I’ve been trying to think what exactly makes Bolingey my favourite fishing venue. Driving along narrow Cornish country lanes with high hedgerows to get there is certainly part of it, as is a sense of being close to the seaside (which exaggerates the feeling of being on holiday). The complex itself sits in something of a tree-lined bowl, creating a nice feeling of seclusion and an escape from the real world outside. Then last but not least there are the delicious fried egg/bacon sandwiches to eat and the monster carp to catch!!!
My home for the day was to be peg 3 – this is a short walk from the car park/tackle shop and is towards the middle of the non-causeway bank of the first pond on the left. As a result this peg has no obvious features – the lake at the rear of the complex is the only one with an island and obviously only corner pegs 1 (John Pilling), 7 (Bagger (of course)), 46 (Tom) and 50 (Ian Turner) have a right angled bank to fish to. As a result I decided to focus on fishing short today and unusually I put three nets into the water before the start – I wasn’t at all confident of catching in excess of 60 let alone 120lb but even a blind squirrel finds an acorn once in a blue moon and adding an extra net when catching close-in can be a real kiss of death. (Three clichés in the same sentence – awesome!!!)
All the gear ...
I set-up rigs for fishing at top kit plus two slightly to the right and at top kit plus one slightly to the left – both were mounted onto black Hydro top kits, featured 4x14 Roobs and were tied on 0.19 Guru N-Gauge main line. However as I was going to fish with sweetcorn on the longer line I went with a 15cm hooklength of 0.15 to a size 16 LWG (eyed) and as I was going to be fishing with big pellets (the over-sized White Acres 8mm jobbies) on the other I went with a hooklength of 0.17 to a size 14 MWG with a hair-rigged pellet band.
The view to the left
Peg 3 is a great spot for tree lovers as it features nice specimens on both the left and right – unfortunately this makes the peg quite enclosed and meant I could only fish my margin lines on a top kit only. (This didn’t bother me as I know from experience that big carp can be willing to feed extremely close to anglers/nets when they are in the mood and quite often fishing along the margin at top kit plus two can be a really obvious thing that everybody does and is something that the fish have wised-up to.) I set-up rigs for fishing as tight to the bank as I possibly could to the left and to the right – both were mounted on red Hydro top kits, consisted of 0.19 straight through to a size 14 MWG and had SconeZone V6 floats. (The depths were different but both were between the ideal 12 and 18”.)
Surveying the carnage from another lost foul-hooker
The first half of my match today can be quickly and easily summarised as: fished the two short lines; hooked seven carp; lost six; landed one; each and every one was foul-hooked. In short – an absolute nightmare!!!
The left margin
As a result I started to feed and fish my margin lines much, much earlier than I’d have liked – I really wanted to save them until the final hour and a bit but by two thirty I had to stop fishing and foul-hooking carp on the short lines for the sake of my own sanity and pole float collection!!!
For margin feed I had two pints of casters (left-over from yesterday), two pints of sweetcorn and tow pints of live maggots. I started by using-up the casters and sport was fairly good – however switching to feeding full pots of live maggots was much better. Between two thirty and four I actually caught quite a few smaller fish (carp and F1s), boosting my weight from a meagre 4-5lb to somewhere around the 45lb mark.
The right margin
The final hour should be the best at venues like Bolingey but as I had to start fishing the margins much earlier than I’d have liked sport predictably started to fade when it should’ve been getting better and better – things also weren’t helped when I started to get carried away with feeding by hand, a series of lost foul-hookers being the result. However by returning to feeding via a cupping kit only and being really patient I managed to induce three proper bites in that final hour – this doesn’t sound like many bites but they were all from proper zoo creatures and added a further 30-35lb to my total.
That's more like it
All too soon it was 5 o’clock and Cornwall’s answer to Laurel and Hardy (Andy Dare and Ricky Dennis) appeared right on time with the scales – John Pilling was first to weigh and would go on to win the lake with 81lb. Frustratingly my catch went 77-6-0, less than one fish behind and yet again I was one out of the money as weights of 140+ (Geoff Edwards), 110+ (Scott Walker), 100+ and 90+ (Dave Gibbs) filled the frame leaving John to take the section prize. Oh well not to worry – it was a lovely day out and we had fish and chips from Port & Starboard on the way back to the lodge so “all’s well that ends well” as they say!!!
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!!!
