This event started two days early for me when I drove up
to the fishery the day before our official practice day just to get a feel for
the venue, in this short time that I had available to me I set up a couple of
rigs one for the short pole and one for down the edge. As it was predominantly
F1 fishing I had both rigs set light with 0.10mm bottoms and size 18 Tubertini
808’s, and I sacked up on pellet and maggot both on the deck and up in the
water, Craig came to watch and have a catch up as well and took this quick video
to show how manic it was!
The next day saw the whole team descending on the venue
for the official practice, for this after the substantial breakfast saw me
drawing Extension lake, peg 19. This swim gave me an island at 11.5m and a
couple of nice margins, my plan was simple and was to fish pellet short and
maggot down the edge, to cut a long story short on the pellet I caught a shed
full of tiny stockies, 11kg of them to be precise. They were like piranhas, as
they decimated my pellets as soon as they touched the deck on the short line, I
got them going on a top kit line as well that sped up how many I was catching. I struggled to get the better fish feeding
but did discover that by starting a new line you could get a couple of quick
better fish before the stockie plague would invade that swim again. My total
weight was 23KG ish and I was last but 2 on the day, it did however, prove that
you needed to find a way to catch the better fish as the stockies were nowhere
big enough. Colin won the day with about 150lb on caster shallow, nice.
Match day saw me as team captain for Army Black, and I
drew myself New 17, I was happy when I got to my peg as it had not been fished
the day before and it had acres of open water to the left, and a nice margin
down that way as well.
Today I set up a method rod to give me somewhere to
hopefully start and bag a couple of better F1’s early, a short 2+2 pole line
using the lessons learnt by the guys the day before on this lake and finally a
rig for down the edge. Again the rig lines were light and the hooks small, but
I was ready in plenty of time even after casting up the tree, I had loads of
bait from pellet to caster and the plan was to fish pellet at 2+2 to get a feel
for the swim and then go from there.
My match went like this, I started on the method for 20
minutes for nothing, then I moved onto my 2+2 pellet line, on this I got a
small f1 then the stockies arrived so after 3 I decided to try something different.
I moved my rig 1m to the left, re plumbed up and then started to kinder cup in
maggot on that line. The difference was immediate and startling as I started to
get bites from proper F1’s. As they seemed to be responding to the feed and to
make a bit more noise to try and drag more fish from the open water I started
to loose feed caster on that line, I had a pleasant day after the change with
fish coming steadily all day, I loose fed maggot down the edge but to no avail,
I managed 6 fish out of the edge in total, but one of them was around 6lb. Gaz
on the peg to my right was catching steadily and I thought that it would be
close between us at the all out, I was right.
I managed to weigh 41KG for a section, Lake and match
win, Gaz had 37Kg for third overall and second in section, Colin again had had
a good end to his match and weighed 38Kg just pipping Gaz, on the team front my
team army black managed 3rd on count back and weight, and victors on
the day was Army Red, with one of the MOD teams splitting us up.
It had been a great couple of days with great company and
the fishing wasn’t too shabby one thing I will mention though was the weather,
it was bitterly cold both days and my moral goes never leave warm boots in
Tidworth when fishing over 2 hours away, even as I am writing this my feet have
not warmed up properly.
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