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!
Saturday, 23 July 2011
Tuesday, 10 May 2011
Spring League, Nick's Lake 8-05-11
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!!!
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!!!
Tuesday, 24 August 2010
Mussels at Shannon's 21-08-10
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
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
Friday, 9 July 2010
Teams of 4 Hartleylands Nick's Lake
Now that the spring league is over and I managed to claw back some good points to show a half respectable 6th position, it is time for myself and Nick to join the plight of the NG Floats team who have already fished 3 matches in the series and are quite low in the points table.
With one match every month through to October, perhaps there would be a chance to pick some points up and move the team higher in the league. This would be quite a challenge though as this is probably one of the toughest fields of anglers you are likely to meet in the South East.
The matches on Nick’s lake are all pole-only due to the tight pegging and the rules banned anything longer than 16m, floating baits, pole feeders etc. It is a basic pole-only match. This can present a problem because if you can’t draw fish within pole range then you have few options. I therefore prepared 3 lines of attack which would be shallow out in front, corn down the bottom of the near shelf and corn in the margins.
Envelopes were drawn by each team captain and we then pulled out our individual pegs, mine being 21. I think I have drawn this peg a couple of times already this season and I knew there were a few fish there but I would have been targeting the island back then, I wasn’t sure how the peg would handle a pole-only approach. However, the weather was hot and lake’s form was spot on so I had no trouble proceeding with my plan to ball it in and fish my socks off. The only change I made to my plan when seeing the peg was to forget the swim at the bottom of the near shelf because the bank-side bushes meant I would be fishing quite a way out from the margin anyway.
So, with 2 shallow rigs and 2 margin rigs set up I proceeded to throw 6 babies heads at 8m on the whistle which I think quite surprised the paste anglers either side of me who were cupping in a few pellets. I also decided to cup some corn down both margins just in case the shallow line didn’t respond. Normally I would leave feeding the margins until the half way point but being pole-only I really needed a back-up plan from the start.
15 minutes in to the match I hadn’t had a bite although the water was fizzing and I was feeding pellets every 5 or 10 seconds to get them up. The paste anglers were taking a few fish each but I wasn’t too worried as it usually takes 10 or 20 minutes to get the fish shallow here in open water especially if you have balled it in. Clearly the fish are on the deck but soon would be coming up to take the pellets.
Sure enough after 20 minutes I had my first fish and registered 20lb in the first hour by which time the paste anglers had slowed up which is what I expected. I have often wondered if I should start on the deck and take a few before the fish come up but I am reluctant to risk foul hookers that would spook the fish instead of building their confidence.
The sport continued through the day with around 25lb going in the nets every hour while those around me were struggling. The only angler I could hear catching was the guy on flyer peg 23 which is without doubt the best shallow pole peg on the lake but I couldn’t see what was happening elsewhere. I suspected 150lb plus would be needed to win but my clicker was showing that I would probably finish with 100lb plus.
Given that my shallow line was producing and apart from the odd quiet spell the sport was consistent, I chose not to fish the margins as my concentration on feeding out in front would have lessened. This is probably the first time this year I have been able to fish one line for the whole match and although there was a chance of some lumps down the edge, I didn’t want to risk it. The steady catch rate of my shallow line might mean valuable points.
As the whistle went I was playing a fish which was soon netted and my clicker registered 120lb. The scales came around and Mark to my right weighed in 49lb. My fish went 129lb 15oz, to my left was around another 50lb and then peg 23 had about 156lb. Nick on 9 had 129lb odd but didn’t beat my 15oz lol. Then Derrick Gladwin weighed in about 133lb so I had to settle for 3rd place, a £40 payout and we walked away with something like 25 points out of a possible 28, not bad.
After the match I was chatting to Nick and he was able to keep the fish coming all day on the shallow pole as well but had odd quiet spells. I told Nick I was thinking about topping the swim up half way through the match with a few more balls. Nick said he chucked in a small ball half way through to try and kick-start the swim again and it worked. Maybe next time I will take a chance and ball it again half way through to see if it improves the overall weight.
Today I was using the following:
NG Dibber set 2’ deep, shot under float, hair rigged band to 14 Drennan Carp Match on 0.16 to 0.18 Fox Micro +
NG Dibber set 1’ deep, shot under float, hair rigged band to 14 Drennan Carp Match on 0.16 to 0.18 Fox Micro +
Frequent feeding was the key (every 5-10 seconds), slapping got more bites, tapping caught the odd fish.
The next match on 10th July is the same lake, same rules so let’s see what happens.
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.
