp were coming every now and then, just not quick enough though!

To my right Jay was catching regularly on a cage feeder and I knew that a feeder approach was a definate banker but wanted to plough on with the waggler to see what would happen. Around 2 hours into the match Peter was on his way round with his camera and as he approached I hooked a decent fish and he did the honours with the camera:

I reckon by now that Jay had 20 Carp in his net whereas I had about 6 Carp and loads of tiny Roach. So with half the match gone I decided to change tactics to see if I could bag more Carp with my 'banker' method and so I put down the waggler rod and started pinging 6mm pellets to the same swim on the end of the island. I mixed up some groundbait that I use when fishing 'the method' and picked up my feeder rod. I stuck a 6mm pellet on the hair rigged band, loaded the feeder and chucked it within 6 inches of the island. The pellets I used were ordinary course pellets distributed in bulk by Dynamite Baits, I think they are Skrettings. I like to use a groundbait similar to the pellets and opted for ground pellet with some halibut groundbait added to make it more aromatic. I also use a float stop above the feeder which you can slide up and down the main line. This has two uses, firstly it prevents the feeder from sliding down to the rod tip when you are re-baiting the hook and secondly it can act as a semi-bolt rig but with the ability to increase or decrease the amount of 'give' in the rig. Today I was not burying the pellet in the feeder for two reasons, firstly because the island shelves at Hartley Lands are quite steep and often you will find that even with the flattest feeders, they still slip down the shelf a little. Having the hook bait 6" behind the feeder means that it is surrounded by the groundbait that falls off the feeder on the way down the shelf. The second reason is that if the bites are quite quick then I see no reason to bury and hide the pellet because in colder weather the fish are not attacking the feeder, they are just rummaging around it looking for any larger particles. I have fished the method feeder in the summer and to be honest the bites are so quick that your tip can go round before the feeder has even hit bottom. This lends itself to burying the hookbait thus preventing foul hooking fish that are attacking the feeder instead of the pellet which is 6" away. Also, if the fish are actually attacking the feeder then bites can come quicker this way.

So, back to the match and with Jay catching at the same rate as me I needed to do something to catch him up and so I continued to fire pellets over the top of the feeder. This is another reason I used a semi-bolt rig because for much of the time my hands were on the catapult and not on the butt of the rod. To prove my method worked I can tell you that around 50% of the carp I caught on the method were from drop-backs and the fish were hooking themselves either by pulling the feeder or by pulling against the float stop. The combination of a hair rig and a semi-fixed rig works very well!

After a while I noticed that Nick was becoming restless because of the poor weather and the bad peg he had. At one point he tried the pole line to see if there were any carp there:

Shortly after this he came over for a chat and having noted that Jay and I seemed to be catching more than most he decided to take a walk to see what else was happening.

As I continued to catch it became apparent that pinging pellets over the feeder was working well. This is a tactic I have used before with success, especially when I want the Carp to come shallow so that I can swap over to the pellet waggler. Jay remarked that he thought I was catching him up but I doubted that I was making progress as he probably had 15 carp more than me when I switched methods half way through the match. Towards the end though I noticed his catch rate was falling whereas I was maintaining a good rate and probably putting 2 fish in the net to his 1.

When Nick returned from his walk he noted that Alan across on peg 32 could not buy a bite on the feeder to the end of his island and was catching well on his top kit. Nick then noticed movement in his margin, threw in some bait and hooked a nice 2 pounder! This may turn out to be an important piece of information for the coming matches as we had all assumed that the weather was too poor for fish to come to the margins!

The final whistle was blown and I thought Jay would be the winner and I would be around 5lb behind him. To our surprise Alan had weighed in 34lb 12oz, most of which was caught on his top kit and as the scales moved around to Jay it was going to be a close call with me being a little disturbed at the thought of coming 3rd like I always seem to. Jay managed 33lb 4oz putting him second and as I hawled my net out everyone started to moan as they were convinced I had more. To my amazement the scales went around to 35lb 4oz to take 1st place in a knock-up where I only fished the 'proper' method for half the match.

The conclusion to this practice match was that several methods would work although the feeder would probably dominate with the inside line a potential back-up. I had learned what I needed to know ready for the 1st proper match next Sunday so look out for the report!

Oh yes, and Vince beat Peter again :~O