Royal Signals Championship day 1, 20/07/16

It was finally upon us and to be honest after coming second in the carp champs earlier in the year I really wanted a good showing on this to get another trophy, the weather again was forecast to be a scorcher and the section rotation saw me on Lake 4 with Pez, Jenks, Jimmy and DJ, to name a few for company.

I had drawn peg 7 which was on the opposite bank to where I had won the Corp champs a few years ago, but I had a nice breeze coming across the lake towards me at the start so I was more than happy, that and an island chuck off to my right and a nice margin at 11m to my left saw me setting up a fair bit of kit hoping for good things.

I started on the method to the island and in the first hour I managed a skimmer, crucian and a couple of carp for about 20lb so I was on course for my target weight of a ton plus.  It was however at this pointy that the wheels started to fall off as Craig on peg 13 started to catch well down his left hand edge, and I started to force things to try and keep up.  I had been feeding a pellet waggler line since the start so I had a quick look and on the second cast the float disappeared and another carp was on his way to the keepnet, as I was playing it though a large ghosty decided to start malingering in the area.  As soon as I got the first fish in the net I spotted the ghosty again and flicked my pellet wag just in front of it, it swam slowly towards where my hookbait had roughly landed and then spooked off. My pellet wag followed it at Mach 10 and it was fish on, a few minutes later 8lb of annoyed ghosty were in the keepnet.  That was it however for the pellet wag and it was back onto the method for a few more carp and bits.

It was about 2 hours in and the wind decided to change direction and start blowing strongly to my left, this had the effect of making it harder to get my method tight in under the boards on the island, and Jenks, Jimmy and Craig all started to catch quite well on a variety of tactics.

It was status quo until the last couple of hours when I started to feed the left hand edge hoping for a comeback hour, I actually though it was going to happen when after 20 minutes I had 3 fish down the edge in 15 minutes and another one that I mugged.  However the fish had other ideas and I only managed 1 fish in the last half hour of the match and not a lot more before that, again I had overfed my margin, I am starting to spot a trend.

Jenks had had a blinding last half of the match catching steady on paste around a 6mm pellet fished at 5m just in front of a small bush to the left of his swim, and he thought I hadn’t noticed, Jimmy had caught well on the method and pellet wag cast along the windward bank and Craig slowed but still had a few in the last hour from his edges.

The all out was well received and the tale of the tape was that Jenks had won the section with 47KG, Jimmy was second with 41kg, Craig had 37kg but as he was a guest his weight only counted for the pools so I was third in section with 34Kg and bits.

Well third saw me well out of it going into day 2 so it would be fishing for pools…..

What would I do differently?

The wind was wrong for the pellet wag and it took me too long to realise that, I should have saved my bait from that line and fished a positive paste line at 6-11m.  I overfed the margins again, but if the fish had turned on I would not have fed enough so that’s a tricky one.

I should have focussed on the method for longer and concentrated my feed as much as possible.

Tackle used:

Pole short:

Elastic: 17H yellow

Line: 0.19mm to 0.17mm

Hook: 5 T175

Float: 4X10 Big H paste

Pole dobbing:

Elastic: blue Colmic

Line: 0.19mm to 0.15mm

Hook: 18 Guru Pellet wag with baitstop

Float: 0.4g Crystal dibber

Pole Margin:

Elastic: 17H yellow

Line: 0.19mm to 0.17mm

Hook: 5 T175

Float: KC Carpa Margin 4X10

Method:

Rod: Drennan 11.5ft medium feeder rod

Reel: Daiwa TDM 4012

Line: 8lb sensor to 0.19mm

Hook: 14 QM1

Feeder: 24g large guru method feeder

Pellet Waggler:

Rod: Drennan 12ft Acolyte Carp waggler

Reel: Daiwa TDM 3012

Line: 4lb sensor to 0.19mm

Hook: 16 Guru Pellet wag

Float: 6g Preston thin pellet wag

Royal Signals, Masters and Clubman match, 19/07/16

This was the start of the Royal Signals Championship for me, I was paired up with Ben so the team was Ben and Ben… Fate?  We met up on the morning, I had had little to do with him on the run up to the match as I have fished with Ben in the past and am aware that he can catch fish on his day, we drew pegs 22 and 23 on the Snake as far as I can remember so once we got to the pegs it was to work.

I showed him a few things like dobbing rigs, simple bait prep and the like and I was still able to set my kit up well in time. The swims were only about 7 meters wide so I was going to concentrate my efforts down to the right hand side of the swim, I set up a method, shallow rig, deck rig across and a paste rig for down the edge.  I got Ben to set up roughly the same… ish.

