Love ‘em or hate ‘em the Thursday rover match is a mainstay of any (non-festival) week at White Acres. Over the years I must’ve fished at least twenty of these events and only managed to win more than a bag of pellets on just two occasions – a third place in September 2009 (70-14-0 from peg 19 on Twin Oaks) and a second place in June 2013 (112-5-0 from Acorn).
Pre-match excitement
Today’s peg choice was going to be even more interesting than usual – Twin Oaks, Acorn and Canal were out of action due to the Olde English Cider festival, Jenny’s was all but taken-up by pleasure anglers, Pollawyn has been out of form all season, Sycamore has no form whatsoever and everybody knows that Eery can do a big weight meaning it is now the non-secret secret choice!!!
... out of 50 - bugger!
As a result my plan was to fish on Trelawney – ideally on peg 23 as this is the peg from which Geoff Edwards paralysed the match on Monday (167lb), but if not any of the pegs to the left of 23 along the far bank of Trelawney. However this plan was totally destroyed when it was revealed that pleasure anglers had already taken-up 22, 23 and 24 – a drop in the ocean compared to myself drawing 47 out of 50 meaning I had Bob Hope and no hope of getting anywhere near those pegs!!!
With little option remaining I end-up on peg 12 on Trelawney. This is towards the wider part of the lake where the lodge bank starts to turn 90 degrees and form the bank that holds the pegs in the high teens. This can be a very good area – despite being pretty squashed I was heartened to see that Geoff (who being sponsored by Guru obviously had a much better draw) had elected by choice to place himself on peg 14 to my left. As a result I set-up with the enthusiasm of a man that had sat on peg 25 just 48 hours earlier and caught a big F1 every chuck on the jigga during a pleasure/practice session …
The Preston jigger
My tactics were simple – given the ‘shit or bust’ nature of the White Acres rover I settled on one tactic and was going to make it work or blow-out. That approach was fishing for F1s shallow on the long pole and in order to do so I had 4 rigs and 4 pints of casters!!! (Each rig was mounted on a white Hydro top kit, was made-up on 0.17 Guru N-Gauge main line, featured a large Preston Innovations jigger float and had a 3” hooklength of 0.13. Two of the rigs were set for jigging between 4” and 2’, two were set for jigging between 4” and 1’. Two of the rigs had size 18 Guru LWG hooks, two had size 16s.)
Not enough of this today
The first hour was fairly slow (10lb on the clicker) but I remained positive and kept feeding and slapping – 90 minutes later and having only added a further 4lb I’d basically given up!!! I decided to have a dabble on the feeder to the island and fed some groundbait down the edge to my right on the off chance that some of the older/larger resident carp decided to have a munch, but neither line produced anything worth writing about. A paste line fished at top kit plus one straight in front did produce a nice skimmer and a few more of those big F1s, boosting my weight to a titanic 22-6-0 and a bag of pellets for finishing 22nd overall – at least the sun was shining and I wasn’t at work!!!
Keep your eyes on the prize
So once again another Trelawney blow-out but in the context of the Thursday rover I guess it’s par for the coarse as there are very few frame places and no section prizes/points to aim for. It became obvious today that the jigga is a devastating method when it works but when the fishing is harder more subtle tactics will at least catch some fish – you can tell if the jigga is going to work because on the first slip out you’ll go slap, slap, slap, jig, jig and you’ll see ten feet of elastic ripping out of the end of your pole!!!
No comments:
Post a Comment