Jefferies Cup 2013

It was off to march for the annual Jefferies Cup competition, I was picked up by Chri Glover at 0330 and off we trundled, we made good time and even with a quick stop off to refuel we arrived in plenty of time. Plenty of banter was had at the draw venue and it was soon to business, Jon Hatch was B team captain for the day and he returned to Bri, Daz and myself peg 2, I got A section as I was car sharing with gloves so off we went.
Parking was simple, and we soon found our pegs, Gloves was on 12, which was in a far better area but we went a quid any way. It was made worst when the REF angler to my left who had helped to peg it in the morning and had been told that we were in the worst end of the section.

 On the whole the peg looked alright, but I had a small problem as I had only packed rigs for a proper river, the swim was 4 ft down the middle and my lightest rig was 0.75g, I set this and a 1.5g up in case it towed a bit, both Dino Premiers on 0.12mm main line and a 0.08mm bottom to a size 20 hook. I decided to fish ground bait down the middle so I mixed 3Kg of bait and then looked down the peg for a worm line next to the cabbages on the inside. This rig was 0.18-0.14  and a size 14 hook, under a 0.7g slim float. Finally I plumbed up across and tight to the boat, it was a little shallow so I pulled back half a section and put on a bread line with the same line and hooks as the ground bait line, but a smaller 0.6g float.
At the all in (that was 15 minutes earlier than I was expecting) I fed 3 balls of ground bait with squatt, pinkie and hemp in at 10M, then I potted a small ball of licky across with half a pot of hemp.  I went straight on to the ground bait line and started to catch straight away nothing massive but it was a fish a put in, I found that by chopping and changing hook baits as well as the depth I was able to string a few better fish together from time to time. About an hour in I fed the worm line with 4 lobs finely chopped through a bait dropper, and 10 minutes later I was pulling out 4 perch to 6 oz for nearly a pound in short order.
At about half one what flow there had been disappeared and I was left with rigs too heavy to really catch but by chopping and changing around all three swims and hook baits and depths I was able to keep fish going in the net. The afternoon was miserable with trashed rigs, rain and swans causing havoc so when the all out was called I was quite happy to finish.
To cut a long story short I had 6lb 15 1/2oz for 9th in section, I got beaten on both sides (by 1 1/2oz to my left) but I managed to get a quid off Gloves. Army A managed 4th but we were well down the running. Always next year.

Shearwater tackle test

I have been waiting to try out my new Browning Black Viper feeder rods for a few weeks and finally the opportunity arose, Tony and myself got to the lake at around 8 o’clock and decided to fish off the woodland bank about halfway along where I judged the depth should be around 10 feet deep.

My tackle for the day was simple, a 14ft Black Viper feeder and Black magic reel for fishing in the middle of the lake at 60+ turns and an 11ft Black Viper rod with an Ultimatch attached.

My groundbait was a 50:50 method mix and micro pellet that I prepared the night before and as soon as the platform was in the margins I was fishing.

I started the session on a 45g Guru elasticated method feeder with a 10cm hooklength made of 0.20 Cenex line to a size 14 Guru QM1. My hookbaits were banded pellet, white Boilies and pepparami all mounted on a baitband, the pepparami and Boilies have the band pulled inside the bait and the pellets were banded as normal around the pellet.

The day started quite slow and after about 30 minutes of casting every couple of minutes to the clip at 60 turns I decided to try dead maggots as hook bait. This resulted in a small skimmer, so as I was not blanking I decided to bin off the maggot as bream were not my target (Tony had other ideas).

I changed to a skinned piece of pepparami and this was the changing point of my session as I pulled into a carp and a couple of better skimmers in the 2-3lb class over the next hour or so. Then lifting into another bite I just hit solid resistance that I could tell instantly was a good fish, I got it halfway back before it decided that it would run past my line clip and then take another 15 minutes to land.

The Black viper performed admirably and the only time that My casting suffered was as a direct result of my not paying attention whilst casting.

Over the course of the day I extended out to 65 turns and regularly hit the clip well above the water so I think that with a bit more practice and getting used to the kit it wont be long until I am fishing at 80+ turns.

I finished the day on 10 Carp and 9 bream, Tony had 14 Bream and 3 Carp I think and so therefore won the Bream match. He was fishing a lot closer, at 40 turns and only managed to mug his carp out from down the edge on the method close to the end. All in all a very enjoyable day, and one to be repeated very soon.

Start of the great carp hunt.

