One of the interesting things about fishing at this time of year is the serious temperature swing can be experienced during a day – whilst the weathermen were predicting a lovely spring afternoon the view from by bedroom window was distinctly frosty first thing this morning! Such temperature changes typically lead to one thing – a very slow start followed by a frantic end to the match!
Freezing!
I was back to Willinghurst again today and with 30 plus anglers gracing the banks of Old, New and John’s Lake another good draw was certainly the order of the day. Unfortunately my prolific drawing record at Willinghurst had to end at some point and today was the day – I drew the right lake (Old) but unfortunately peg 5 isn’t one that many people would run to!
With a nice warm breeze blowing from right to left the pegs at the end of the narrow section of Old Lake (occupied by Daiwa Dorking’s Pemb Wrighting and Tommy Hiller) looked like the place to be – unfortunately peg 5 is in the main bowl and is in the part of the lake that is double-banked (and hence doesn’t have a far bank to chuck to). The favoured pegs in this part of the lake are the two ends (1 and 26) with the remaining pegs being a little hit-and-miss – these pegs look featureless but there is in fact a shallow bar running through the middle that can be accessed from either side, though in essence these are open water pegs which are at their best when the fish are up in the water and there to be caught on the waggler.
Dan Cooper on peg 3
As expected things got off to a slow start for most (though not Pemb and Tommy) – my only bite of the first hour came from the shallow bar with a 24g mini Guru Hybrid feeder with a Ringers chocolate orange wafter and my only bite of the second hour came from the same spot with bomb and bread. The third hour actually yielded two bites – another carp from the bar to the Hybrid and chocolate orange wafter combination, and one that fell-off from a shorter line that I had been loose-feeding with 8mm pellets. (This fish was hooked on the straight lead with a Ringers pellet wafter – my suspicion is that these actually float even when used with a size 12 QM1 so more tank tests are needed before I try one of these on the hook again.)
The usual suspects ...
Unfortunately the second half of my match wasn’t much better – the fourth hour saw just a single pull from yet another carp to the Hybrid and chocolate orange wafter combination and the fifth hour only lead to a single pull on the bomb and bread (that fell-off). Prior to the final hour I had started to feed a margin line with 7mm meat and dead red maggots – this line would eventually lead to the best fish of the day (hooked five minutes before the ‘all out’, landed ten minutes after) to go with one more on the Hybrid.
The scores on the doors ...
This meant I ended-up with five smaller carp on the tip and one larger specimen from the edge for a total of 32-8-0 – not a great score but not miles behind venue experts Dan Cooper to my right (six carp on the waggler for 44lb from peg 3) and Jason Morgan to my left (40lb from peg 9). As expected Pemb (105-12-0) and Tommy (95-0-0) filled the top two places on the lake, with local legend Dave Carter taking third with an excellent 64-8-0 from the peg directly opposite mine.
It’s not often that I say this, but the other day I actually read an interesting article in Mach Fishing magazine. The piece in question appeared in the March 2016 edition and was titled ‘The Art of Fish Theft’, though the headline doesn’t really do it justice. Instead Tom Scholey describes in some detail how he manages his peg through the duration of a match, intentionally initially ignoring certain areas in order to allow the fish to gain confidence before plundering them towards the end. I guess we all implicitly manage our pegs, but today I was determined to do this in a more explicit fashion, especially as most of my matches have a tendency to start well before tailing-off towards the end!
Unloading all the gear ...
One of the reasons I’ve taken to spending my Sundays at Willinghurst of late is the fact that there are actually lots of good pegs to draw! In my six previous visits to the venue I’ve drawn a real corker each time – I’ve been on the Bomb Hole on the Top Lake (flyer) twice, peg 10 on Old Lake (shallow bar, flyer), peg 53 on John’s Lake (downwind end peg on the day, flyer) and peg 1 on Old Lake (corner peg, flyer) twice! So where would I end-up today? True to form it was another flyer and another return to a peg I have fished before (peg 10 on Old Lake) – what are the chances of fishing a 26 peg lake four times and drawing the same peg twice, twice?
