It is coming to the end of my mammoth stretch of leave,
so with the wife safely at work, I decided to find a few matches for the last
few days of holiday and it all started at Orchard Lakes in New Milton. I have been here before and this place is a
bagging mecca in the summer with 200lb needed to get in the frame on most days,
however, in the winter it can be a completely different proposition. I need not have worried although I was a
little disappointed at only 4 of us on the match but with 10,12,14,16 was a
fair match, I came out of the bag last with peg 16 in my hand.
One of the massive plus points of Orchard is the fact
that you can drive to 60% of the pegs on the match lake, the other is that
every peg has an island within easy reach. Looking at the swim I decided on a
two pronged approach of a track line and a far bank line that I put to the left
of the reeds under the tree at about 14m. Rigs were easy they were both 0.16mm Main
line to 0.1/0,12mm bottoms and 18 Tubertini 808’s, the float for across was a
10X11 MW Pear and the track was a 0.3g MW Pinger, elastics were a pink reflex
for across and double 5 for the deeper water. On plumbing up I had a bit of a
shock with here only being 2ft across but I tried a trick that I picked up this
week which was to leave the float in the swim for a couple of minutes to try
and judge if there were any fish in that area, the answer was yes as the float
dipped a couple of times so I was happy to fish water that seemed so
shallow. The track turned out to be
about 5feet deep and it would be a good comparison for where the fish wanted to
be.
Before the all-in I also quickly set up my 10ft F1 waggler
rod with a 3bb insert waggler to try and mug a few fish on during any quiet
spells as I had seem a lot of fish splashing up the channel in front of my peg,
that had a 0.12mm hooklength to a size 18 Tubertini 808. So the all-in was called and I shipped
straight across to the gap over with a small frenzee pot of 2mm and 4mm pellet
mixed with a 4mm exp on the hook, I only had to wait 30 seconds and the first
fish was on its way to the bank, it was a small roach but it was a start so I continued.
I was catching quite well but the stamp of fish was
smaller than I remembered with them coming in at 8-12oz on average, but by
changing the feed patterns and coming upto 8 inches off the bottom I was able
to keep in touch with the fish and improve the size. I rested the swim by
looking down the track, this was a nonstarter so I pinged the waggler over and
managed 5 slightly bigger fish in short order before I cast up the reeds and
lost the lot. I decided not to set it up again but it proved a point that I may
have to look more in to another day.
The last hour was my best with me kinder cupping in 20,
4mm pellet and dropping a pellet through the feed to see the float bury most
put ins, I did loose too many fish and I lost a rig in the small tree to my
left when the wind picked up at one point. But by keeping my feed tight and
working hard I had managed to get a fish most put ins. The all out was called and Daryl came around
with the scales, my three nets equalled 63lb which was not bad for January and
as the scales followed around 14 had about 20lb, 12 had 37lb (Inc 26lb of
silvers) and then there was Wacky on the end peg flyer with 41lb (63lb 1oz as
he told me) so I managed my first win of 2014.
Thanks to Shaine and the team at Orchard and I will be
seeing you again now I know how close it is.
cant keep a good man down well done mate
ReplyDelete