The last couple of weeks have seen me mainly sorting carp gear out so that I could fish a winter ticket on a gravel pit just north of Swindon.  I have done a couple of trips to Todber Manor with mixed results.

Dusk over little Haynes

Little Haynes

A Wadmill Double

Wadmill in the rain

Wadmill again

 But the day was finally upon us that would see me in pursuit of Giant Carp again.  However, my first visit saw me failing to even see a carp, forget a lighter so I packed up, bought one and set up again and finally the weather tried its best to soak me whilst I was sleeping as the wind swung into my bivvy as I slept.

The point 

Car Park swim

The following day it was back to Todber again, this time on the paddock lake.  It has a good head of carp to just over 30lb and cats to 80lb so expectations were high as my brother and I had the whole lake booked. ( There were meant to be 6 of us).

We set up in pegs 2 and 3, I put John into 3 (the best peg on the lake) and proceeded to cast towards his swim with a pva bag . This rod gave me the only 2 bites that we had for the 24 hours and they resulted in two nice looking mid doubles.

A Paddock Double

The Saturday night saw wind and rain of biblical proportions and I thought that I was going to end in Kansas at any time. It was a good giggle and a nice reminder of how social fishing can be.

Paddock Peg 2

Back in the swing at Bishops Cannings

Today saw me pointing the van North East of Devizes to find the Crown Inn in Bishops Canning for the draw of first AAF Gp2 match of the year and my first match after my stint away. It is good to see a thriving match circuit in the army, we had 43 anglers on the bank today, some of which had travelled up from Exeter to fish. I was saying hello with a few old faces and putting the landlady to rights about otters until the booking in was done and we were left to wait for the draw. Whilst waiting to pull my peg when the phone rang and I had to half sort out my van insurance, ‘I won’t keep you for a moment’ was the quote and she was right as it was 30 minutes, I need to apologise as I was trying to sort out my life as people were trying to run a draw but the long and short of it was that I was on peg A13? And I would need a call back later about the insurance. I around 400m down from the Bridge at the Bridge inn, and it looked a bit like this:

As you can see by all the features I fancied it for a few fish so set a target weight of 3Kg, my plan was 4 lines, a worm rig next to the boat in the track, a worm rig across under the small bush to the right, bread at 5m and squatt across at 10m in 2 1/2ft of water.

The plan was simple and I was ready with time to spare, so I had a chat with a couple of guys up the bank before getting settled for the 1100 start. At the all in I fed a small ball of bread at 5m, 4 balls of 50:50 Canal and Etang (both Browning) with 1/4 of a pot of hemp and a good helping of squatt on the long line. I also potted in 10 worms and 20 casters on both worm lines before shipping out an 5mm punch onto the short line, it took less than 3 seconds before roach no.1 was on its way to hand, and this continued for 20 fish in the first 27 minutes. It was at this point that the fear of someone starting one of the boats to my right got too great and I had to have a look before the fish went, in 10 minutes I added 5 perch from 3 to 12oz and it was a great boost to my net. They quickly disappeared so it was back to the bread line where the fish had suddenly turned transparent, I fed some more bread and that did not have the desired effect so it was out onto the long line to try and get some squatt fish put together.

Well the squatt fish were there in numbers and the rest of the match passed quite quickly with me taking a run of squatt fish and then trying to snag a bonus off either of my worm lines (and another 10 minutes on the phone about insurance!!). The rain that had been with us at the start eased and dissipated letting the sun through and there ended the sport. I ended up feeding soft balls of groundbait and fishing straight over the top for tiny roach with the odd better fish thrown in but in no real pattern. I did snap up on a decent fish and also bumped off a couple of slightly better fish ion the squatt line but as I was trying to get back into the swing of things and fishing as an individual I was not to bothered.

I also spent far too long trying to bag another perch from either of my lines but again I was fishing as an individual so nothing ventured nothing gained. I didn’t gain anything but had fun trying anyway.

The all out was called and I managed to follow the scales down from around peg 4, one thing was obvious and that was that there were bigger fish at the top end of the stretch with loads of 2 Kilo weights coming out for far fewer fish. Getting down to my end I had Bri Shuttler pegged to my left and he had managed 2.130, I scrapped 2.930 and Dave Griffiths to my right had 1.740Kg. My weight was enough to scrape 2^nd in section beaten by a 3.050 from peg 2, it is now clear just how important those 4 lost fish were!!

It was good to get on the bank again and I hope that I can continue my run into the second match on the Bristol Avon at Chippenham.

Be prepared Pt 2, Bait

In this part I am going to look at the preparation and care of baits that I use on a regular basis, I am going to look at each type of bait in turn starting with live baits.

