Sunday 19 April 2015

19 April 2015, Richardson's Lake (Marsh Farm)

Following nearly ten days of great weather (warm sunshine, south-easterly breezes), today saw a dramatic change with a biting wind blowing in from the north-east – this change was to have a dramatic impact on today’s Godalming AS versus Woking DAA on Richardson’s Lake at Marsh Farm!  

All the gear …
  
  
  
My dip into the bag of dreams gave me peg 17 – out of the 39 in the bag I was one away from the one I really fancied (16), but I was nicely out of the cold wind (unlike those in front of the shop and on the back straight where it must’ve been freezing).
  
Before the all-in I set-up my usual pellet feeder rig for tight over and my standard SconeZone v8 rig for left and rights at top kit plus 4 sections on the pole.
  
On the feeder for a change!
  
The first hour and fifty minutes were biteless, then as is often the way I landed two tench in a row on the pellet feeder. The followed another blank hour before I lost a mental (possibly foul-hooked) fish, again on the pellet feeder.
  
My top kit plus 4 to the left line (fed with micros) would eventually yield 3 crucians to 4mm expanders – the top kit plus 4 line to the right (fed with 3 cups of damp but loose Old Ghost Green Alga) didn’t produce and bites but it did see nearly 3 hours of continuous fizzing!!!
  
The view to the right
  
A pretty slow day ended with one final tench on the pellet feeder with 45 minutes to go – leaving me on 11-13-0, just out of the frame (only another 2 ounces needed), but a double default section win nonetheless!!!
  
Overall top 5:
  1. John Brownley, 25-2-0
  2. Ken Russell, 19-8-0
  3. Brian Wallace, 19-6-0
  4. Mick Mahoney, 16-13-0
  5. Mark Shaw, 11-15-0
Until next time …
  
  

Wednesday 15 April 2015

15 April 2015, Richardson's Lake (Marsh Farm)

Following Sunday’s victory I was convinced I was going to win again today – until I drew peg 29, right in the middle of cyanide straight that is!
  
All the gear …
  
  
  
At the end of the day the pellet feeder/pinging 6mm pellets over the top combination still did the business and yielded 9 decent fish (plus one on the pole) for a good weight (29-2-0) from a poor area.
  
Standing-up again!
  
Today also saw most fish fall to a bright Bait-Tech 6mm micro pop-up fluro jobbie hookbait, with only a couple to the usual 6mm hard pellet. (When fishing with a small pop-up on the hair I squeezed a single number 8 Stotz onto the hooklength half an inch from the hook to prevent the bait popping-up too far.)
  
2 nets please!
  
Overall top 4:
  1. Mick Hall, 49-4-0
  2. Russ Berryman, 41-1-0
  3. Trevor Haskell, 40-6-0
  4. Andy Ryan, 36-0-0
Conclusions: The big question is this – should I spend future matches at Marsh Farm on the pellet feeder only or should I persist with the pole (which I’m really struggling to get working at the moment)?
  
Until next time …
  
  

Sunday 12 April 2015

12 April 2015, Richardson's Lake (Marsh Farm)

As I have next week off work as a holiday today’s match will with any luck be the first of 3 in 8 days at my local Marsh Farm – as the weather forecast is pretty good for the time of year I’m ever hopeful of a few pulls!
  
Impressive vapour trails
  
  
  
Surprising my dip into the bag of dreams yielded the same peg as my last visit to Marsh Farm – peg 8 – so a nice wide peg in the favoured area (at the moment) in front of the on-site tackle shop. However unlike that previous visit today’s weather was pretty good – sunny and fairly windy (but not so strong that holding 13m of pole would be an issue).
  
Prior to the all-in I prepared 4 set-ups – pole rigs for fishing left and right at 13m, a traditional cage feeder with a long tail (45cm of 0.13 N-Gauge to a size 20 LWG) and a pellet feeder. (As the wind was fairly strong I erred on the side of caution a went with the 30g Preston pellet feeder as opposed to the 20g version that can be more productive in better conditions at Marsh Farm.)
  
Please go ‘round!!!
  
