As I have next week off work as a holiday today’s match will with any luck be the first of 3 in 8 days at my local Marsh Farm – as the weather forecast is pretty good for the time of year I’m ever hopeful of a few pulls!
Surprising my dip into the bag of dreams yielded the same peg as my last visit to Marsh Farm – peg 8 – so a nice wide peg in the favoured area (at the moment) in front of the on-site tackle shop. However unlike that previous visit today’s weather was pretty good – sunny and fairly windy (but not so strong that holding 13m of pole would be an issue).
Prior to the all-in I prepared 4 set-ups – pole rigs for fishing left and right at 13m, a traditional cage feeder with a long tail (45cm of 0.13 N-Gauge to a size 20 LWG) and a pellet feeder. (As the wind was fairly strong I erred on the side of caution a went with the 30g Preston pellet feeder as opposed to the 20g version that can be more productive in better conditions at Marsh Farm.)
Please go ‘round!!!
On the whistle I fed 4 balls of Old Ghost Green Alga groundbait on my right-hand pole line, one third of a pot of micros on the left-hand line and settled down for some pellet feeder fishing. This led to an early tench, but a lack of further action forced me onto the pole – which wasn’t much better as I finished the first hour with just the one tench and 4 of the smallest roach in the county!
The second and third hours weren’t much better as all I could muster was a solitary skimmer on the cage feeder and a decent bream from the groundbaited pole swim that fell-off for no good reason as I was about to slip the next under it – not something you can normally afford to do at relative hard waters such as Marsh Farm!
Fish on!
Things did though pick-up in the fourth hour as two decent tench found their way to the net courtesy of the pellet feeder – however the action really started to hot up once I started to ping 6mm pellets over the top of my pellet feeder line via a catapult. This simple change saw 6 tench, 2 carp (one of which was a proper munter) and a crucian landed in the final 90 minutes (today’s match was fished 1000 to 1530) – a proper bag-up session by Marsh Farm standards!
Dave Ewing Snr on the scales
Whenever I feel I’ve done well I seem to pack-up really quickly and can’t wait for the scales to arrive – though normally I take ages squirrelling my gear away and can’t help but feel a sense of foreboding when the grim reaper appears!
Overall top 4:
Phil Morris, 40-9-0
Dave Steer, 26-9-0
Charlie Salmon, 20-12-0
Dave Lake, 19-15-0
So in the end something of a struggle turned into a first victory since October 2014 – though in the end the big carp (which went 11-14-0) wasn’t needed as I already had just enough to sneak past the living legend that is Dave Steer.
Bosh!
Conclusions: Over recent weeks I’ve really struggled to catch anything at all on the pellet feeder – something that is tremendously worrying when 99% of your successes in recent seasons has been on that method! Anyway the vast improvement in the weather over recent days seems to have brought the tactic to life, so perhaps 2015 will be a good year after all!!!
If I was being honest I’d say that last of my most memorable matches have been down in Cornwall at White Acres – mainly on Acorn, Twin Oaks and Bolingey. However the annual Angling Times Supercup has provided some noteworthy days over the years – mostly for the wrong reasons (Bough Beech – I hate long distance feeder fishing; Moor House Farm – frozen solid and all the fish at either end of the lake with me right in the middle; Wood Lane Fisheries – does a fishing venue really need to be that deep?) and in 12 attempts my Godalming Midweekers/Apollo Godalming team has been knocked-out in the first round every time!!!
Welcome to Woodpeckers
This year’s draw once again saw us handed an away fixture – the 2015 campaign was to start against a team from Warlingham & District Anglers’ Society, a club well known to most of the Godalming AS regulars as for a few years we fished together on jollies to Monk Lakes.
Being the home team Warlingham had the choice of venue and they decided to take us to Woodpeckers Fishery near Crawley in West Sussex – none of my Apollo Godalming team mates or myself had been there before but word on the grapevine was that the place was fishing hard with recent matches won with as little as 17lb, hardly prolific for a venue that is apparently "very well stocked with a large selection of species"!