Tuesday, 15 June 2010
Spring League final round - Nick's Lake Hartleylands
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
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
Wednesday, 9 June 2010
Guest blog by Jeff Driscoll - 2nd from along the spit
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
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
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
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
Tuesday, 8 June 2010
Lake 2, Monks - Hather's forum bash
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!
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!
Thursday, 3 June 2010
Spring League round 4 Nick's lake Hartleylands
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
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
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.
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.
Sunday, 18 October 2009
Sam's Silver Fish match 17-10-09
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
Sunday, 11 October 2009
The Year of Hell............
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!
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!
Monday, 29 June 2009
Hartleylands forum match, Bramley and Peartree lakes
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When the Spring League finishes, Nick usually runs a match open to members of various forums. The match is usually booked across the two small match lakes, Bramley and Peartree, which although have 20 odd pegs each, can really only hold 10 without causing problems of fishing too close together towards the islands. I usually use this match as an opportunity to experiment with a few things as there is nothing much to lose apart from the pools which were being split over the top 2 on each lake with a small section payout as well.
The weather has been very good recently although the past week has seen the odd tropical rain storm however, the temperature had shot up today and we were going to be in for a real scorcher. A few of us were chatting over breakfast about the possible weights and the chance of the lake record being broken on Bramley as we were fishing for 6 hours today. I have never fished a 6 hour match before and to be honest I don’t feel that 6 hour weights should be allowed to count as match records so my main thoughts of today were focused on a big weight and a chance to experiment with a couple of things.
I just want to talk for a moment about what I wanted to experiment with today. Firstly, I feel that in good conditions you need to find the method that puts fish in your nets the quickest. Now that may seem obvious but up until the end of last summer I would reach for my waggler rods before anything else on this venue. Fishing the pellet waggler is a very successful method here along with the method feeder and occasionally fishing down the edge for lumps and anglers usually go with the method they are best at. However, in a couple of matches on this venue I have fed a shallow pole line at around 10m to see if the method could work as well as it does at Monk lakes. When I have done this the fish have always been there at the first put-in which has previously been around 40-60 minutes or so. So one of the experiments I wanted to run today was to see how quickly I could catch shallow at a 7m line. This would show me whether I need to feed and fish to the islands for a while so the pole line can build up or whether I can go straight out on the quicker method.
Something else I wanted to try out in this hot weather was laying down a large bed of feed in a margin swim and see how productive it could be. Given that we are fishing for 6 hours up until about 4 o’clock, the lumps should come in and potentially add significant weight to the nets of smaller fish. I opted to feed hemp with a bit of corn mixed in and fished a new soft hooker pellet over the top. Trevor Price (GOT Baits owner) sent some down as part of the prize hamper for the spring league and told me that they were not on the market yet. They are a large soft dark pellet, probably a 10mm-12mm expander but coated in a slightly sticky white substance that really does look and feel like emulsion. They actually look delicious and would be easily visible on the deck.
So my plan today was to feed shallow close in and down the edge and hopefully not need to pick up the waggler rod at all although I did bring a pair with me along with a bomb rod. At the draw I was given peg 24 which is on the car park end at the point of the first island. It is not a noted peg and even though the weather was hot I would still expect to catch better from the pegs opposite the gap between the islands. I wasn’t too bothered though as I am always quite confident of catching well up in the water at this time of year. By the way, this is now 8 times out of 8 matches that I have drawn Peartree rather than Bramley!
As this was to be a 6 hour match, the ‘all in’ was sounded at 10.15 and I threw some pellets out at 7m and dumped 2 jam jars of hemp down the left hand margin which looked a better option than the right hand margin as I could ship the pole a reasonable distance along the bank and under the branches of a bush. I flicked a few more pellets out at 7m and shipped the pole out with my fingers crossed that I would get a quick response. My eyes were half on the float and half on my watch as I flicked pellets out every 5 seconds. I started off at 18” deep and continued feeding every 10 seconds and slapping every 10 seconds as I usually lift the rig out as soon as the pellet has had time to reach maximum depth. Looking around the lake it seemed everyone was having a slow start and clearly not feeding much apart from Al Loader to my left who was out on the shallow pole as well.
I looked at my watch as I was shipping in my first carp of the day……….. 8 MINUTES !!!