On the whistle I fed 4 balls of Old Ghost Green Alga groundbait on my right-hand pole line, one third of a pot of micros on the left-hand line and settled down for some pellet feeder fishing. This led to an early tench, but a lack of further action forced me onto the pole – which wasn’t much better as I finished the first hour with just the one tench and 4 of the smallest roach in the county!
  
The second and third hours weren’t much better as all I could muster was a solitary skimmer on the cage feeder and a decent bream from the groundbaited pole swim that fell-off for no good reason as I was about to slip the next under it – not something you can normally afford to do at relative hard waters such as Marsh Farm!
  
Fish on!
  
Things did though pick-up in the fourth hour as two decent tench found their way to the net courtesy of the pellet feeder – however the action really started to hot up once I started to ping 6mm pellets over the top of my pellet feeder line via a catapult. This simple change saw 6 tench, 2 carp (one of which was a proper munter) and a crucian landed in the final 90 minutes (today’s match was fished 1000 to 1530) – a proper bag-up session by Marsh Farm standards!
  
Dave Ewing Snr on the scales
  
Whenever I feel I’ve done well I seem to pack-up really quickly and can’t wait for the scales to arrive – though normally I take ages squirrelling my gear away and can’t help but feel a sense of foreboding when the grim reaper appears!
  
Overall top 4:
  1. Phil Morris, 40-9-0
  2. Dave Steer, 26-9-0
  3. Charlie Salmon, 20-12-0
  4. Dave Lake, 19-15-0
So in the end something of a struggle turned into a first victory since October 2014 – though in the end the big carp (which went 11-14-0) wasn’t needed as I already had just enough to sneak past the living legend that is Dave Steer.
  
Bosh!
  
Conclusions: Over recent weeks I’ve really struggled to catch anything at all on the pellet feeder – something that is tremendously worrying when 99% of your successes in recent seasons has been on that method! Anyway the vast improvement in the weather over recent days seems to have brought the tactic to life, so perhaps 2015 will be a good year after all!!!
  
Until next time …
  
  

Sunday 5 April 2015

05 April 2015, Woodpeckers Lake (Woodpeckers Fishery)

If I was being honest I’d say that last of my most memorable matches have been down in Cornwall at White Acres – mainly on Acorn, Twin Oaks and Bolingey. However the annual Angling Times Supercup has provided some noteworthy days over the years – mostly for the wrong reasons (Bough Beech – I hate long distance feeder fishing; Moor House Farm – frozen solid and all the fish at either end of the lake with me right in the middle; Wood Lane Fisheries – does a fishing venue really need to be that deep?) and in 12 attempts my Godalming Midweekers/Apollo Godalming team has been knocked-out in the first round every time!!!
  
Welcome to Woodpeckers
     
This year’s draw once again saw us handed an away fixture – the 2015 campaign was to start against a team from Warlingham & District Anglers’ Society, a club well known to most of the Godalming AS regulars as for a few years we fished together on jollies to Monk Lakes.
  
Being the home team Warlingham had the choice of venue and they decided to take us to Woodpeckers Fishery near Crawley in West Sussex – none of my Apollo Godalming team mates or myself had been there before but word on the grapevine was that the place was fishing hard with recent matches won with as little as 17lb, hardly prolific for a venue that is apparently "very well stocked with a large selection of species"!
  
Looking left from peg 21
   
  
        
The venue itself (there are 3 or 4 lakes onsite) was quite a pretty place, the lake we were on (Woodpeckers Lake) having about 30 pegs and lots of features such as islands, overhanging trees and reed beds.
  
My draw saw me on permanent peg 21 – a very fishy looking spot at the top end of the lake with a nice chuck to an island (with a fallen tree in the water), another fallen tree to the left and plenty of room to the right with some of last year’s reeds still visible.
  
Will a fluorocarbon leader make a difference?
     
Before the all-in I prepared two rigs – the first being a 24g Guru pellet feeder (featuring the X-Safe system as opposed to my usual free-running set-up) with a 3 foot leader of 10lb (0.30) Drennan Supplex fluorocarbon above it and 10cm hooklength of 0.22 N-Gauge to either a size 14 or a size 16 QM1 and a hair-rigged band below it. (Previously I’ve always stuck with free-running method/pellet feeder approaches – however it appears that venues such as White Acres and Gold Valley are now allowing the use of the Guru X-Safe system so I wanted to try this out alongside the use of fast sinking fluorocarbon that is said to partially disguise what can be fairly crude feeders.)
  
