Royal Signals Carp Angling Champs 2023

Time for something a bit different, I am going to drop in a few of my carp/speci sessions on here aswell so that you can get an idea of the mindset and tactics involved on these.

Cromwell lake near Newark was the venue, 18 acres of crystal clear water with depths going down to over 20ft, this can be a challenging venue.  The weather forecast was pretty good so that could not really be used as an excuse.

I had booked on for the night before as it meant I didn’t have to drive up at stupid o’clock in the morning, and settled in peg 13, I chucked out a couple of pva bags pushed a 45m baiting pole under a bush along the margin.  I saw a good 30 in the bay to my left but it wasn’t interested in eating and the birds managed to spook it off aswell.

On the first official day I was packed down nice and early and managed a walk around the lake, having fished it before my top choices were pegs 18, 14 and 2 as they covered some shallow water in the middle of the lake and I have always seen fish there when I have fished the lake in the past.  I had seen fish show all over the lake so the only swim I didn’t really want was peg 9.

I came out in the middle on the draw, and fortunately peg 2 was still in there, I had also been eyeing up peg 7 but fortunately went for 2 as I had fished it before.

On starting I cast a bare lead out onto the shallow water only to find that there were very few clear spots and all of the bottom seemed to be covered in silt weed, even so I started on PVA bags, but after the first recast it became obvious that these were wrong as I could not feel a nice drop, so after a few hours my plan changed completely.

I found an area were the silkweed seemed shorter and decided to put some long ronnies into it with a scattering of  bait over the top, I was feeding crushed DNA Baits S& boilie, corn and pellet using a mini skyliner spod sop that the disturbance was an absolute minimum.

I cast them out at 8pm and settled in for the night.  At about half 4 I woke up for some reason and watched the water over my spot, as I did so a fish showed, so all was good in the world. Now in my normal fishing I am usually up and watching the lake for signs before first light so that I can move onto the fish, but in these matches when you are looking for 1 or 2 bites I generally lay in bed and do it as I can only fish the water in front of me.  Anyway, I dozed off and was soon rudely awoken by my left hand rods bobbin hitting the floor,  I ran out of my bivvy in my socks and soon thought that I should have put my trainers on as the gravel was brutal…..

I was however attached to the fish, but it wasn’t doing a lot and I thought it was a tench so I walked the rod back to the bivvy, slipped my trainers on and played, well wound the fish in, as it didn’t do a lot, and I got a mighty shock when a slab of a mirror wallowed on the surface in front of me as I put the net around it.

 

First job, get 3 mini spods back out in the area to a) top up and b) spook the fish away and allow me to get the rod back out there, that went well rod reset and then Marcus and I weighed and took photos of the fish.

I tipped the scales at 30lb 5oz and was big enough to take me into the lead, my plan was sorted for the next morning and the day was spent flinging zigs out at a variety of depths and ranges hoping to mug a cruising fish, it didn’t happen.

 We all wound in for a couple of hours in the afternoon of day 2 for a BBQ and catch up, most people put some bait in before going and this seemed to kill the fishing off as only a few more fish were hooked.

In total 5 fish were landed and mine was the largest so I won the R.Sigs Carp Angling Championships for the first time with Jim as a runner up, (So the same top 2 as last year)

 

Lots of fish were hooked and lost in the weed but that is carp fishing I am afraid.

Thanks to Nick for doing most of the heavy lifting before the event and also for the team at Cromwell for looking after us for the duration of the event.

What would I do different:

I think I fed too much before going on the BBQ and this scuppered my chances on the second morning by having too much bait in the swim. I feel it was the best swim choice with what was available to me, maybe if I had moved to my left boundary, but the guys in Rosies retreat were sending their baitboat all over the place so I never really knew where they had been putting bait or rigs before I got in the swim.

Rigs used:

Rod: ESP Onyx 3.25lb

Reel: Shimaono Ultegra 14000 XTB

Mainline: 15lb ESP Syncro XT

Lead: 4oz pear

Rig: 10 inches of ESP semi stiff tungsten loaded and a Ronnie rig with a size 6 barbless Krank.

Hookbait: 12mm Pink S7 Pop Up

 

 

 

Royal Signals Championship 23 Todber Manor

Firstly, sorry for not keeping this up to date, but I am going to try and get back on the blog as I can use it for other things aswell.  Anyway back to the champs, I was a little on the back foot as I had been coaching on the run up to this, so whilst everyone else was getting their eye in I was trying not to lose mine. Day 1 Hillview peg 40, not the best peg but I had tons of room and the pegging was fair so it was a get my head down job and catch what I could.

 

I started with maggot in the margin and fished that all day, I swapped between shallow and no shot rigs as I had carp crawling up the bank all day, I was a little rusty however and a few destroyed rigs- (should have used a no float rig!!), and not keeping up with the clicker cost me dearly in the end.  I weighed in 653lb 13oz but had gone over in 3 nets so had lost out on at least 50lb, DJ smashed the lake on the day with 733lb but I feel that may have been possible from that peg if I had just done some small things better, but Hey Ho, onto day 2.

 

Day 2 Homeground, I was on peg 85 for this match, not what I wanted but I had the wind and rain in my face all day so that may have been a benefit by pushing the fish into the margin.  Plan was the same as day 1, maggots in the margin but I also added a meat line on a top kit as a resting line.  It was another good day and I barely noticed how crappy the weather was because I was catching so well throughout the day, I had a small cut out to my right and at times I was able to mug the individual fish as they were slurping the maggots off the reeds.  When they backed off for a few minutes I was able to drop on my meat line and tick over with a slightly bigger stamp of fish, although the bites were slightly slower.

I knew it had been a good day and I weighed in 508lb 9oz, I was pleasantly surprised when this was enough for a section win and with DJ having a  mid 400lb I knew it would be close for second place in the champs.

 

History will show that Greg was totally dominant with a 750lb on day 1 and 1081lb on day 2 he romped to winning the Corps Champs with a perfect score and total weight of 1830lb!!!, DJ piped me with 3 points and 1178lb to my 3 points and 1162lb.  Those nets I went over on Day 1 cost me dearly.

 

Thankyou to Greg for running the event and to all that fished, we just need to find more anglers now that want to get involved.

 

What would I do different:

Practice, I firmly believe that fishing the match before the camps would have stopped me from going over on my nets day 1 and this would have been the difference between 3^rd and 2^nd.

 

Rigs used:

Pole meat:
Elastic: Preston 17H
Line: 0.19mm Powerline to 0.17mm Powerline
Hook: 14 Kaizen
Float: 0.3g RWC Avenger

 

Pole shallow maggot:
Elastic: Preston 17H
Line: 0.19mm Powerline to 0.17mm Powerline
Hook: 14 Kaizen
Float: 0.4g Drennan inline dibber

 

Pole No float:
Elastic: Preston 17H
Line: 0.19mm Powerline to 0.17mm Powerline
Hook: 14 Kaizen
Float: none