Sunday 13 March 2016

13 March 2016, Match Lake (Sumners Ponds)

As is often the way I have a little poke around the internet when I’m planning a fishing trip – checking the weather forecast, reviewing recent match results, that kind of thing. Well prior to today’s trip to the Match Lake at Sumners Ponds I received something of a shock – Facebook was full of photos of people wearing chest waders netting the very same Match Lake, looking to capture the resident carp in order to transfer them to a newly opened specimen lake!!!
  
What impact would this have on the fishing?
  
Whether or not the majority of the 27 Godalming AS and Woking DAA anglers were aware of this netting I can’t say – regardless the turn-out was good for the time of year and the breakfast was even better! (Sumners Ponds is primarily a caravan/camp site and has a proper restaurant, hence the food really is the best I’ve ever eaten whilst wearing my fishing Gore-Tex.)
  
Yum yum!
   
  
  
My last visit to this venue (which was another Godalming versus Woking affair) saw me draw a narrow peg in front of the furthest island from the car park – this seemed to be an area devoid of carp so I was really looking for a peg on the open water part of the lake, ideally with a chuck to the shallow bar created by the sunken island as this seems to be a real fish magnet. As it happened I drew peg 1 on the day (the venue isn’t permanently pegged) – this was the peg nearest the car park, not on the shallow bar but in the main bowl and an end peg to boot.
  
End Peg Billy!!!
   
Hoping that such a draw would put me on a few carp (those that eluded the netting anyway) I set-up my usual tip rod and a rig for fishing with corn at top kit plus 2slightly to the left (black Hydro, 0.17 N-Gauge main line, a 4x14 Roob shotted with a spread bulk of number 9 stotz and 15cm hooklength of 0.13 to a size 16 LWG (eyed)). To keep things ticking-over I also set-up a rig for fishing for silvers with maggots – this one featured yellow Hydro, 0.13 main line, a 0.2g SconeZone V8 and a 15cm hooklength of 0.10 to a size 18 Tubertini 808.
  
I caught a reel. Yes a reel. Not an eel!
  
At the start of recent matches I’ve spent the first five minutes looking for an early carp on the short pole with corn – being a bit of a carpy corner I thought I’d do the same today and got rather excited when the float dipped immediately. Unfortunately it was only a small roach but at least I was off the mark and had avoided a second blank in a row! This was a good sign for later (when I planned to fish for silvers during middle of the match) but as it was still very early in the day I swapped straight on to the tip rod, casting Ringers chocolate orange wafter on a straight lead rig just short of the halfway point between myself and the angler opposite (who interestingly had only set-up the pole).
  
Unseasonal?
   
This soon resulted in a pull – unfortunately from a slightly unseasonal 2lb tench instead of the 20lb carp I was secretly hoping for! A few more casts to the same spot produced a few liners but no proper pulls so I slowly but surely started to casting further and further to the left, creeping towards the long margin of the bank in front of the car park every 10-12 minutes. Once I got tight to the bank the liners increased again and eventually another pull saw a 6lb carp in the net – unfortunately this was a one-off and apart from a reel (that I hooked cleanly through the bail arm) that was the end of the action for the first two hours.
  
Early spring sunshine
  
I’d been throwing maggots onto my short line throughout the first couple of hours and as a bite from a carp wasn’t looking too likely the start of the third hour saw me reaching for my lighter pole rig – this saw a good run of some decent (2-4 ounce) roach, allowing me to alternate between fishing for carp whilst still putting something in the net. (The roach fishing would be good then fade, so fishing the tip for ten minutes allowed to me to rest the roach line (and vice versa).) After a while the roach came-up in the water so I set-up a shallow rig – every now and I’d swap back to the deck rig and eventually the inevitable happened, though the carp in question ran me ragged on the yellow Hydro I was using and eventually transferred the hook onto Mick Redman’s keepnet!!!
  
Funnily enough when I was replacing the hooklength on that pole rig the tip slammed around out of the blue and I was attached to another good fish – after a bit of a tussle and some shuffling a nice 15 pounder was looking up at me from my landing net.
  
The usual suspects on the side tray
  
Going into the final two hours (we were fishing for 6 hours today) I was in a real quandary and couldn’t decide whether I should keep alternating between catching silvers and looking for carp or to focus solely on carp – however I could see Pete Worsfold and some of the other anglers on the sunken bar catching the odd carp so I decided to gamble and go for carp only.

In order to try and induce a bite I started pinging 10mm Ringers pellets straight in front and started fishing a small 24g Guru Hybrid feeder tight the bank to my left. Sport was hardly hectic, but a 6lb carp on the straight lead over the lose feed, a 20 pound beast on the Hybrid feeder and a last gasp 4lb barbel on the same tactic was a reasonable return and more than if I’d have fished for roach too. (Unfortunately I lost another carp than came tearing towards me on the straight in front line, and more significantly my lucky fishing watch fell-off my side tray, straight into the drink never to be seen again!)
  
Was there enough in these nets?
  
As is often the way when you are End Peg Billy I had the pleasure of being on the scales today and had to weigh-in the whole of my bank (14 pegs) – this was a bit of a chore but was also quite interesting. The guy on the far end peg caught 7 small carp, but for the next 8 or so pegs (those in front of the islands) it was nothing but roach, Andy Rogers being the best with a lovely 22-15-0 bag. As expected the pegs into the main bowl all had carp, Pete Worsfold’s 54-14-0 being top with just my bag to weigh.
  
My gut feeling was that I had fifty pounds and I was going to finish just out of it so I weighed my silvers net first – when this bag went 11-0-0 I knew I was in with a chance and I was proved correct when my 4 carp pulled the dial around to 45-15-0, giving me a total of 56-15-0 and victory by just over two pounds, the five pounds of roach I caught in the middle of the match making all the difference!!!
  
Until next time ...
  
  
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