The second rig was for the pole at 13m slightly to the left – as this approach was aimed at skimmers it was based around yellow Hydro, 0.13 mainline, a 0.2g SconeZone v8 and a 15cm hooklength of 0.10 to a size 18 Tubertini 808. Plumbing-up revealed that the lake was shallow (2.5-3 feet) and silty.
  
A dabble on the long pole ...
     
I kicked-off my match by feeding a reasonable amount of soaked micros, 4mm expanders and dead red maggots on my 13m pole line and spent half an hour on the pellet feeder towards the island directly opposite. Despite looking amazingly fishy this didn’t even yield the slightest of liners, so it was soon over to the pole – hardly bagging, but a couple of small skimmers at least got me off the mark on what was already looking like a hard day for most.
  
At the start of the second hour I did see a massive bow wave over the spot where I’d been casting the feeder so as the pole line was still mighty slow I decided to switch back to the feeder and started pinging 8mm pellets over the top. This did eventually lead to a convincing pull that was actually a massive liner, but even though I tried swapping my pellet feeder for an inline Guru lead with a 12 inch tail (in case the fish were shying away from the feeder) I failed to actually hook any carp.
  
As it was looking increasingly unlikely that the pellet feeder was going to be at all productive I found a spot on the 13m pole to the right of my initial line that had the same depth as my existing rig and fed 3 balls of Old Ghost Green Alga – hopefully this would act as a positive plan B whilst I continued to winkle-out a few more skimmers on the negatively fed line.
  
A tasty looking margin to the right!
   
The positively fed pole line was soon doing the business and the third hour of the match saw a good run of reasonable skimmers and two very welcome carp – virtually every fish falling to a single white maggot, red maggots and 4mm expanders being completely ignored. Unfortunately I also lost two more good fish (probably carp) – whilst yellow Hydro is an amazingly good elastic for skimmers and the odd better fish, there are times when decent fish will run you ragged on it, but as I was fishing a team match for mainly small fish I was reluctant to upgrade to anything heavier in case I started to bump smaller fish.
  
Things started to slow considerably going into hour number four, so as I had lots of room and a margin full of features to my right I decided to set-up a rig to target carp close to the bank at top kit plus two – white Hydro, 0.15 mainline, 4x12 KC Carpa Force and a 15cm hooklength of 0.13 to an eyed Guru LWG size 16. At 1345 (we were fishing 1000-1500 today) I fed this line with 3 pots of Green Alga and dead red maggots went back to fishing the feeder – that continued to be a complete waste of time!
  
A last gasp fish from the margins
     
  
  
I kept my beady eye on the margin line for tell-tale signs of carp but for quite a while there wasn’t the slightest movement so I kept rotating my two 13m pole lines, picking-up a few more skimmers and another bonus carp (once again over the line fed with groundbait).
  
With fifteen minutes to go I finally saw a tail pattern over my margin line so I was soon in with a nice big worm – the float flew under straight away but unfortunately the culprit was foul-hooked in the left pectoral fin. (I know this because despite taking quarter on an hour to land I eventually got the biggest fish of the day in the net just as the final whistle blew!)
  
Bagger with the clinching section win
      
  
By the time the scales reached my peg my Apollo Godalming team were actually 2-0 up but luckily I was able to do my bit for the team as my 19-8-0 of carp and skimmers were enough to make it 3-0 – the Warlingham angler in the next section (J Gibbon) would make it 3-1, but Bagger was soon on hand to make it 4-1 and give us an unassailable lead. (Colin Underwood would also go on to clinch the final section to make it 5-1.)
  
Individual top 3:
  1. J Gibbon, 23-12-0
  2. C Underwood, 23-0-0
  3. P Morris, 19-8-0
So after 12 years of hurt the unthinkable has happened – we’re into round two of the Angling Times Supercup 2015!!!
  
Team selfie
       
Conclusions: Over the years I’ve been lucky enough to win a few individual matches and do reasonably well in some White Acres festivals – however nothing competes with sharing success with your mates, so I’m pretty sure today is already going to be one of the most memorable of 2015!!!
  
Until next time …