23/04/14 Fishomania Qualifier Gold Valley

This was my last bite at the Fisho cherry and due to the distance from my house and the fact that I have fished there before I decided that I would just turn up on the morning and chance my arm, I met up with Ian fresh from his win the day before at Maccy D’s and after a quick chat we travelled down to the fishery.

The car parks were overflowing when we got there and there was a great buzz going around the fishery, the general consensus was that a the middle of Gold lake, a corner on Middle or Syndicate were the places to be. So when I drew peg 14 on Gold I was more than happy as it was smack bang in the middle of the lake and there were fish cruising in front of me all the time as I was setting up.

So with that amount of fish up in the water, that was where I was going to target them, Rig 1: Dobbing on the pole, 16m of pole, 3m of line, a small dibber and a 0.16mm hooklength to a 16 PR36 and a quick stop. This rig was for dropping a bit of meat in front of any fish that I see cruising close to me and I also used it to try and mug one for the first 5 minutes, it didn’t work so enough of that.

I then had 2 pellet waggler rods set up for my short line, one with a loaded float and one with a float with shot, these were both on 4lb mainline, 0.20mm hooklengths and I had a 14 on the loaded float and a 16 on the shotted float.

The rigs for the long line, next to the rope was a method feeder and a large loaded pellet wag, again big hooks and strong hooklengths were the name of the game.

My bait tray was pretty sparse with a couple of bags of 11mm pellet for feed and a few 8mm and robin reds for change baits, I also dampened off half a pint of 2mm for around the method and I was ready for the all in.

I walked the bank for a little while trying to see if I could glean any tips and also trying to give the fish somewhere to hide in front of my swim, it worked as they moved in and milled around until the keepnets went in…grrrr.  Also on my wanders I ended up going a quid with Ian and Ray Hayward so that would be interesting and a reason to stay.

As the hooter went I shipped out on the pole and slapped the dobbing rig around a bit to see if any carp were still close in, the answer was no as shed loads of bait was getting thrashed in at around 20-25m and all the carp started running away to the middle of the lake. I started pinging in a few pellets further out than the guys either side of me helped along by the light breeze off our backs, however the fish had obviously backed right off to the middle of the lake as I managed one missed bite in the first hour and a half and fish were head and shouldering further out. So out went the big wag, in the next 30 minutes I landed 1 hooked in the mouth, one foul hooker and lost a further 2 foul hookers before they moved to the other side of the rope. So it was back to working hard on the shorter line.

This finally paid off with 2 more bites coming over the last 3 hours both on the shorter line and both hooked in the mouth, so that was it the match was over and all I could do at the end was chuckle at how hard the section had been.  The guy top my left had 2 small carp and a couple of skimmers on the method, he had to wait 33 minutes for his fist bite and 36 for his second??!! The guy to my right blanked, in fact the only indications he got was when he cast into my swim… Yes I had noticed but the pegs were a bit tight and I was feeding to one side so that I could give the fish somewhere to hide within an easy cast, it kind of worked. It did seem as though the fish did not want a lot of feed and did not appreciate big loaded wags on their heads as both of my short line fish came on the shotted pellet wag, I might explain the rigs one day, but not today.

Will Raison was weighing us in so I went up to see how Ray had done, 46lb saw me losing a quid so I quickly got back to my peg as loads of people were not weighing in, I had 4 (of the smallest gold lake) carp for 21lb and due to the fact that no-one else weighed in this won me the section. The big test was if I had beaten Ian though and the answer was no as his 40lb+ was enough to win his section as well, so a hard earnt section win for the pair of us.

Well that was my last chance at Fisho this year, but I may have a pop at a couple of Maver Match This events in the locality, I will just have to see if I am feeling lucky closer to the time.

22/04/14 Todber knock up

Pez the Golden geezer that he is had organised this a couple of weeks in advance and I had been looking forward to it for a while, breakfast was dispatched at Skevvys café and we all met up at the lake for the draw. There were only 8 of us, Pez, Kev, Tony, Tommy, John, Ian, AD and myself so there would be bags of room on the lake, I drew peg 5.

My plan was simple as I knew that 150lb would be needed to win off this lake and having fished that area before I knew that there are numbers of F1’s to be had towards the far bank. With this in mind I set up a few rigs, a soft pellet rig for across, a hard pellet rig for across, a shallow rig for across, a paste rig for 5m, a corm/meat rig for 5m and a margin rig.

My match went pretty much according to plan with a few fish early on soft pellet before I swapped to a hard 6mm hookbait and then I was slapping 10 inches deep by the end of the first hour and every put in was seeing ne net a small f1. The problem was that everybody else was catching carp and I did not feel as though I was catching quickly enough so I started looking on my other lines concentrating mainly on the 5m paste line. This saw me taking a number of carp upto 7lb but again it was too slow. I also got to watch Ian on peg 1 go into overdrive for the last 2 hours which was supposedly his slowest period!!!!

