15 August 2015

Emergency Services National, Barston Lake

I had been looking forward to this match for a while as I like Barston and if it was closer I would fish it more often, I was so excited that I struggled to sleep and I was feeling groggy as my alarm sounded at 0530 for my drive up to Solihull.  It was a good run and I was soon eating a fantastic breakfast at the Restaurant on the Lake, it didn’t take too long for the rest of the team to arrive and soon the talk was of tactics and where we wanted to draw.
Gaz handed me 112 at the draw and to be honest I couldn’t remember where this was but I had a pleasant surprise when I got to it.



It was a nice easy chuck to the island with the gear that I had with me and I decided to fish a 45g large hybrid feeder with pellet around it.  This was set up on my 14ft Black Viper feeder rod and I had that teamed up with an Ultegra 5500 Xtc absolutely brimmed with 8lb sensor.  I cast out first with a 2oz bomb to get an idea of the distance and also the lake bed and I had found some gravel which was where I decided that I would start.  Plan B was the pole at 13m to fish for the large head of skimmers and F1’s that can come on the pole line I set up two rigs to fish here, a 4X14 and a 0.6g floats both on 0.16mm mainline to 0.12mm bottom and a size 16 hook, Pink Vespe elastic balanced these rigs off and that was that.  Plan C  was a pellet wag and 10ft method rod for fishing at 25m or so and Plan D was paste at 6m.
The all in came along and I fed 3 balls of groundbait laced with chopped worm and caster at 13m (on a hard spot) half a pot of hemp and pellet at 6m and then I launched the method to the Island, I had a liner on the first cast but then the second and third had problems as my quiver tip was too light and tried to cause frap ups on the cast. To overcome this I put a heavier quiver tip into the rod but this saw me missing 3 minutes of fishing time, it cured the problem though and I was easily hitting the distance cast after cast.  The fish were not forthcoming though and apart from a wrap round that resulted in a broken hooklength and a 4oz skimmer I was struggling.
After an hour I decided to try the pole for an hour and I managed a small carp or skimmer a chuck for the hour but the draw of the island was too much and after a quick go on the pellet wag the method was soon flying back out towards the island.  This was a good call and over the next hour or so I had a decent carp and a string of F1’s one after another on the feeder,  however the last hour started to slow and turned into a bit of a struggle with only a couple of f1’s and skimmers on the tip to show for it.  I even tried the paste in the last few minutes but to no avail and I finished the match with a 4oz skimmer at 81 yards on the feeder.
The scales came round and gave me 38lb of carp and F1’s and 16lb of skimmers and small carp from on the pole line!!  It made me wonder what I could have done if I had just stayed on the pole line as I only needed another 11lb for a section win, as it was I won my half section for £20 and was 5th in section beaten by the better pegs to my right. Oh and a few double figure fish were definitely the difference.
Teams on the day were Notts fire third I think, Navy and RM were second and the Prison service won the day, we had 2 decent results and three not so good ones but it was still a good day out.

What would I have done differently?
I didn’t need big bertha and could have got away with a lighter actioned rod for the cast to the island, this would have improved accuracy and also may have prevented the two lost fish that I had on the tip.
I should have also concentrated in the pole when the skimmers arrived on the feeder line as I had a decent weight of the small fish that would have boosted me quicker than winding similarly sized fish from next to the island.

Carbon stem floats for speed fishing!

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