Sunday 24 March 2013

24 March 2013, Bramley (Godalming AS)

Three pairs of socks. Two long sleeved thermal vests. Two pairs of thermal long johns. One T-shirt. One pair of heavy weight walking trousers. One fleece top. Two fleece jackets. A bib and brace. A Gore-Tex jacket. A baseball cap and a woolly hat. Welcome to spring 2013 in the south of England!!!

Bramley Park Lake

After (sensibly) giving last weekend a miss due to the freezing winds and heavy rains I joined eleven other hardy souls (a mixture of club stalwarts and southern legends Ian Dixon, Dave Steer and Dave Johnson) for a Godalming AS club match at Bramley Park Lake.

Aerial photo of the lake from Google Earth

Bramley is one of Godalming Angling Society’s stillwaters and is a three acre venue near Guildford. The main species are skimmers, tench and roach – though there are a few twenty pound plus grass carp that occasionally win matches with a single bite!

Sir Ken Cardwell

This venue has over the years been badly effected by cormorants – however sterling work by the club and Bramley head bailiff Ken Cardwell (including the creation of five mini islands that act as fish refuges and regular restocking), have lead to decent match catches.

The view from peg 8



I adopted my usual drawing posture (right foot off the ground, left hand into the bag of dreams) and out popped peg 8 – in an area that has apparently fishing well, a suggestion reinforced by the fact that pegs 7, 9, 10 and 11 had also been included despite the venue boasting 32 swims.

Before the start I set-up a tip rod and 2 pole rigs – though I won’t go into details of these pole rigs as I never actually tried the pole during the match! The tip rod was my usual 10’ Preston Innovations Carbonactive Mini Carp, matched with a Daiwa TD-R 3012D loaded with 8lb Daiwa Sensor. It was set-up to fish a running rig so on went a Preston feedabead, and my now trusty 45cm of 0.15 Guru N-Gauge with a size 18 QM1 (in a loop) was slipped inside a loop made from a figure of 8 knot in my main line – one of the advantages of using 8lb main line is that you don’t need anything to stop a feedabead slipping down onto the hooklength, helping to keep the rig as simple as possible!

Drennan feeders used today

Before the ‘all in’ I removed my hooklength and attached a large green Drennan groundbait feeder in anticipation of launching 10 lots of dead maggots, 4mm pellets and Sonubait’s F1 Black in my swim at 35m.

Having done so I swapped to a micro Drennan stainless cage feeder, reattached the hooklength and slipped two dead read maggots onto the hook before casting out with much anticipation! Nothing first cast (which I left in place for 12 minutes), but 5 minutes into cast number two the tip launched itself into a nice curve and a pound and a half skimmer was soon in the net.

Unfortunately this was something of a false dawn and it took until the end of the second hour for my next bite – though this time it was a better specimen of about 3lb. By this point I was well behind the leaders (who had 4 or 5 fish each), but I knew I wasn’t out of it if I could put a run of fish together.

A Ringers 8mm pop-up

The banjo feeder rig

Again this turned-out to be wishful thinking as despite persisting with the cage feeder and trying a fluro pop-up on the straight lead and the banjo feeder with micro pellets and a 6mm on the hook, I was only able to land one more skimmer and a small roach (both on the cage feeder) to give me a total of 5-14-0.

Looking left from peg 8

This left me sixth or seventh (from 12) and well behind the leaders who all managed 7 or 8 skimmers each.

The top 3:
  1. Colin Underwood, 20-14-0
  2. Perry Gray, 19-4-0
  3. Chris Kampa, 18-14-0
Well done to all of those that braved the arctic conditions, but the question on everyone’s lips is: when is spring 2013 finally going to arrive?


Why not follow me on Twitter? @philip_r_morris

Saturday 9 March 2013

09 March 2013, Middle Lake (Willow Park)

Following last week’s success at Busbridge I was really looking forward to having the chance to make-up for blanking on my previous visit to Willow Park – especially as the temperature gauge in the car was showing a balmy 8 degrees Celsius at seven thirty in the morning!

Nice and mild for a change!

Even though three of my six fishing trips in 2013 to date have been to Willow Park I’m a relative newcomer to the venue, so when I pulled peg 25 on Middle Lake out of the bag of dreams it didn’t mean much to me – however when I realised I was the only person pegged on the road bank with three spare pegs either side and the other three banks had most of the pegs in I started to think I’d drawn rather badly!!! (This was reinforced by a tweet from venue regular Pemb Wrighting that simply read ‘oh dear’.)

Willow Park, Middle Lake




However, like most people I only get to go fishing once a week so I was determined to be positive and make the most of my day on the bank. A couple of texts from my mate Ian McClaren (known as The Bard on the Matchfishing-scene website) confirmed my thinking on how to approach the peg and I settled on an open-end feeder, a straight lead rod for fishing with a pellet cone and the pole at 14.5m.

The two different types of hooklength for the open-end feeder

In conjunction with the open-end feeder I’d be using two different hooklengths – 30cm of 0.17 Reflo Power into a size 16 Guru QM1 with a hair-rigged band for a 6mm pellet and 45cm of 0.15 Guru N-Gauge with a size 18 QM1 tied into a loop for fishing two dead read maggots.