Score on the doors were:

Peg 1 Ian 156-14

Peg 2 Tommy 26-15

Peg 3 Pez 95-08

Peg 4 Kev 87-07

Peg 5 me 113-05

Peg 6 Adi 57-11

Peg 7 John 125-14

Peg 8 Tony 74-14

In all I managed to get a quid off Tony but handed it straight over to John… I still think that if I had kept my head down on the F1’s until the last hour I may have been able to overturn John at least as the speed at which I was catching them at times was scary.  I think I will have to do it again soon and I will try and do a big weight of small f1’s.., Fisho at Gold next…

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.

Witherington Farm Open, 12/04/2014

It was off to Witherington Farm for a 20 peg open, all the usual suspects were there and it was a who’s who of Withy regulars.  I had however, come prepared as Stu and I had snuck down the day before for a cheeky practice where we sat on Selwood and tried to catch carp on a variety of tactics.  On the day I drew Selwood peg 4 that was a peg to the left of where I had sat the day before, so I had a rough idea of how to approach the day.  There was a bit of banter flying around at the start and somehow I got suckered into going a quid with Blakey, not the best plan if I like my money.

I started by clipping up my feeder rod to the island as this would be my starter line, I then plumbed up a 13m skimmer line, a 5m meat line and also down the edge to the left platform where I have had fish before and also to the right in front of some reeds. Bait was pellets, meat, corn and hemp and at the all-in I quickly shipped out onto the 5m line with a pot of hemp and meat before casting the feeder tight to the island, pepparami was the hookbait of choice and the tip went round within 2 minutes. Carp number 1 was in the net before some people had even finished feeding their pole lines and casting to the island, next cats was again on the money and the tip went round after 3 minutes.  Carp number 2 was in the net and I had managed about 10lb in the first 10 minutes, it was at this point that I fed my skimmer line with some 3mm pellet and a little hemp, and also cupped some meat and corn down the edge to the pallet.

I went back out on the feeder for another half an hour or so but the carp had shut up shop by this point so at nearly an hour I had a cheeky look down the edge to the pallet, this led to carp number 3 to end up in the net within the first hour and I thought that I was in for a very good day. However, it was not to be and I then suffered a very slow hour I managed a couple of skimmers by changing to a smaller hook on the feeder and also changing hookbait to a 6mm hard pellet in a band.  I had a few looks on the skimmer line and I soon figured out that they wanted a small ball of my method mix with a few pellets for every 3 fish and also that lifting and dropping was key. (The practice had come in handy after all). The rig that I was using was a 4X12 MW F1 slim carbon on 0.16mm mainline to a 0.12mm bottom ending in a Colmic N501 hook in a 16 for pellet. The elastic I was using was a soft set pink reflex and this was fine on the most part but I started to get a few problems when the fish started feeding a bit more gently, and a few dropped off, I think this was a culmination of the elastic being too harsh, the hook too big and my hooklength too long, but I didn’t change anything so only have myself to blame.

I managed another carp from down the edge and lost one but all the guys around me were hooking and landing large bonus carp on their light skimmer rigs, I however didn’t manage a bonus and it wasn’t until the end that I would realise how costly this would be.

The weigh in saw me have 43lb, 21lb odd of skimmers and 22lb of carp, Jon on peg 1 managed 10 carp and some skimmers for 50lb, Ray on 6 had 44lb helped no end by two very large carp one on the tip and one on the pole. Blakey showed me the way on the skimmers with 30lb of them and nearly 20lb of carp for 49lb, so Jon won the section but the top three weights came from Cottage and were topped by James Knight with 194lb!! So in all I got a lesson in skimmer fishing and managed to lose a quid to Blakey that I still owe him.

05/04/14 Viaduct Fisho

So silly season is upon us again as I was directed to my parking space at Viaduct Fishery for the first Fisho of the year, I had already picked up a brekkie and a brew so set about sorting my kit and then waiting in the draw huddle chatting away to a few people whom I haven't seen for a while. Even before I got to the draw box people were moaning and commenting that they were going home, peg 48 was my destination for the day.  Now I was blocked in at the car park so had no choice but to stay but since it  had cost me £25 that didn't worry me, however,when I tipped up at the lake there were 3 empty pegs all at the far end of the lake giving the guys up that end a lot more room to play with, I was not impressed.

I had decided to go a quid with DJ who had drawn 111 on Campbell so I thought that an easy days bagging F1’s would be in order so I went about setting up a 10X11 MW pear to fish pellet on a 16 T808 on a 0.10mm bottom and 0.16mm mainline. Pink Reflex elastic was selected as a shock absorber as I was mainly hoping for skimmers and smallish F1’s on this line at 13m.  The next rig out the bag was a 4X10 MW carp slim on 0.18 – 0.14 and a T175 size 2, this was for fishing meat at 5 and 16m as the depth was not too dissimilar and I could get away with the same rig on both lines. Elastic for this rig was geared up to yellow as the target fish was big F1’s, big skimmers and carp. Finally I set up a margin rig to fish down to my left, this consisted of Blue Reflex elastic, 0.20mm mainline, 0.16mm bottom, T175 size 3 and a 0.2g MB WAC ‘O’.