Old Lake is quite an unusual shape in that it has a large bowl at one end and a narrower section at the other. Whilst there are platforms on both banks all of the way around, in the narrower section only the pegs on the side nearest to the café are included in the open matches. Peg 10 is in this narrower section and has two main features – the platform opposite (at about 35-40m) and a shallow bar that runs through the middle of the narrow section. (Apparently there used to be an island running through the middle of the lake, so I guess the shallow bar is what remains of this island.)
The old faithful
Taking these main features into account I once again decided to set-up both of my tip rods – they featured identical configurations (8lb Daiwa Sensor mainline and a 3’ leader of 10lb Drennan fluorocarbon with a loop to take various Guru X-Safe legering devices), but one was clipped-up on the bar and the other was clipped-up just short of the far bank. (The bar is quite easy to find – when you drop a bomb onto it the tip springs back immediately and on the retrieve you can feel the tell-tale tap, tap, tap of a hard gravel bottom.) I also set-up a pole rig to fish meat at top kit plus two (that I wouldn’t actually pick-up) and had planned to have a margin line in front of peg 11’s platform – until a late arrival (Martin White) came and sat on it that is!!!
Following Tom Scholey’s lead I was determined to leave the far side alone for at least two hours – the matches at Willinghurst are six hours long so I figured that two hours would be long enough for the anglers either side of me to push the carp into my peg, giving me four hours to plunder them. Having said that the first hour was very slow for everybody! I started on the bar with 4 pieces of 10mm punched bread (30cm of 0.19, size 12 QM1 with a 12mm hair, 19g Guru X-Safe bomb with black Hydro) but I eventually got my one and only pull of the first hour (from a pristine 8lb common) on a Ringers chocolate orange wafter (same set-up as for bread except the use of a shorter (10mm) hair).
Donkey chokers
Going into the second hour I decided to actually feed some bait and deposited 5 method feeders of soaked micro pellets onto the bar before starting to ping 10mm Ringers pellets three quarters of the way across. Whilst doing so I tried fishing to far side (ahead of schedule I know) - no bites materialised but I did manage to prick one whilst reeling in!!! Unfortunately this one (which was clearly foul-hooked) eventually fell-off, so my second aim of the match (to land every fish that I hooked) was also out of the window before the end of the first two hours.
The view to the left
The middle two hours of the match were hardly hectic either – I managed two smaller carp on a hard pellet hookbait from the three quarters pinging line before suffering the ignominy of being broken on the take as I was busy eating a tuna and cucumber roll!!! Having said that the fishing was still hard all around – Jason Morgan on the end peg (13) was struggling from a lack of fish in his peg after getting off to a good start and I’m pretty sure that Shaun Barnet (8) and Perry Stone (5) to my right were both pretty much fishless at this stage. Only Jake Gallagher (1), Ben Cooke (24) and Mark Glyn (24) seemed to be putting runs of fish together.
The view from the far bank
As expected the sport picked-up a little going into the final two hours – a nice double-figure fish from the bar on a wafter was very welcome, as was a much smaller sample from the three quarters line that gave me a pull before I could even sink the line. The final hour saw me focus more and more on the far side - carp #6 on bomb & bread and carp #7 on a 24g mini Hybrid feeder with soaked micro pellets and a chocolate orange wafter hookbait from close to the platform opposite were the rewards. Unfortunately the final pull of the day ended in disaster – the carp in question took me into a tree that was partly dangling into the water and I lost the lot! (Hybrid feeders do grow on trees after all …)
The moment of truth
In the end my seven carp went for 43-10-0, not a great return but much closer to the 65-1-0 (Perry Stone), 64-10-0 (Ben Cooke) and 63-14-0 (Mark Glyn) that filled the top three places on the lake than I expected when the ‘all out’ was called. So congratulations must go to Perry Stone who came from nowhere to take the spoils on the pellet waggler after the shoal that were sat in front of Ben and Mark early doors eventually drifted across to his side of the bowl. (Perry was second on the day, Tommy Hiller winning the match with 85lb from New Lake.)
