Sunday 30 July 2017

30 July 2017, Syndicate Lake (Gold Valley)

Gold Valley, Syndicate Lake 112 today ... spent most of the day cursing myself for losing a 15lber in the first 5 minutes!!! Eventually caught a few on the waggler and had a good last 30 minutes on the straight lead to finish with 80-4-0, one out of the money as Olly Tilley had just over 100lb!
   
Wagglers at the ready!!!
   
Until next time ...
  
   

Saturday 29 July 2017

29 July 2017, Middle Lake (Gold Valley)

Gold Valley, Middle Lake 75 today ... basically my plan to feed aggressively with groundbait and maggots at TK+3 then catch loads of big skimmers and the odd stockie carp/F1 back-fired and I had my arse kicked by Robbie Taylor (who was next door on 77)!
   
Middle Lake, peg 75
   
Until next time ...
   
   

Sunday 23 July 2017

23 July 2017, New Lake (Willinghurst)

Well what a day to forget that certainly was! Round 4 of the Avon Valley summer league at Willinghurst today, New Lake peg 5 being my home for the day. To cut a very long and tortuous story short I worked five different lines for the full 5 hours and I could only manage one carp for a level 7lb - this meant I could only beat one angler in my section and to add insult to injury another 12 ounces would've seen me double my points return!
  
All the gear ...
  
Until next time ...
  
  

Saturday 15 July 2017

15 July 2017, Middle Lake (Gold Valley)

Different fishing day this weekend (Saturday) but the same venue (Gold Valley) and the same peg as a couple of weeks ago (Middle Lake 91), so not for the first time (and almost certainly not the last) I’ve managed to draw the same peg twice within a matter of weeks!
  
Is all this stuff really needed?
  
Looking back at the blog from my previous attempt at peg 91 (on the 18th of June) it can be seen that I spent the first half of the match failing to catch the bigger, older carp that still reside in this lake before switching my attentions to the F1s, stockie carp and skimmers – as a result I managed 40 odd pounds in just over two hours and was left with the feeling that it might be possible to reach the magic 100lb mark by targeting them all day.
  
Once at the peg the chances of catching any big carp seemed even less than last time – the wind was blasting from right to left (as it had been for a number of days apparently, presumably pushing a lot of fish into end pegs 84/85) and given the cool, cloudy conditions there weren’t any cruisers visible so it was time to put the theory to the test!
  
Middle Lake, peg 91 (again)
  
Not completely discounting my chances of catching a big carp or two, whilst still giving myself a couple of options to catch the smaller fish, I set-up the following before the start of the match:
  • One of my Daiwa Airity tip rods with a Guru X-Safe 19g inline lead and a 30cm hooklength of 0.17 N-Gauge into a size 12 QM1 with a 10mm hair (for fishing with a wafter over loose-fed 8mm pellets at 25-30m)
  • A top kit (fitted with green Nick Gilbert Amber Core elastic) featuring a rig consisting of 0.17 main line, a 4x16 Malman Roob and a 15cm hooklength of 0.13 into a size 18 LWG (for fishing at top kit plus 3)
  • Another top kit (green elastic again) featuring the same rig as above but with a slightly smaller 4x14 Roob (for fishing the (fairly deep) right margin with a top kit only)
  
The view to the right
  
On the whistle I fed 4 balls of Bait-Tech Special G (a 50:50 mix of gold and green) on the top kit plus 3 line, flicked my bomb/wafter rig to 25m and pinged a few pouches of 8mm pellets over the top. After three or four minutes I sensed that this wasn’t the way to go so I switched to the margin line in order to start building towards my target weight of small fish.
  
My chosen feed and hookbait for this line were red maggots – the stockie carp and F1 seem to love them, but so unfortunately do the margin-hugging micro-perch! I could tell that there were plenty of the intended species down there but more often than not the tiny perch were getting to the hookbait first – having limited options on my side tray (these tiny fish aren’t normally an issue away from the margins) I ended-up fishing with the tiniest grains of corn I could find in a tin of Jolly Green Giant. (And I mean tiny! There’s no way the newly stocked carp could get a proper sized grain in their mouths!) This had the desired effect and in fact got me a massive bonus in the form of a near double-figure fish after about twenty minutes!!!
  