Well the weather so far this week can certainly be described as ‘mixed’! Bagger and myself spent a day in glorious sunshine on Jenny’s Lake on Saturday – I tried and failed to catch F1s on the long pole shallow but instead caught a nice mixed bag on maggots at 5m using the new Guru F1 maggot hooks and orange Daiwa Hydrolastic (which were both brilliant). However since then it has basically rained non-stop for 36 hours!!!
Take notice
We are down at White Acres again this week as Bagger will be fishing the Olde English Cider festival – this is the festival aimed at club anglers and is fished across Twin Oaks, Acron/Canal, Trewaters and Python. Whilst Bagger is doing that I’ll be fishing the Monday and Thursday residents matches, then hopefully the highlight of the week will be the Friday match at Bolingey which we’ll both be fishing (the festival is Monday to Thursday).
My home for the day today would be Trelawney peg 7 – regular readers of this blog will know that this lake was the scene of a Milo festival first day disaster when I seriously blew-out from peg 20, so whilst I hadn’t drawn the best peg on the lake my main aim for the day was to build a decent weight and gain a decent section position.
The view to the right
I started my match on the bomb & bread to the central island – this is normally a good bet for an early carp, so when a couple of casts on this and a couple of casts with a mini Hybrid feeder failed to produce any pulls or liners my mood started to match the weather!
All the gear ...
In all fairness my main tactic today was going to be the long pole shallow for F1s so the tip rod was soon dispatched up the bank in favour of a jigga rig – personally I prefer the large Preston Innovations jigger floats and the rest of the set-up included white Hydrolastic, 0.15 Guru N-Gauge main line (18” above the float stop, a total of 2’ below it) and a 3” hooklength of 0.13 to a size 18 LWG. (The inline nature of the jigga meant that I could fish at depths between 4” and 2’ with this rig.)
Plenty of casters
For bait I had 2 pints of casters and 2 pints of White Acres 4mm pellets (which are slightly over-sized). I spent most of the day feeding casters but I’m still not totally convinced that they are better than pellets – for my money you get a much tighter grouping with pellets and they make much more noise when they hit the water, though I guess the ultimate question is whether or not F1s prefer the taste of casters!
Ironically on the day slapping the rig onto the surface of the water seemed more important that loose feeding, the favoured routine being: slap, slap, slap, try and feed, elastic out!
Jack Smart's pole
Sport wasn’t really that hectic and the F1s in my peg seemed to be the smaller silver coloured ones with only the occasional larger brown/gold specimen making an appearance. Despite this I still managed to put a decent 58-2-0 onto the scales – enough for sixth overall and second in section behind 63-10-0, yet again meaning I’d be one out of the money!!!
Geoff Edwards (Guru), 167-12-0, Trelawney Peg 23
Martin Holmes (Burt Baits), 79-12-0, Trelawney Peg 4
John Fulford (Wigstone Tackle), 68-8-0, Trelawney Peg 19
Colin England (Army Angling Federation), 64-2-0, Trelawney Peg 26
Jack Smart (Legacy Tackle), 63-10-0, Trelawney Peg 8
Phil Morris (All The Gear No Idea), 58-2-0, Trelawney Peg 7
Even though I use the word ‘today’ a great deal in these blogs they are normally written a few days after the event – for example, as I sit here and type this it’s the Friday after the Sunday, six days since England beat Australia in the rugby and the day after England beat Wales in Euro 2016. Both of these matches saw England roar to victory after falling behind, the complete reverse of my match ‘today’!!!
Gimme shelter
Today’s match (I’ve stopped putting quotes around ‘today’ now) was my fourth in a row at Willinghurst since getting back from the Milo festival at White Acres (where coincidentally we’re returning to next week as Bagger is competing in the Old English festival) and the first for ages to be fished in heavy rain (which I absolutely hate, mainly because I know it takes ages to properly dry two sets of kit).
Despite the rain I managed to draw another flyer again – this time peg 26 on Old Lake. This is just a few pegs along from where I was fishing last week (peg 22) and is one that you have to fancy as it is in a corner with a long, reed lined bank running at right angles to the left. However it is situated past the shallow bar that runs through most of the pegs in the lake so it has deeper water straight in front, the only shallow areas being in the margins.
Keep those pellets dry
My plan of attack was fairly simple – to try and avoid my usual slow start and put a few fish together from the deeper water in the first part of the match before annihilating my competitors in the final 90 minutes with loads of big carp from the long margin.
There’s a nice looking (unused) platform diagonally across from peg 26 and I had planned to fish in front of this with the pole – however on holding 16m of pole it soon became clear that this platform is more like 19 or 20m away. By swinging the pole to the left I could get close to some reeds, but as this wasn’t really that close to the bank (and right in the corner of the lake) I decided to attack the vacant platform with a Hybrid feeder set-up instead.