Now by live baits I am not talking about small fish but thing like worms, maggots and casters, I am going to start with worms as these are pretty easy to look after.

Dendrobenas:  These usually come supplied in a hessian sack when you buy a 1/2KG or more and this is the perfect container top store the worms in as it allows them to breathe naturally and also with a little bit of thought it is possible to keep them alive in the medium provided for up to a month.  The best tip I have been given is to feed them cold mashed potato as it keeps them big and juicy for longer. For storage a cold concrete floor out of direct sunlight i.e. a garage floor should be fine, just don’t let them freeze in the winter!

Lobworms: These are a slightly trickier animal to deal with in that I tend to collect them upto 2 nights before I fish with them, I will then store them in soil and cut grass until the match making sure to keep them cool but not cold. Check them regularly for dead or broken worms and that way you should be able to extend their life for a couple of days. As I say though I very rarely try to keep them for longer than 48hrs as I have been unable to extend their life in a bait tub for any real length of time, this winter I will be trying a worn sack though. I will keep you updated.

Maggots and Pinkies: These are so similar that I am going to cover them in the same paragraph, put them in a bait tub with about an inch to the top and stick them in a fridge, like this they should be good for about a week.  This can be used to your advantage as well especially when fishing for small fish (especially Bleak) as the skin of the maggot will get tougher and therefore they should stay on the hook for longer, the maggots also build up a resistance to the cold so they should be livelier for longer in cold water.  I also like to de-grease my maggots when I am fishing on running water as it helps them to sink faster, the way that I do this is by cleaning all the sawdust/ maize from the maggots, and then I riddle off all the dead, casters and large rubbish. Once this is done I will add a really good quantity of turmeric to the maggots, this not only removes the grease from the maggots making them sink quicker but also gives white maggots a subtle bronze colour that big Roach love.  I will leave this in the fridge overnight before the match, and then as I am sorting my bait I will riddle off all the excess turmeric (this prevents you from turning very orange).

Dead Maggots: There is only one way that I use to numbers of maggots and that is to riddle them clean, put them into a plastic bag, add a flavour if I am going to then I put them into the freezer for 24-48 hrs. This produces much better dead’s than boiling them as they keep their shape and colour for longer. If however I only need 1 or 2 at a time then I will rub them against my thigh whilst fishing, and that provides me with hook baits when I want a change.

Squatts:  These are the larvae of the common house fly and as such they are considerably smaller than normal maggots and pinkies, sometimes they come from the shop and they are positively tiny, as long as you get your bait a couple of days in advance I have a tip that can give you some of the biggest squats on the bank, feeding them.  This was shown to me on my first national and it has never left me (thanks Gaz the bait man), it is simple but I have tweaked it slightly to try and get the best results with minimal fuss.  I will usually have a pint of squatt for a normal canal match, the first thing that I do is sieve off all the brick dust that they will be stored in, this is to be saved for later. The next step is to riddle them into a shallow tray, whilst they are going through the riddle I will prepare their banquet. Bread and milk is all that you need I tend to soak the bread in the milk until it is properly sodden all the way through and tries to fall apart as you lift it, a good tip here is to use milk at room temp as too cold and it will affect the squats appetite.  Once the squatt are riddled and the bread soaked, I place the bread into the squats and leave them to it, I will keep a bit of an eye on them as they can climb out of the tray of they are wet so beware. I will leave them for as long as possible as the more they eat the bigger they get, about 3 slices of bread should be enough for a pint of squatt but experiment and if they will eat more then why not give it to them, I have tried 6 slices before on a good batch and some of them ended up the size of pinkies! Once they have eaten all the bread or you have run out of time, chuck them back through the riddle and then put them back into the brick dust and into the fridge. Storage wise, keep them in the brick dust and dampen it slightly to prevent them from shrivelling up too much, the colder the better (but not freezing) as they will go into suspended animation and not get any smaller.

Casters: I always use shop bought caster, but not every shop knows how to turn their own or how to look after them, I use 2 shops in my local area, Premier Angling in Chippenham and Reids Tackle at Witherington Farm.  I will think nothing of going on a 2hr round trip if it will get me the best quality bait for a competition.  Things to avoid are small dark casters as these will probably all float and if they are supplied in a vacuum packed clear bag as this causes bag burn. You need a good mix of colours light to dark and the gold standard is casters that are given to you wrapped in a paper bag inside a sealed plastic bag as these will not suffer from Bag Burn. If you are concentrating on carp then it is not as important, but confidence in your bait means that you will have more confidence on the bank and this can only help you catch more fish.