  

So the clubman got to start 30 minutes before the Master, so I got Ben to start dobbing over the far bank loking for an early fish, I was expecting it to be hard so 30lb would have been a good weight between us in my opinion.  It didn’t take too long and soon Ben had his first fish on its way to the onion sack.

It was a carp at about 3lb so a good start and there were plenty of fish showing themselves along the far bank.  He had a couple more by the time I got to start and as he was doing so well I decided to follow suite and started fishing meat across the far bank.  It was obvious by the fishes reaction that they wanted to be shallow in the heat, which was starting to become oppressive, so I set up a shallow rig to fish under the far bank foliage and managed a few fish on this over the first couple of hours.

After this  time the shade in which I had been getting my bites disappeared and the only shade I had was down the lake to my right, by casting the method tight to the top bank under the trees I managed another 4 carp and I also managed to mug a couple on a mugging rig.

Going into the last couple of hours I started to feed my right hand edge with a mix of 2mm and 4mm pellet with an eye to fish paste over the top, it never really kicked off though even though I managed a couple of fish I was soon fishing meat slop up the far bank for another couple of fish in the last hour and 1 down the edge.

Ben had struggled aswell to get numbers of fish and he ended up on just over 5kg of fish, I had 14 and a half, this was enough for us to end up third pair on the lake and 8^th pair overall, so plenty of room for improvement next year.

Kev and Greg smashed it on reptile and Greg (… the clubman) had enough weight so that Kev didn’t even need to weigh in!!!

What would I do differently?

I think that the method should have been my main line of attack for the day with the far bank meat as a backup to grab the odd fish rather than the other way round, I also think I overfed my margins… wonder if I will learn from it this time?

Tackle used:

Pole Long:

Elastic: Blue Colmic

Line: 0.19mm to 0.15mm

Hook: 2 T175

Float: 0.3g AS4

Pole Long Shallow:

Elastic: Blue Colmic

Line: 0.19mm to 0.15mm

Hook: 18 Guru pellet wag

Float: 0.2g crystal dibber

Pole dobbing:

Elastic: blue Colmic

Line: 0.19mm to 0.15mm

Hook: 18 Guru Pellet wag with baitstop

Float: 0.4g Crystal dibber

Pole Margin:

Elastic: 17H yellow

Line: 0.19mm to 0.17mm

Hook: 5 T175

Float: KC Carpa Margin 4X10

Method:

Rod: Drennan series 7 Carp feeder 10ft.

Reel: Daiwa TDM 3012

Line: 8lb sensor to 0.19mm

Hook: 14 QM1

Feeder: 24g small guru method feeder

16/04/14 Fisho Makins

I decided that before this match my best bet on doing well would involve a days practice at the midlands bagging mecca so on the Tuesday Morning, I met Craig, my practice partner in the café and we hatched a plan to practice on lake 1 and then move to phase 2 later. We sat on the far bank from the café and I started on the method to the island whilst Craig fished the pellet wag, we both primed short pole lines and margin swims but neither of these really produced.  The pellet wag was the way for the day and I let Craig go 3-nil up before I got off my box and started to show him a few tricks (even though he showed me a few back) By the end of the day we were both knackered and had caught a shed load of fish, I was even catching Bream and roach on my slightly more refined tactics.  All we really knew was that we wanted to draw open water on Lake 1 for the big day as there were loads of big fish moving in those areas.

So the big day was upon us and we had spent the night in a local Indian restaurant enjoying the fine food but this did mean that I had not replaced any of the hooklengths that I had trashed the day before, this is why I was in the car park desperately tying hooklengths before the draw.  A few of the army team old and new were at the draw so we all sat in the café and had a good catch up, it was then that we noticed that there were fewer people around so we had a quick look outside, this put us all nearly at the end of the draw queue. The pre match brief was short and sweet and then it was the agonising wai8t to the tickets whilst all the other anglers were coming out with their tickets, including most of the pegs that we fancied on lake 1.

Lake 2, B20 was my pitch for the day and no one was happy about being in that area, still there was a section to fish for so I set up a method rod, pellet wag for across to the island, a pole rig for the base of the shelf at 7m and a margin rig that I plumbed towards the empty platform to my right, but I was not holding my breath on that producing at all. Just before the all-in I got to look up and down the section and realised that I had Jamie Hughes and Adam Waklin for company, so I was well and truly up against it. Unperturbed at the start I sent the method across for a couple of liners, then at 45 minutes I had a quick look on my 7m pellet line, I managed a couple of small skimmers and wondered if dead maggot would be better on the hook, so I gave it a go and first dob I had a carp of about 5-6lb, then a few small roach to follow. Back out on the feeder with dead maggot saw a run of 4 smaller carp at about a pound a piece so with a couple of skimmers I had about double figures and was right up there in the section. It was about 1:45 and I had a phone call from the wife that saw me putting my fish back and bugging out in double time, I will never know how I would of done and considering what happened I don’t really care, there is always next year.