The view across the lake to the right
The other decision I had to make was how to fish into the deeper water and what bait to use. In my mind the choice was between fishing the pellet waggler with (lighter) Dynamite 8mm pellets or fishing the straight lead with 10mm Ringers pellets (which can be catapulted for miles but sink like stones). Rightly or wrongly I went for the latter, my feeling being that the heavy rain would force the fish closer to the bottom, meaning that the straight lead was the way to go.
Pemb on peg 5
The first four hours of the match actually went quite well – I managed 9 or 10 pulls on the tip, 2 fish on the pellet waggler (one foul hooked in the dorsal fin) and a diddly (1lb) carp on the Hybrid feeder from the platform. Sport was hardly hectic though – some of the bites on the straight lead only materialised after the hookbait (a 10mm Ringers chocolate orange wafter mounted on a 10mm hair attached to a size 12 QM1 on 0.17 or 0.19 Guru N-Gauge) had been in the water for ten to twelve minutes.
At this point I was probably winning the lake – nobody was catching with any regularity and even Guru-backed superstar angler Pemb Wrighting on peg 5 opposite was struggling to catch on the pellet waggler. (Though Pemb was just about to start feeding his edge swims with meat and groundbait – more on that later.)
The area I'd hoped to catch from
In recent weeks I’d caught most of my weight in the final 90 minutes, so going into the closing two hours I was confident of a good result as I’d been pinging pellets across to the adjacent platform and I was starting to see movement – at one stage a carp even waved its tail at me!
However it wasn’t to be – I kept feeding and dropping next to the platform with my mini Hybrid feeder but I despite my best efforts I just couldn’t induce a pull. I continued to fish and feed the longer line into the deeper water and probably caught another 8 or so fish on the straight lead but the size of fish kept getting smaller and smaller. Out of the corner of my eye I could see Pemb bagging from his edge lines – his fish kept getting bigger and bigger!!!
19 carp and this Bertie
In the end my 20 fish went 74-15-0. This was rather disappointing as at venues such as Willinghurst 20 fish normally gets you over the magical tonne barrier – to put things into perspective Pemb’s 16 or 17 fish were enough to win the match as they went well over 120lb.
The thing that I found most interesting though is that last week I weighed less (66lb) and lost 3 or 4 fish and this week I weighed more and didn’t lose a fish all day – despite this I was buzzing last week (as I had a very slow start and nearly got into the money with a great last hour) and this week I went home gutted as I’d put myself into a good position and blew it at the end. That’s fishing I guess!!!
After a couple of weeks of less than average weather, today’s forecast was for temperatures into the mid-twenties and clear blue skies. Some might disagree, but personally I think that spending such a day fishing a match at the lovely Willinghurst Fishery is hard to beat ...
Nice day for it
Today’s match was supposed to be on Old Lake and New Lake only, but due to high demand Horseshoe Lake was also added into the mix at the last minute. Before the draw the café was full of the usual venue experts and Daiwa Dorking regulars (Paul Holland, Stevie Gardener, etc) all looking for the two vital ingredients of any successful match day – a nice breakfast and a flyer of a draw!
Having only fished New and Horseshoe Lakes once each I was hoping for a pitch on my usual haunt (Old Lake) and this is exactly what I got in the form of peg 22. Regular readers of this blog will know that there is a central, shallow bar running through the length of the lake. Well now having drawn on the far side of Old Lake I can confirm that the bar is shallow but it certainly isn’t central – the posts marking the end of the bar are much, much closer to the far bank than to the pegs on the café side of the lake. (This sounds very boring but there is an interesting point coming later …)
Otherwise peg 22 is like any typical Old Lake pitch with reeds in the margin and peg 21’s (vacant) platform accessible at top kit plus four to the right. However the most striking thing about the peg today was the quality of angler I could see from it! I had venue experts John Radford (24) and Mick Keeper (26) to my left, local legend Paul ‘Tommy’ Hiller (1) diagonally across the lake in the corner, Preston Innovations Delcac angler Jamie Granger (5) directly opposite and more superstars in the form of Marcus Page (9), Ian ‘Dicko’ Dixon (11) and Claire ‘Bagger’ Hollis (13) in the narrower (single banked) part of the lake. Ouch!!!
All the gear ...
