AAF Winter Challenge, Witherington Farm

This is the Army’s annual Christmas match and so with that in mind Chris and myself were late to help John unload all the prizes from his van (Tractors), so scales organised, prizes sorted tables commandeered the draw went ahead. Everybody had to draw their peg from in a Christmas cracker, laugh at the joke wear the hat etc, anyway, I was drawn peg 78 on Inner snake, and I knew that at the weekend not alot had come from the area in which I was sat so I expected the worst when I was setting up.

To that end I decided on 2 5m lines at 10 o’clock and 2 o’clock, then 2 margin lines and I also set up a rig to fish across but due to the wind I was unsure if it would get used. The 5m rig was a 0.5g Frenzee FP500 float on 0.16mm Cenex to a 0.12mm bottom and an 18 Tubertini 808 Hook, this was set on pink Browning reflex elastic through a tension puller kit. My Margin rig was a 0.4g Drennan Carp 7 on 0.18mm Mainline to a 0.12mm bottom and an 18 B911; this was rigged on yellow reflex elastic, again through a tension puller kit. My far side rig was again on pink Cenex and had the same line and hook as the track rig, the main difference was the float as it was a 4X14 Preston PB Carp5.

My side tray was full of pellet, corn, meat, expanders, maggots (alive and dead) and groundbait and at the all in I fed all my lines frugally and started to fish on the 5m lines, even here was tricky to fish due to the stiff cross wind and after 30 minutes I chucked a method feeder across the canal on my bomb rod. I received a couple of small liners and after 25minutes (still first cast) the tip went round with carp no.1 on the end, I had 2 more in quick succession and then it went quiet again. I found that over the next couple of hours if I sat on a cast long enough the tip would go round with either a carp or skimmer on the end. My rig was a small inline method feeder running on a 12” twisted loop, this was stopped on the line with a Korum quick change bead, and my hooklength was 0.16mm Cenex to a size 16 QM1 hook. I was fishing a single dead red on the hook and barely covering the feeder in groundbait so that the hookbait would be the only solid food there. I kept on looking over all my pole lines and only dropped a small roach on my LH Margin line, the rest of the time was taken up casting out the tip and waiting for an indication.

I finished with 6 carp and 3 skimmers for 21lb 10oz; this was enough for a section win and another second in the match with Mayo Jnr catching 28lb from Cottage. It was a cold boring day but I learnt a fair bit about method fishing in the winter. Back to the river at the weekend though, no methods there!