That’s it for live baits, there are probably more but I am struggling to remember them, I am now going to move onto particles starting with my favourite.

Hemp: I will cook up bulk lots of hemp from time to time, usually doing 6-8 pints at a time, I do it the normal way, big pan soak for 24hrs and then simmer until the kernels start to split. Simple. There are a couple of things that you can do to increase the potency of your hemp for carp fishing and it involves me putting my Speci Hunter hat on, Chilli and salt are both added to my carp batches as I have more confidence in it pulling the fish from further away.  If I am carp fishing you will usually find hemp somewhere in my kit as just through the noise of one fish feeding on it make one hell of a racket under water and will draw fish in from quite a distance. Try that with soft pellet!  For roach I will freeze the hemp into 1 pint bags and take a couple every time I go fishing, hook baits are a different kettle of fish though, before I bag up the batches I will sort through and select some grains that are only just starting to split, These are separated into another tub and I will pierce the flat end of the grain to aid hooking. Hooked in this way a grain of hemp can stay on the hook for upto 10 fish, something that you cannot do when hooking then the traditional way through the split.

Tares: I try to find shop ready tares wherever possible, the best come in a small green bag and I forget their name but they are perfect.

Sweetcorn: This is the easiest bait that I use, open the tin, pour into bait tub and then cover with water, if I fancy giving it a kick then I will add a flavour or some salt to it in the bait tub.

Meat: For feed I use Morrison’s own brand and a MAP meat cutter in 6,8 and 10mm depending on the venue and size of carp that I am targeting, I will rarely do anything to the loose feed meat apart from store it in the fridge at home and on the bank I will cover it in plenty of water, on hot days it sometimes pays to only put a small amount on your tray at a time and top it up throughout the day as it can go off in the sun.  Meat for bomb hookbaits is a different prospect, I will take a tin, thickly slice it and then use a multitude of different sized punches to get different sized pellets of meat. I then split them down into small re-sealable bags and then flavour the meat in different ways. The fun part of this is finding out the best flavours so I am not going to spoil that for you.

Pellets, both expander and soft can be prepped on the bank, the only time I really prep my pellet the night before is if I want mushy feed pellet, I will take ¼- ½ a pint of 4mm pellet and cover item with an extra half an inch of water sat on top of them, put it in the fridge overnight and in the morning you will have sloppy pellet, perfect for hard days in the winter.

Groundbait for roach and small fish is best mixed on the bank, if however, you are after bream or other big fish then the longer you can let the bait rest the better as it creates an inert bed of feed for them to graze over. I will mix my bream groundbait the night before and it usually consists of 50/50 Browning Etang and Betaine Mussel mix, although the colder it gets the less fishmeal I put in and I will swap the Betaine mussel mix for No1 or Canal. Top tips when using ground bait is always use a drill!  I have found nothing better when mixing 4-5kg of groundbait and leam together, make sure that it has enough guts to do the job and that the whisk will get into the corners of the bucket that you use. If you do not have a drill then be prepared to riddle it a couple of times to get it to do the job you want.

So that’s it, I am going to save some bits for another day, but if you have any questions then please by all means drop me a line and I will try to answer it. Until the next time, tight lines.

Being Prepared pt1

So I am sat here waiting for time to speed up and for me to be able to get home and I am thinking about all the things that I need to do when I get home, now some I am not going to share with you, but I am going to cover the sort of preparation that I go into before a match.

I am going to start with some of the general stuff and let’s look at hardware, namely poles, rods and reels and what I do to maintain them at peak performance.

Poles:

I am not renowned for looking after my kit but if there is one thing that I spend a bit of time on every so often it is my pole, every month or so I will take it apart and clean the gunk off all the sections with soap and hot water. Once this is done I will flush the inside out of each section again to try and prevent any bits of grit and gunk from sticking between the sections and possible damaging the carbon.  This also goes for all the top kits and at least once a year I will pull out all my elastics and give the inside of the top kits a clean through with hot soapy water.  Once the sections are clean I will then polish all of the sections to help them slide trough my hands, especially important if you are trying to dag over 100 small roach from a far bank line. I the past I have lost small fish through my pole sticking in my hands or my elastic not retracting back into my pole but this alleviates a lot of these problems.