Bits and bobs for the 'QM1 in a loop' arrangement

Since using the QM1 in a loop last week at Busbridge I’ve been thinking about ways to fine tune it and I’ve decided to make the loop that the hook runs in neater by making it nice and small using the little green plastic device shown above (it’s a Seymo loop tyer and I use the pair of pins with the smallest gap).

The two different feeders used today

On the whistle I clipped-on a large green Drennan groundbait feeder and ‘spodded’ ten loads of Sonubait’s F1 Dark groundbait, dead read maggots and soaked 4mm fishery pellets at about 30m slightly to the right. (This was a something of a gamble given the time of year, but as Del Boy Trotter would say ‘he who dares Rodney, he who dares’!!!)

In order to allow this line to settle I then picked-up the pellet cone rod and cast to about 35m slightly to the left in the hope of landing an early bonus – however no indications after 15 minutes saw me reaching for the open-end feeder rod again, this time with a mini Drennan stainless cage feeder and the 45cm QM1 in a loop hooklength attached. By this time it was 1025 and I hadn’t seen anybody catch anything yet - hence I was more than happy to see the tip fly ‘round first cast with a positive bite and a big fat F1 was in the net in double-quick time!

I was even happier to see my 10’ Preston Mini Carp rod nearly dragged into the lake within about 5 seconds of my feeder hitting the deck on cast number 2 and an even bigger and fatter F1 joined its friend in the net!!! I had a couple more casts with double dead read maggot without any indications, but a switch to the hair-rigged pellet band hooklength and a 6mm pellet gained an immediate response and I was onto 3 F1s for about 9lb at the end of the first hour.

Another view from peg 25

As bites were now very few and far between I decided to put some more bait into the main feeder line and re-spodded with 5 large feeders worth of bait. To give this line a chance to settle I had a quick go with the straight lead rod (no pellet cone this time) over an area at about 25m to the left that I’d been loose feeding with a few 6mm fishery pellets via a catapult. Unfortunately this didn’t yield any indications, but a switch back to the main feeder line did see two nice skimmers in the net – one on maggot, one on 6mm pellet.

This meant that at the end of the second hour I had 5 decent fish in the net for approximately 15lb and I felt as though I was doing well as I hadn’t seen anyone else catch as many – however the wheels started to come-off during the third hour as I didn’t have any indications whatsoever and Chris Love, Alex Clements and Rob Harvey all started bagging-up and easily overtook me!

The Mo Brown Slim'o

Despite not catching anything during the third hour I had started to feed my 14.5m pole line with soaked 2mm fishery pellets, and just as I was becoming rather despondent halfway through the fourth hour I hooked and landed two nice skimmers in a row on a 4mm expander pellet. (The rig for the pole included a 0.1g Mo Brown Slim’o on 0.13 Reflo Power into a hooklength of the same material in 0.10 with a size 20 Tubertini 808. Elastic was pink Hydro. Shotting was five number 8 stotz spread evenly 20-40cm from hook.)

During the fourth hour I also caught another big skimmer on the main feeder line to put me on 8 fish for a good twenty pounds – I knew I was miles behind Chris Love and Rob Harvey, but given my iffy draw I was pleased to be in contention with Alex Clements and Mark Burrows (amongst others) as the best of the rest.

The view towards the Small Lake

The start of the final hour saw 5 more large feeders worth of bait applied to the feeder line as a final gamble – though in the end this didn’t pay-off as no more fish were to fall to the feeder. Unfortunately it was the same on the pole, but I did (rather annoyingly) contrive to miss two proper bites that were presumably from decent skimmers.

That left me on 8 fish that went 23-14-0 – a decent result given my previous blank and a somewhat dodgy draw! Rob Harvey’s 3 F1s and 15 skimmers were enough to beat Chris Love’s 15 skimmers by a mere 5 ounces to take the victory, and Mark Burrows’ catch pushed me down to fourth by 10 ounces – small margins, eh?

Final result (based on weight only):
  1. Rob Harvey, 53-15-0
  2. Chris Love, 53-10-0
  3. Mark Burrows, 24-8-0
  4. Phil Morris (yours truly), 23-14-0
Final result (based on the continental pay-out system used at Willow Park):
  1. Rob Harvey, 53-15-0
  2. Dougie Graves, 19-6-0
  3. Chris Love, 53-10-0
  4. Ian Covey, 13-2-0
So all-in-all another enjoyable day at Willow Park – a cracking breakfast and some decent fishing given the time of year. All I have to do now is figure-out how to catch an additional 30lb to win outright – or failing that learn how to draw in the right section so I can finally take some money from Ian Covey!!!



Why not follow me on Twitter? @philip_r_morris

Sunday 3 March 2013

03 March 2013, Busbridge (Godalming AS)

Godalming Angling Society provide access to a number of stillwaters and stretches of the River Wey in and around the Milford/Godalming/Farncombe area of Surrey and one of the venues used several times a year for club matches is Busbridge.

Busbridge (a Godalming AS water)

This is best described as an estate lake, but is similar in many ways to the Big Lake at Furnace Lakes – it is a fairly long/thin lake with a dam wall at one end and platforms on both of the long sides with anglers on one bank facing those on the other. Busbridge contains specimen carp and pike but the match angler’s quarry is typically skimmers/bream in the 12 ounce to 4 pound bracket.

Looking across the lake from peg 31



Today’s draw was held in the Weatherspoon’s on Godalming High Street and I have to say I was impressed with the breakfast – a large breakfast, a bacon roll and two hot drinks for less than £7.50! After finishing my bacon and hash browns I slipped my hand into the bag of dreams and (some of you may not be surprised to hear that) I found one of the end peg fliers (number 31 to be precise) stuck to my trusty right hand!!! This peg is towards the far end of the lake away from the dam wall and as is typical of this kind of lake as it is much shallower that the dam wall end – probably six feet versus 12 or 15. Today it also had the massive advantage of not being double banked as the last angler on the far side was pegged opposite peg 33. (If only I could draw like this every week!!!)

A choice of open-end feeders

Given the target today was bream I decided to focus on the feeder and left my pole and waggler rods in the bag. I set-up two tip rods at the start – one for fishing with a traditional open-end feeder, the other for a 24g Guru method feeder with a 10cm hooklength of 0.19 Reflo Power into a size 16 QM1 for use with a 6mm hard pellet in a hair-rigged pellet band.

The QM1 in a loop hooklength

I selected two hooklengths to complete the open-end feeder set-up – the first was 30cm of 0.19 Reflo Power into a size 14 QM1 for use with a hair-rigged 8mm boilie, the other was a slightly less conventional arrangement for fishing dead maggots. Since I’ve started using the QM1 hook from Guru I’ve been amazed by the lack of lost fish and I use them all the time for hair-rigged baits on the tip – however today for the first time I used a size 16 QM1 tied into a small loop for the direct mounting of three dead red maggots. This sounds a little unconventional but looked pretty good as part of a 45cm hooklength of 0.15 Reflo Power. (It’s worth noting that the 30cm hooklength featured a total of 4 number 8 stotz – 2 an inch from the hook to keep the intended pop-up close to the deck and two others evenly spread 10cm apart to keep the hooklength pinned to the bottom.)

Today’s bait selection

Bait for today included half a kilo of Sonubait’s F1 Dark sweet fishmeal groundbait, half a pint of dead red maggots, one pint of 4mm hard pellets and some softened 2mm pellets mixed with Mainline Cell stick mix liquid and Sonubait’s Stiki Pellet powder for added attraction and stickability on the method feeder. These baits were complemented with some hard 6mm pellets and a tub of Bait-Tech fluro pop-ups for the hook.

Looking towards the shallow end of the lake

Given the fact that I was on an end peg flier, and taking into account some mistakes regarding not feeding enough made on a recent visit to Furnace Lakes, I decided to be positive and at the start I ‘spodded’ seven Drennan XL feeders worth of 4mm pellets, dead maggots and groundbait down the middle of the lake at about 25m. (At the time this seemed like a lot of bait but in hindsight this was probably equivalent to 2 large pole pots of bait – if I’d had used the pole today I’d had fed two or three times this amount to create a bed of bait for the intended bream to settle over.) I then switched to a mini Drennan cage feeder (the 15g version) and attached the QM1 in a loop hooklength with three dead reds. Nothing first cast, but a nice bite on chuck number two settled the nerves and proved the new set-up was working – in total I landed five nice skimmers/bream in the first hour and I’d put last week’s blank to bed already!

The second hour saw 6 more fish in the net – 2 on the method feeder and 4 to a fluro yellow 8mm pop-up on the open-end feeder with the 30cm hooklength. Things started to slow after two and a half hours so I ‘re-spodded’ with 6 more XL feeders worth of bait and this lead to another run of fish – after 3 hours I had a total of 15 in the net.



Things once again slowed at the beginning of the fourth hour but this time I decided to play it safe and see if the fish would return of their own accord – but with the exception of one bream (that was hooked after the bait had been in the water for 17 minutes) they didn’t so with 90 minutes left on the clock I ‘re-spodded’ with 5 feeders worth of bait. This ultimately saw three more fish hit the net before the ‘all out’ to leave me with a total of 19.

Roger Howe (Godalming AS match secretary who I’d had the pleasure of being pegged next to today) was soon ‘round with the scales and I was very pleased to see that my fish went for a total of 44-6-0. As it turned-out the rest of the lake had fished pretty hard with only the odd bream and tench being caught so I’d done enough to win on the day.

The top 4:
  1. Phil Morris (yours truly), 44-6-0
  2. Roger Howe, 7-5-0
  3. Andy Rogers, 5-6-0
  4. Mick Redman, 5-2-0
Section winners:
  • Dave Woolgar
  • Ian Covey
Whilst of course I was pleased to win the match it does show how peggy certain venues can be in the winter (after all I did blank at Willow Park last week) and a good draw really is vital – roll-on summer I say!!!


Why not follow me on Twitter? @philip_r_morris