A return to the dark side

Of late I have started to notice that I was enjoying my fishing less and less, largely due to the fact that at this time of year most of my matches were on commercial venues and the carp are usually still grouped up causing Underwater Bingo. I was also starting to find that with my job I was having less time to spend a day on a venue and practice/ pleasure fish and I was more and more fishing match after match on different venues and not learning from my mistakes etc.

I decided to take a radical turn in my fishing and bought a pair of Radical Old School 2 1.75lb TC rods and Radical Heat free-spool reels, these I set up on a pair of bite alarms and set off firstly to Wadmill Lake at Todber Manor Fishery.

I set up between the second and third island and ran a couple of 30g inline method feeders onto the 8lb mainline and terminated both rods with size 12 Guru QM1's on 0.20 Hybrid mono. Feed was a 50/50 mix of 2mm and 4mm pellet softened the night before and moulded around the feeders with 8-10mm boilies as hookbaits.

I caught steadily and had a great day as an old fried Deano Watts had descended onto the venue with a few of his friends for a friendly day session. Banter and brews were flowing well all day and I managed to catch 10 Carp to around 14lb (including the 'Lemon') 

and a couple of bream to 6lb 10oz. Deano and co. managed 8 between the 4 of them but we all had a good laugh plus I ran to the swims (so got the flyer)  at the start of the day as I roughly knew where the fish would be.

About a week later I was back down Todber, this time for an overnighter ( got my bed chair back out of storage), I got to the lake at around 4pm and moved to the opposite side of the lake from where I was the week before due to the 20mph northerly winds and already near freezing temperatures. Again I set up the two rods on method feeders with softened pellet feed and boilie hookbaits, this time I had upped my mainline to 12lb to try and let it sink more and also added a couple of feet of leadcore above both of the feeders. In hindsight I would have been better off leaving one rod alone to see if there was a difference in catch rate, but hindsight and that. Hook lengths had also changed to 15lb braid and a size 10 curve shanked hook as I had managed to bend a QM 1 the week before. 

The evening started well and whilst waiting to move into the peg I really wanted I managed to mug a couple of quick fish, once the day shift had packed up I moved into the hot area out of the increasing wind and settled in for the night. It was largely quiet, and I only managed 8 carp (1 at 3am!!). But in my defence the air temp did go down to -4.5oC and the water temp dropped a couple of degrees through the night. Hard work payed off though and if I dropped the feeder in front of a fish it would usually rattle off quite quickly.

Sunset over Wadmill

The Robin did not go hungry!!

My final trip out consisted of a visit to Shearwater for the day with my new found skills, long story short, two swims, no carp, 20 bream and nearly a swan after it swam through my lines at the rod ends. Another pleasant day though and I experimented alot with hook bait size and buoyancy on the method this time. I was not too upset about not catching a carp as the guy next to me managed 6 in an hour just before I turned up and then did not have another bite all day. At least I avoided the blank!!

Looking for a last gasp carp

Withy Teams of 4, 02/03/2013

Again I had been selected to fish Selwood Lake, and when John returned from the draw with peg 4 I thought that it would either have a few carp or it would be a bad day in the office.

The peg has an island around 25m away and a long margin to the left that is around 3-4ft deep and acres of open water in front so it is usually a good draw.

I set up a 30g scoop feeder to fish to the island on my standard 10ft bomb rod, 0.20mm mainline, a 0.18mm bottom to an 18 PR36 and a bait band. Feed for this was mixed 2 and 4mm coarse pellet softened and hookbait was either a hard 6mm pellet or a grain of corn.

I set up a deep margin rig for down to my left that would also double up as a dobbing rig in the early stages of the match, this was a 4X12 Big H Border float on 0.18 to a 0.14mm bottom and a size 1 Tubertini 175, this was set on Blue Cenex elastic through 1 section and I fished bread, corn and maggot on this rig. For the silvers I decided to fish pellet as I thought that this would give me the best chance of the odd rogue carp and I found two spots that were the same depth, 1 at 6m and the other at 14m. The rig for this changed a couple of times through the day but the best was a 0.2g ‘Dino Floats’ Duke, with 0.16 mainline and a 0.10 bottom with a size 18 Tubertini 808. This was set on pink Cenex elastic that is soft enough for the skimmers and also powerful; enough to control the odd carp, on these lines I fed 2mm and 4mm pellet softened through a tiny kinder pot.

At the start of the match I set my margin rig 8 inches off the deck and proceeded to look in every nook and cranny as far as I could reach to my left with bread, I did not even get a touch, so I then started to feed my pellet lines and trickled a bit of bait down the edge. Whilst this was settling I cast the feeder a couple of times to the island with no indications to speak off so at the hour mark I moved on to my pellet lines starting at 6m again with no bites and then going out to 14m where after 1 ¾ hours I had my first indication. This was when I decided to change to the rig I mentioned earlier and I got a quick run of skimmers, 3 to be precise before having to re feed the line and start to rotate around to look for a bite.

This set the tone for the rest of the match; I managed a lone roach from the margin, a couple of bits from the short line, a liner on the feeder and around a dozen skimmers and a couple of roach from on the long line. This gave me a grand total of 9lb and a handful of ounces and last on the lake, even Les beat me off the next peg with a flukey carp!!

The team did not do as badly as me so we are still in with a chance.

So that was my last match for a while as duty calls I hope that you all have tight lines this summer and I will try to put up a few educational bits on here whilst on my extended holiday.