This information will prove very valuable from now on, especially as we have the Nick Puncher Memorial match approaching on this venue and over 100 anglers will be fishing. I need to test this response out more in the future but if today was anything to go by then I know that I only need to fish to the island for a few minutes to pinch a few carp before taking a look close in. By the way, my shallow rigs were the same as they always are and I had a ‘long line’ rig for easy slapping and so that I could flick the rig beyond the pole tip and keep the pole off their heads in these calm conditions. The second rig was a ‘short line’ rig to use if the fish became more confident and started to hang themselves. I also brought some more of those white pellets with me that Nick had mentioned a few weeks ago. I’m not sure if he feels they work any better on the hook than the usual darker pellets but I am beginning to think that they do. They are a little larger than expected for 6mm pellets and the feed pellets seem smaller to me than usual. The white ones do seem to get a bit slippery when wet but they hold together well and stay in the band a bit longer.
Anyway, after my 8 minute wait for the first fish I started bagging and had 20 fish in the net within the first hour, including the initial 8 minute wait where I could have had a few on the wag as well. The fish were all very small though, around the 1lb mark rather than the usual pound and a half. Things slowed down a bit during the second hour but adding a section and keeping up the feed I still managed 35 fish by the 2 hour mark. The conditions were now extremely hot and the lake was dead calm so I decided to sling 2 handfulls of hemp down the edge and rest the shallow line a while.
On went a large white expander and as soon as the float settled under the bush it shot under and the doubled 8 slip came peeling out of the pole. Unfortunately I couldn’t have any spare sections attached behind me due to a bushy tree to my right so I had to hold on with only 5.5m in my hands. I managed to reach for another section to add on while the fish steamed off and soon a nice plump 7lb carp was netted. I began to think I had made a good call by feeding heavily under that bush.
Another pellet went on but the float was just bobbing around from small stuff nibbling it. This is a problem at HLF as there are a lot of tiny silvers that will attack a soft bait and I therefore opted to re-load the jam jar in an attempt to draw more carp in to push the silvers out.
Back out to the shallow line then and the fish were queued up waiting. I continued to catch and began to slip the fish into a second net having put 40 in the first. Again though things eased up and although the fish were all at the depth I wanted them, they just seemed more interested in basking than feeding. I stuck another dozen fish in the net by the 3 hour mark before resting the swim again.
I had been feeding handfuls of hemp down the edge every 20 minutes to make a bit of noise and to hold the bigger fish there so it was now time to take another look. A few missed bites then resulted in a couple of small carp so it seemed the very few larger fish were up for it today. I stuck a couple more jam jars under the bush and went out shallow again.
By the close of the 5th hour I had about 75 fish and was quite disappointed at their size and that the hot conditions seemed to spoil the chance of a big weight. I was sure that 150lb – 200lb would be on the cards but with 75 fish I would be lucky to get close to a ton!
Altering depth was not an option as I was pricking them as I lifted the rig. The fish were all up at 12” and quite a few were cruising around my swim. I did manage to mug one or two of them that seemed a little closer to 2lb but they just weren’t that fussed on eating even if the sound of the pellets was drawing them in.
My thoughts kept tempting me to go down the edge again and try to put some weight together to compensate for the smaller fish but I kept thinking back to this fixture last year where I decided to fish half the match shallow and stay down the edge for the second half as an experiment to see if the lumps would build a better weight. Looking around the lake I was unsure how close certain other anglers were to my weight as I had seen a couple of blokes catching reasonably well. What if their fish were bigger than mine? Should I stay shallow or go down the edge? Finally I made my decision as I really wanted to give the margin swim a reasonable chance to prove itself to me and the final 45 minutes was devoted entirely to the bush.
So, in went 4 handfulls of hemp and out went the rig. Every time I hooked a fish I chucked another handful down there to settle them. I lost 2 more lumps due to not having enough pole behind me to cater for their runs but I stuck at it in the hope that I would be able to tame one or two. Unfortunately most of the fish were just around the 1lb to 2lb mark so it seemed that even down the edge it was only the small fish that were interested.
Fortunately a bit of cloud cover started to pass over, I was really hot and fishing for 6 hours in this heat left me hoping for the final whistle. It came and I was passed the scales to do the weigh-in.
I finished on 82 fish for an estimated 100lb and the scales showed 101 odd. A few weights in the 80’s and 90’s were recorded but it seemed my disappointing day had won the lake. Bramley had fished a bit weird as well but the weights were a little better. Nick won the Bramley match with 123lb so we both went home £65 better off and I left with some valuable information about this place and how the weather can affect the fishing.
My next match will be the Nick Puncher Memorial 100+ open. Fingers crossed for a good draw!
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
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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.
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.
Sunday, 21 June 2009
Monk Lakes 1 & 2 - Pad's Army charity open
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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!
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!
Sunday, 24 May 2009
The rivers and streams of Yalding
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!
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!
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