Tidy side tray for once!
  
After nearly an hour it was time to look on the TK+3 line – I had expected it to be solid but initially I couldn’t get a bite, the fish having clearly cleaned-out the groundbait fed at the start of the match. Feeding another couple of balls of Special G did the trick, though the sport wasn’t as hectic as previous sessions, possibly due to the slightly cooler weather conditions or possibly due to the number of matches that have been held on this lake lately.
  
With a couple of hours gone I didn’t seem to be going anywhere so after feeding 4 more balls of groundbait on the TK+3 line I decided to flick my bomb and wafter to the rope (regretfully I hadn’t been feeding 8mm pellets via a catapult as I should’ve been whilst fishing the pole) – after a couple of minutes the tip pulled ‘round and I was attached to a nice skimmer (I’d hoped it was a carp but that’s life I guess). Switching to an X-Safe inline cage feeder with a 60cm hooklength and two dead red maggots I quickly snared two more before a couple of chucks with nothing but chewed maggots saw a switch to a 30cm tail – this instantly led to a stockie carp then absolutely nothing!!!
  
The view to the left
  
Whilst fishing the feeder I’d taken the opportunity to pump a few 4mm expander pellets and prepare some 4mm hard pellets (by adding a little pellet oil to get them to sink quickly) – the combination of these baits seemed to work well on the margin line and meant that every bite was from a stockie carp or an F1, the perch not seeming to fancy pellets.
  
Plenty of bites!
  
By continuing to feed the TK+3 line aggressively with groundbait I was also able to get amongst more skimmers, but as before I knew that the intended 100 pounds plus of small fish definitely wasn’t on the cards – my final weight of 57-0-0 consisting of 11-0-0 of bigger carp (that early margin munter and another 2lb sample I felt worthy of placing into my big fish net) and 46-0-0 of skimmers, stockie carp and F1s.
  
Caption competition time!
  
Surprisingly this was enough to beat all of the anglers to my left on my bank (despite the wind blowing that way) and when the two anglers to my right couldn’t beat me I thought I was in for some section money – until the mighty Mark Eves slammed 70 odd pounds onto the scales from (end) peg 97 that is!!! (Mark’s weight consisted of just 30 pounds of small fish but 40 plus pounds of big carp, once again showing that to do well on this lake you definitely need a good amount of big fish, albeit backed-up with a reasonable amount of smaller fish.) Well done to Paul ‘Tommy’ Hiller on the win and Nick Howell on taking second place!!!
  
Until next time ...
  
  

Sunday 9 July 2017

09 July 2017, Middle Lake (Gold Valley)

After a cracking walking holiday in the Lake District last week it was back on the bank again today and another go at an open match on Middle Lake at Gold Valley – there wasn’t a huge turn-out but it was a quality field once again featuring the likes of Daiwa Dorking’s Paul ‘Tommy’ Hiller and Mark Goddard as well as the usual venue experts in the form of Olly Tilley, Charlie Dalton and Eddie Green (the older version).
  
Peg 61 on Middle Lake
  
Having fished a couple of competitions on this lake recently I had formed a pre-match plan that involved drawing a nice peg in the middle of the lake and fishing for the newly stocked carp and original skimmers with maggots over groundbait from front to back, ignoring the older/bigger carp and trying to build a winning weight by catching the smaller fish at a decent rate all day. Unfortunately this plan was somewhat scuppered when I drew peg 61, the corner peg nearest the clubhouse – this had been a great peg through the winter (as the new fish seemed to shoal-up next to the parallel margin), but since the weather has warmed-up and the fish have spread-out a quick look at the Gold Valley Facebook page revealed some really poor weights returned by some really top anglers!
  