13/07/2012, Royal Signals Champioship, day 2

Day 2 saw us all swapping lakes and Pez and I tried something new by drawing for each other, it worked, I put him on a good peg, Snake 15, and he put me on end peg 26 on Lake 4. It was looking good for the team until I found out that the day before only 9Kg had come off it, but it was a start point. When I got to my peg I found the island on my left hand side that extended to the rope at around 40yds, there was a big tree on both sides of my peg and also a really nice margin down to my left hand side that required the bare minimum of gardening.

This allowed me to make an easy plan I was going to fish the pellet wag, method or bomb long and then paste down the edge to my left in the last couple of hours, I set up an 11ft Force Pellet Waggler 2 with a Xitan 030FD reel and 0.18mm mainline. I slid a sliding pellet wag rig up the line with a 4.5g clear loaded pellet wag and terminated it with a 0.18mm bottom to a 16 hook and a bait band on the hair. I also set up a bomb rig on a 10ft Force Commercial bomb and then set up a similar margin paste rig as yesterday for down the edge. At the all in I cast out the pellet wag and was rewarded with a fish on my 4^th cast at around 5 feet deep, this filled me with confidence and with the wind blowing from over my left shoulder I was able to controll feeding and the float easily. This then set the rest of the day, I caught fish on the waggler on and off for the first 4 hours of the match and had 15 fish in the net at the end of this period at depths from 2-6ft, I also caught one on paste on a rig I quickly set up at 5m after watching Ivan on the far bank bag a couple of quick fish. This only gave me the one so at 2hrs to go I fed the edge and had a look, again it took the fish about 20 minutes to settle but then I stopped foul hooking the fish and started landing some better margin fish. I had a further 7 or 8 in the last couple of hours and this was enough to give me another good weight with 55.850Kg and this was enough to take top spot on the day again.

It was a brilliant couple of days and the best bit was picking up not only the individual championship but Pez and I also managed to pick up the team as well. Not too bad.

Here are the full results:

12/07/2012 Royal Signals Champs , Day 1

Day 1, I was running this match ably assisted by Pez This saw me draw peg 16 on Reptile lake, Phase 2, after I had finished with the tidying up of the draw area and then loaded up my barrow it was off down around the lake to get to my peg. Upon arrival I found myself sandwiched between 2 guest anglers, Gaz Evans (Army team captain and Makins Regular) and Rocky (Makins Regular and Army squad member) so I knew that I had my work cut out from the start. Both Rocky and Gaz however were throwing in disclaimers from the start saying that I was on a better peg; well I didn’t know as I had not fished the place since last year. I decided on a simple plan with a method rod and pellet wag for casting into a gap between two islands at around 23m, Meat at 5m to my left away from Gaz and then paste over groundbait down on my left hand margin as I had a platform at 10m.

 At the all in I potted in a half full pot of bait at 5m and then cast the pellet wag into the gap as the carp were showing on the surface, instantly I knew that this was the wrong thing to do as the waggler was making too much noise on the impact with the water and seemed to be making the fish back off from the start. I quickly decided to get off my box and set up a shallow rig to fish at 14.5M towards the island, It consisted of a 0.1g Sconzone wellardz on 0.18mm Hybrid mainline to a 0.14mm Cenex bottom terminated in a PR36 hook with a F1 bait band. I dropped a 6mm pellet on the surface 3 times and yellow Reflex elastic poured out of the top kit, this happened a few more times as I slowly started to trickle bait in on the line. But it was in a straight line with my back up feeder line so before I got too carried away I moved it around 4m to the left more towards the centre of the open water.

I stayed on this for around an hour but I noticed that the fish were starting to back off a bit so I cast out the feeder to give it a rest, the tip flew round fairly quickly and I took a quick 10 fish on this line. I alternated between the tip and the shallow line for the next couple of hours taking fish steadily, I had a couple of looks on the short line but with no indications I stayed long.

With 2 hours left to go I put 5 pots of groundbait down the edge to my left and a couple of minutes later followed it with a rig, consisting of a Big H Bullit paste float on 0.20m  cenex with a 0.18mm bottom finished with a size 5 Tubertini 175. This was rigged on a strong hollow elastic so that I could bag happily,  by this time both Rocky  and Gaz were making charges with decent fish from their edges so I had to hope that I could get enough to stay in front. It didn’t take long and I started to get a few fish from on it and they were of a slightly better stamp than most other people were managing, I kept catching until the all out and at the end I knew I had a decent weight.