Prior to the all-in I set-up rigs/rods to cover the following options: an 11’ Daiwa Tournament waggler rod for fishing with a loaded 4.5g Drennan Pellet Waggler (main line was 6lb Guru Pulse and the hooklength consisted of 0.17 N-Gauge into a size 18 Guru Peller Waggler hook – though I would later change this to 0.19 and a size 16 MWG); a 10’ Daiwa Tournament tip rod for fishing with various Guru X-Safe devices (mainly a 19g in-line bomb and a 24g mini Hybrid feeder); a rig for fishing into the deeper water in front of peg 21 (black Hydro, 0.17, 4x14 Roob, 0.13, size 16 LWG); and finally a bagging rig for margin fishing directly in front of peg 21’s platform (read Hydro, 0.19 straight through to a size 14 MWG, 0.3 SconeZone V6).
Off to a slow start
Still being a relative newcomer to fishing at Willinghurst I basically decided to spend the first half an hour or so watching everybody else! I thought that the best way of doing this whilst still actually fishing myself was to fish on the tip so I did so with a Hybrid feeder loaded with micro pellets and a 6mm hard pellet hookbait cast onto the bar (main line was 8lb Daiwa Sensor with a 3’ leader of 10lb Drennan fluorocarbon, the hooklength was 0.17 into a size 16 QM1). Personally I never had a bite during this period and nor did anybody else – apart from Bagger who paralysed the early stages with a good run of carp on the pellet waggler!!!
Playing a carp on the waggler
As the match progressed a few others also started snaring the odd carp on the waggler so I followed suit. By the end of the first 90 minutes I was still in touch with most of the field as I’d managed two bites and two 4lb carp on my pellet waggler set-up, though with hindsight this was probably the wrong tactic – I say that because of the position of the shallow bar relative to my peg. Because the shallow bar was fairly close (22-25m) it was at the distance you can naturally fire 8mm pellets to and hence it coincided with the normal range of the pellet waggler. As a result I end-up either fishing onto the bar itself or fishing just past it – neither being ideal as the bar was far too shallow to fish a float over and by going past the bar I had to bring any hooked fish up and over it, plus I was in danger of encroaching on the imaginary halfway dividing line and fishing in Jamie Granger’s swim.
Old skool
Despite those two carp, sport was pretty slow so I decided to set-up another approach at around 12:30 (Willinghurst open matches are fished from 10:30 to 16:30). This is an approach that I’d had at the back of my mind for a while and is something of a return to the ‘old skool’ – basically it consisted of a small free-running 20g Drennan groundbait feeder (the green plastic ones) with a 2’ tail of 0.17 to a size 16 MWG for fishing with bunches of dead red maggots.
The idea was to draw a number of carp into the swim with regular deposits of groundbait and dead red maggots and to induce them into taking the hookbait on the drop as it fell through the water. During the half an hour or so that I fished the tactic it sort of worked and it sort of didn’t – I didn’t get any bites from carp but I did land three nice skimmers that must’ve weighed the same as my two carp!
However when bites slowed I (mistakenly with hindsight) decided to switch back to the waggler as others were catching on it and I was falling further and further behind – this was a massive mistake as I would basically go for the best part of three hours without putting anything in the net!!!
Straight lead gear
It’s fair to say that going into the final 90 minutes I was getting pretty cheesed-off with my performance and lack of fishy action on the waggler so I settled into a strict regime of spending five minutes on the bar with the bomb & pellet, followed by 5 minutes on the 5m line, followed by 5 minutes in the margins. After a further 30 minutes with no bites I was seriously considering packing-up (or at best fishing to the end and not weighing in) when all hell broke loose and it suddenly became a fish a bung on the bomb & pellet on the bar!
I literally couldn’t get in and out quick enough as every time I cast onto the bar and unleashed a barrage of pellets over the top the tip would slam ‘round as another carp consumed my 8mm Ringers pellet wafter hookbait. (Rather than mount them via a band I drill them and mount them lengthways on a hair rig with a boilie stop.) I lost count of how many I landed but I definitely lost 3 – one broke my 0.17 hooklength (which I should’ve upgraded to 0.19 or even 0.22) and two came off because I was pulling too hard (the thing I’m always telling others not to do). In fact when I pulled-out of the second I unleashed a ‘C-bomb’ across the lake in disgust so sorry about that.
Tommy and Jamie on the scales
In the end I must’ve landed 50lb in the final hour as I went from having 16lb on the clicker to weighing-in 66-8-0, much more than I’d thought and agonisingly just OOotM (one out of the money)!!!
As you can see from the following Bagger continued her great recent form to finish-up third on the lake, not that far behind Ian and Tommy:
