After a couple of pleasure sessions (a reasonable day on Pollawyn 18 catching carp and skimmers on waggler and bomb, followed by a really good day catching F1s on the jigga on Jenny’s 41) it was soon time for the White Acres’ Thursday rover match and good draw required as effectively only Jenny’s, Trelawney and Pollawyn would be available today due to the Olde English Cider festival taking-up Twin Oaks, Python, Canal and Acorn.
The High Bank, Pollawyn
Despite having a good day on Jenny’s yesterday I narrowed-down my ideal location to the High Bank of Pollawyn or 5-6 wider pegs on Trelawney where I had planned to pinch a few carp on the tip before plundering some big F1s on the jigga. As it happened I drew 10 (out of about 70) and despite there being some pleasure anglers already on the High Bank I was able to squeeze myself onto peg 25 on Pollawyn – this is the peg to the right of where I was on Tuesday (18) as here is a rather madcap numbering scheme on this lake!
The White Acres’ rover is an unusual match as everybody that weighs-in gets a prize – though if you finish outside of the frame this is normally limited to a bag of pellets, pretty much making this a ‘do or die’ competition as there are no section prizes as such. As a result my plan of attack and bait allowance were very simple – to fish into the deeper water in front of the central island on the straight lead and/or waggler with a mixture of Dynamite Swimstim 8mm pellets (standard sized pellets) and White Acres 8mm pellets (which are more like 10/11mm donkey chokers).
Drennan wagglers
The gear for the straight lead was the usual heavy set-up – 8lb Daiwa Sensor main line, either a one third or a two thirds of an ounce square bomb connected by a snap link swivel and stopped on the line by a large Guru float stop, finished-off with 30cm of 0.22 N-Gauge and a size 14 QM1 with a hair-rigged pellet band. The float gear was slightly more subtle – 4lb main line, a 3g Drennan glow tip carp waggler held in place by two medium float stops below and one above, with 25cm of 0.17 N-Gauge and a size 18 Guru Pellet Waggler hook at the business end. (These new Drennan wagglers are slightly thicker than a standard waggler but are much slimmer than the Preston Innovations Dura pellet wagglers and are basically much more discrete.)
Looking right towards the gap between the islands
To cut a very long and boring story short the match itself was an anti-climax as I could only manage one carp (on the straight lead after about 30 minutes) and nothing else but skimmers to end with a lowly 19-8-0; in all fairness nobody around me caught more than a couple of carp each and personally I feel my tactics and execution were correct – it was just one of those days where the car were further down the lake in the gap between the islands where my old mate Martin Johnson fished a blinder and made no mistake (on the same tactics) to land 130 odd pounds!!!
Chris Haywood next door
I also had the pleasure of fishing next to good friend Chris Haywood today – we started on similar tactics, though after an hour Chris saw that the writing was on the wall and switched to a more festival-style approach to score nearly fifty pounds of skimemrs on the short pole with meat and barbell down the edge on worm over groundbait, in the end only fifteen pounds off a top six finish.
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