Another important part of the pole is the elastic, and I have heard many times (usually by people who have something to gain by selling loads of elastic) that it needs to be changed every few weeks or couple of months. This I believe is rubbish, yes if the elastic is damaged or perished then it needs changing but not before.  I check my elastics, solids and hollows by running the most used part (the last 3 feet at the connector end) through my lips to feel for damage, if it is a little rough I will not worry too much unless it is a very important match, if it feels jagged then I will either cut off the damaged bit and use the spare on the winder bung or swap it completely.

The way that I elasticate the pole also helps with fish losses, 90% of my elastics are through a long top 2, use No.2 for small canal roach as it helps stop the fish from splashing and spooking their brethren when you are trying to string a few together. My next is No. 3 again through a long top 2, this when I need a little more power than the no.2 but is still soft enough so you rarely bump fish off on small hooks. I have landed carp to 8lb on no.3 elastic and a 0.07mm hooklength!!  Next step is No.5, this is my ‘go to’ elastic on rivers for rigs upto 2g and bagging bread rigs on canals. I also like it for skimmers on canals, again to glide the fish from in the swim and to try and make it last 1 or 2 more fish. After I go over 2g then I will up the elastic to No.6 to try and strike through the float cleaner or a decent hollow for Flat floating. I also have a couple of top kits with No.5 through a pull bung of some description, for the days that I am using 0.07mm bottoms on commercials for roach and Skimmers.

The next level is hollow elastics and theses are mostly from the Browning Reflex range, I use the pink for commercial silvers and bonus canal fish on caster, Yellow for most of my carp work especially shallow as it allows the fish again to exit the swim with the minimum amount of fuss and by using a puller you can land anything on it as long as your terminal gear is up to it. The blue is used for carp of 8lb+ for general fishing, the green for paste and bagging down the edge. Finally I have bought a new margin pole so that I may be able to extract some very big fish from the margins on Orange Reflex and I am also going to experiment with a solid 16 Cenex elastic as well (watch this space).  My final couple of top kits have yellow and blue Reflex through a tip section, These are for flat float and perch fishing as they are forgiving but powerful enough to set big hooks into a fishes mouth when needed, my favourite is the yellow as that is what I used last winter when I had my 40lb Kennet and Avon bag, That included 3 massive perch that were dealt with no problems.

That concludes my pole, let’s look at rods, ‘what do you need to do to a rod’ I hear you cry, well I like to keep my trotting and pellet waggler rods well-polished on the blanks as this allows the line to flow through the rings far easier. So what, well how often does your waggler trundle towards the chub bush in your swim only for it to drag off line as the line runs off some water on the tip?  It doesn’t happen to me now but it used to years ago, the other reason for keeping the moisture off you rod is that it will let you cast lighter floats further, quite handy on the pellet wag or if trying to mug shallow carp next to islands!!  This believe it not also works for feeder rods but the difference is negligible at distances less than 60 yards. Another thing to look at that is often overlooked on rods are the rings, and it is worth checking all the rings on a rod from time to time for damage and also to give them a clean as a build-up of gunk or a crack on a ring could damage your reel line and lose you a match!

Moving onto reels, these are expensive and technical bits of kit that are full of working parts, I service mine once a year by opening them up and lubricating it in the right places with the correct grease or oil.  If you are not confident doing this then there are company’s out there who will do it for a cost or the manufacturers after sales department. I will again change my line when it needs it, if it has been abused for prolonged periods of time or if it looks/feels damaged. I again try to keep my choices of reel lines to 4 main types: Cenex slow sinking in 0.14 and 0.18 for float work, Cenex feeder in 0.16-0.22 for the tip, Daiwa sensor in 4lb for the pellet wag, 8lb for summer carp bagging on the tip and finally braid for long range fishing on the tip, I have used several and am still to find one that I am truly happy with, currently I am using Drennan feeder braid.

Other things to check are keepnets before any match take them out of the shed and look for small holes that could let fish out or be made into bigger holes by the fish!  Barrows, check the tyre pressures and give any screws a quick splash of WD40 or similar from time to time (not many things are worse than cold hands and a cold stuck hand wheel).  Pole rollers need checking from time to time for signs of damage and to make sure that they rotate efficiently, I am not bothered if they squeak as that tends to put off anglers around you, especially when you start bagging and all they notice is squeak, squeak of the roller.

That’s about it for hardware, I could start going on about cleaning of clothing and luggage etc but that would be very hypocritical of me.

In the next part I am going to look at bait until then 'Tight Lines'.

Browning 2014 Catalogue

The new Browning Catalogue can be found here:
http://www.browning-fishing.com/Latest_News/Entries/2013/9/17_Catalogue_2014.html