The scales came round and I was one of the last to weigh on Reptile, with 58.680Kg, this was more than enough to see off anyone else in my section by around 20Kg so the job had been done for day 1. On the team front, Pez had drawn in a corner on Lake 4, Peg 18 and found himself boxed in, once the fish backed off from in front of him he struggled, but he had done enough for the team with a second in section keeping us in contention for the Inter Unit Championships.

Match Fishing Subscriber Classic, 08/09/11

This was my first time on this event and I was impressed with the size and organisation, 178 anglers descended onto Makins over all 3 phases. At the draw I was after any of the lakes in Phase 1 as the fish are bigger and they are generally open water venues, or Reptile on phase 2 as I believe it held my best chance of a good result from there. After a 2^nd breakie that saw me putting the world to rights with a couple of RAF lads, my hand went into the bucket and I pulled out Snake 7 on Phase 2. I was not overly impressed but the thought of a day fishing a new lake was enough to see me off to my peg with a renewed enthusiasm.

As you can see I had a multitude of options, and what this does not show is that there was a blank peg on my right with a small bay and another point coming from the right at 14m to my right. My plan was simple, meat to the middle point as I could see some carp moving around that point, pellet to the left hand point and then I was going to fish down the edge to my right using the loose groundbait trick. I plumbed up about half a section along the right hand point, the meat rig to fish there was a 4X12 Big H float on 0.17mm mainline and a 0.15mm bottom to a 16 B911 on Green Vespe Elastic through my tension puller kit and a small cad pot mounted on the end of the kit. The pellet rig for the left line if it was hard was a 4X12 Big H Border float with a cut down bristle, this was rigged on 0.15mm main line to a 0.13mm bottom and an 18 B911, this was set on yellow Browning Reflex elastic in case skimmers became important again through a puller kit and with a small cad pot. The margin rig started off as a 0.3g Frenzee FP800 on 0.19mm mainline and 0.17mm bottom with a size 3 Tubertini 175 to fish double corn, this was all set on green preston hollow elastic as the fish seemed pretty much contained in the bay with few snags. As I had plemty of time before the all in I also set up a Standard paste rig to fish a 2+2 line at 10 oclock towards the guy pegged to my left and also a small method on my 8ft Force Carp Wand to fish to the gap in the islands. My bait was some 1mm and 3mm pellet mixed together, a pint of riddled meat, a kilo of green swimstim, some 6mm sinking expanders (Soaked overnight), 2 pints of hemp, 2 tins of corn, 8mm meat cubes and punched polony for the hook and finally a bit of paste mix.

At the all in I decided not to feed anywhere but the line I was fishing so I filled my cad pot up with 50/50 hemp and riddled meat, and shipped out an 8mm punch of polony to the right hand point. I did not have to wait long and within 2 minutes I got a liner. Next put in carp no.1 was on its way to the net, this was followed by no.2 then the liners started as the fish came up in the water for the riddled meat. I quickly set up a shallow rig with a cad pot and this resulted in an instant bite but then the carp backed off, the golden first hour was up. I fed half a pot of bait on the meat line to try and get the fish down and had a look on the pellet line; I had fed a small nugget of pellets about 10 mins before I went on it and started to get bites from skimmers straight away. I had 5 then my first carp from this line showed up, but again I was getting problems with the carp causing liners in the slightly deeper margins. I rested the lines, heavy potted and also tried shallow to no avail but I was landing a couple and with 2 hours to go I had 6 carp in the net. It was time to prime the margin, so out went 3 pots of groundbait and about 20 grains of corn and within 10 minutes the bottom was starting to colour up so I had a look. I foul hooked a carp almost instantly and then another so I decided to swap over to a paste rig down the edge. This was the turning point of my match and in the last hour I managed around 6 carp to 6lb from down the edge on paste. Before I knew it all out was called.

I had ended up with around 15 carp and a few silvers, I had taken a carp on every rig I had set up including the 2+2 paste and method, around the lake it had obviously fished hard and after the scales came around I was surprised to have ended up with 51lb dead. At the presentation it turned out that this had been enough for a section win so some cash and Dynamite Baits goodies were gratefully received and then it was off on the marathon journey to York via Peterborough. If I could do it again I would probably fish paste across on my pellet line and I would have spent longer on the method to the bar, especially as it turned out that I was 8lb short of winning the Phase and 10lb short of 4^th place, either one of those would have seen me in the Drennan Knockout cup 2012! Wait till next year.