Pre-match tidy side tray
  
Being a rather warm day again there were quite a few of the older carp cruising about and as I had access to the parallel margin to my left I set-up the following before the start of the match:
  • Mugging rig #1 featuring black Nick Gilbert Amber Core elastic, a top kit’s worth of 0.17 Guru N-Gauge, a 0.6g Drennan inline crystal dibber and a 25cm hooklength made-up of 0.15 line into a size 16 LWG with a hair loop
  • Mugging rig #2 – same as above but featuring a hair-rigged pellet band instead of a loop
  • A pellet waggler rod incorporating one of the new Guru foam wagglers (3SSG)
  • A rig for fishing straight in front at TK+3 for the new carp made-up of green Nick Gilbert Amber Core elastic, 0.17 mainline, a 4x16 Malman Roob and a 15cm hooklength of 0.13 into a size 16 Kaizen
  • A final rig for fishing tight to the parallel margin to the left consisting of black Nick Gilbert Amber Core elastic, 0.17, a 0.4g Drennan margin crystal and a 15cm hooklength of 0.15 into a size 16 Kaizen – this rig was slightly heavier than the one above as I was hoping some of the older carp might be lurking here alongside the newer fish and there was a snaggy looking overhanging tree to deal with!
  
Cheeky bow wave
  
I started the match by feeding 4 balls of Bait-Tech Special G groundbait and dead read maggots on the TK+3 line (with hindsight this was something of a mistake but more on that later) and picked-up mugging rig #1 – a 7mm cube of luncheon meat was mounted on the hair and I began looking for cruising carp within pole range. By standing on the footplate of my box and wearing the correct eyewear (prescription Oakley sunglasses) I was able to spot a number of candidates and in less than 30 minutes I had three nice big carp in the net for 20 plus pounds – not a bad start when you consider that only a low 60lb weight was needed to pick-up money on Friday’s match on this lake!
  
The view to the left
  
Inevitably the cruising carp disappeared so after 45 minutes it was time to switch my attentions to the smaller carp and F1s that had hopefully moved over my TK+3 line – in fact I knew that they had as this part of my swim was fizzing like mad and looked like a faulty jacuzzi! I thought the bottom felt a bit sticky when plumbing-up but as I’d never really experienced any silty swims on this lake before I ignored it, definitely another item for the ever growing cock-up list! Whilst there were plenty of fish present it was really hard to get a run of proper bites going, no doubt due to the fact that the fish couldn’t see my hookbait given all of the silt that was being churned-up!!!
  
Mid-match side tray carnage
  
At this point I should’ve moved this line a meter or so to the left or right but instead I decided to let the fizzing subside and tried loose feeding live maggots via a pole mounted pot instead. This seemed to work for a while - until the fish came-up in the water that is, something that I’m still surprised by as this line was certainly no more than 3 feet deep! I hastily set-up a jigga rig and after landing 5 fish in as many minutes I thought I’d stumbled onto a winning formula before the fish disappeared on me – luckily a switch back to the long pole mugging rig got me another big fish on a 7mm cube of luncheon meat so I felt I was back on track for a decent score as at the halfway point as I reckoned on having about 40 pounds in the net.
  
Yours truly playing a late fish
  
Unfortunately the second half of the match wasn’t as good as the first! I didn’t see a single muggable fish for the remainder of the match and the supply of stockie carp from the TK+3 line soon petered-out, the only saving grace being a big carp out of the blue on this short line and a bit of a run of fish towards the end of the match from the line tight to the bank to the left – I probably should’ve caught more from this line but I got a little hacked-off having to re-tie rigs for this line 3 times after being taken through the overhanging branches on a number of occasions!!!
  
Not quite enough!
  
In the end my fish went 61-8-0, 38lb of big carp and 23-8-0 of stockie carp and F1s. This left me one from last in my five peg section though it shows how tight things were as I was less than 25 pounds behind eventual winner Olly Tilley!!!
  
Until next time ...