I was ready with plenty of time and at the all-in I shipped out ¼ of a pot of hemp and meat onto both my 5 and 16m lines before shipping out to 13 m with my pear rig baited with a 4mm expander, in the tosspot I had 2mm, 4mm softened pellet and some groundbait slop. First drop I had a roach hit it on the drop and drop off itself but then 5 minutes later I was playing carp number 1 and at 4lb it was worth at least 3 F1’s, that was the end of that line though as I managed a couple of very small skimmers but after 30 minutes I had to have a look on my 16m meat line.  I had a couple of quick F1’s that were in the 1.5-2lb bracket so again bigger than most of the fish that the guys seemed to be bagging on the tip.

This was when my first mistake happened as the guy to my left had come down the edge already and was catching a few small f1’s, as soon as he hooked a proper carp at about an hour and a quarter I was feeding my edge line at 13m down the edge to my left, I think that I fed too much as it was a half a pot of hemp, 4mm pellet and meat.  Anyway I tried the 13m line again, this time feeding with a catty and managed an f1 and a couple of small skimmers so it was long for an f1 then down the edge for a quick look.

To be honest this is where my story gets stale, I managed 2 small tench and a couple of f1’s from the edge all day, the 13m pellet line got discarded as the 16mm meat line was producing the odd run of better f1’s and carp. I found that big potting with a bit of hemp and about 30-50 bits of meat and then resting the line allowed me another quick run of fish when I looked back on it.  With and hour and a bit to go my 5m line produced a run of big skimmers and a couple of carp but it would never be enough to threaten the guys on the far bank and with the island chucks.

I managed to have a nice days fishing and ended up with 50lb 14oz enough to beat 1 on the lake I believe, the guy to my right called Dave, to my left he had 58lb on 46 it was about the same then the rest of the lake there were two eighty’s, a ninety and the lake was won with 109lb from peg 50, when no one was sat in 51!!!! He still did well but it is frustrating when people draw but don’t fish as he had more water to drag fish from and caught on all methods steady all day.

DJ had 30 odd pounds from Campbell so I took a quid off him and the match was won by Kev Dicks with 146lb from 86 on Cary, well done mate.

Two more tickets, I just hope that I at least draw a chance.

30/03/2014 Todber

I was invited to take part in the Todber Series that was being run by Mark Poppleton as my mate Tony had other commitments that would see him unable to attend this match, I didn’t need too much in persuasion as I have some big matches coming up and I thought that a few hours bagging here would set me up well.

I even popped down on the Friday before for a cheeky practice that saw me catching on paste down the track and getting a few fish out from the margins in peg 17, so I was well impressed when I drew peg 17 on the day.

I decided to fish pellet across, and I also set up a method rod in case the wind picked up, I set up a corn rig and a paste rig for down the track at 2+2 and finally I set up a paste rig and a margin rig again both for the same swims as there was the same depth next to a tree to my left and also some reeds 10m to my right.

I was ready for the all in and straight away fed half a pot of hemp, pellet and corn down the track before shipping across the far side with a 6X11 MW pear on 0.14mm mainline to a 0.1omm bottom, the hook was a T808 in an 18 and I started with a 4mm expender feeding micros and groundbait through the pole mounted pot. It did not take long and after a roach I soon had a carp of about 3lb stretching the pink reflex elastic to the max, but I persevered on the same rig as it was not feeling too light for the fish that I was catching, I managed a few F1’s with the odd carp mixed in but I was hardly setting the world on fire, so with the sun out and a few carp cruising I set up a shallow rig consisting of a MW pea on 0.18-0.14 and an 18 PR36 hook with a bait band. I quickly bagged a bigger carp, but then spent too long trying to get the next, I had a look down the track and didn’t get a touch.

By this time I was quite perplexed and started to rotate the shallow and the paste line, I even started feeding the edge line to my right too early with groundbait and naffed that up. I foul hooked one carp on paste, didn’t get a bite down either edge and when I went back onto my deck across rig that I had changed to fish hard pellet I managed around 15lb of fish in the last half hour on it.

I was quite frustrated at the end although I had not really taken the day seriously, I spent too long trying to get paste working and the shallow fishing was not the way ahead either, maybe in a couple of weeks. I had managed to weigh 48lb for second from last in section, with Mark Brennan on my left taking 80lb and showing me the way and to his left Frank managed 150lb plus for a convincing match win.

Just one thing left…. How do I explain this to Tony??