The venue itself (there are 3 or 4 lakes onsite) was quite a pretty place, the lake we were on (Woodpeckers Lake) having about 30 pegs and lots of features such as islands, overhanging trees and reed beds.
My draw saw me on permanent peg 21 – a very fishy looking spot at the top end of the lake with a nice chuck to an island (with a fallen tree in the water), another fallen tree to the left and plenty of room to the right with some of last year’s reeds still visible.
Will a fluorocarbon leader make a difference?
Before the all-in I prepared two rigs – the first being a 24g Guru pellet feeder (featuring the X-Safe system as opposed to my usual free-running set-up) with a 3 foot leader of 10lb (0.30) Drennan Supplex fluorocarbon above it and 10cm hooklength of 0.22 N-Gauge to either a size 14 or a size 16 QM1 and a hair-rigged band below it. (Previously I’ve always stuck with free-running method/pellet feeder approaches – however it appears that venues such as White Acres and Gold Valley are now allowing the use of the Guru X-Safe system so I wanted to try this out alongside the use of fast sinking fluorocarbon that is said to partially disguise what can be fairly crude feeders.)
The second rig was for the pole at 13m slightly to the left – as this approach was aimed at skimmers it was based around yellow Hydro, 0.13 mainline, a 0.2g SconeZone v8 and a 15cm hooklength of 0.10 to a size 18 Tubertini 808. Plumbing-up revealed that the lake was shallow (2.5-3 feet) and silty.
A dabble on the long pole ...
I kicked-off my match by feeding a reasonable amount of soaked micros, 4mm expanders and dead red maggots on my 13m pole line and spent half an hour on the pellet feeder towards the island directly opposite. Despite looking amazingly fishy this didn’t even yield the slightest of liners, so it was soon over to the pole – hardly bagging, but a couple of small skimmers at least got me off the mark on what was already looking like a hard day for most.
At the start of the second hour I did see a massive bow wave over the spot where I’d been casting the feeder so as the pole line was still mighty slow I decided to switch back to the feeder and started pinging 8mm pellets over the top. This did eventually lead to a convincing pull that was actually a massive liner, but even though I tried swapping my pellet feeder for an inline Guru lead with a 12 inch tail (in case the fish were shying away from the feeder) I failed to actually hook any carp.
As it was looking increasingly unlikely that the pellet feeder was going to be at all productive I found a spot on the 13m pole to the right of my initial line that had the same depth as my existing rig and fed 3 balls of Old Ghost Green Alga – hopefully this would act as a positive plan B whilst I continued to winkle-out a few more skimmers on the negatively fed line.
A tasty looking margin to the right!
The positively fed pole line was soon doing the business and the third hour of the match saw a good run of reasonable skimmers and two very welcome carp – virtually every fish falling to a single white maggot, red maggots and 4mm expanders being completely ignored. Unfortunately I also lost two more good fish (probably carp) – whilst yellow Hydro is an amazingly good elastic for skimmers and the odd better fish, there are times when decent fish will run you ragged on it, but as I was fishing a team match for mainly small fish I was reluctant to upgrade to anything heavier in case I started to bump smaller fish.
Things started to slow considerably going into hour number four, so as I had lots of room and a margin full of features to my right I decided to set-up a rig to target carp close to the bank at top kit plus two – white Hydro, 0.15 mainline, 4x12 KC Carpa Force and a 15cm hooklength of 0.13 to an eyed Guru LWG size 16. At 1345 (we were fishing 1000-1500 today) I fed this line with 3 pots of Green Alga and dead red maggots went back to fishing the feeder – that continued to be a complete waste of time!
I kept my beady eye on the margin line for tell-tale signs of carp but for quite a while there wasn’t the slightest movement so I kept rotating my two 13m pole lines, picking-up a few more skimmers and another bonus carp (once again over the line fed with groundbait).
With fifteen minutes to go I finally saw a tail pattern over my margin line so I was soon in with a nice big worm – the float flew under straight away but unfortunately the culprit was foul-hooked in the left pectoral fin. (I know this because despite taking quarter on an hour to land I eventually got the biggest fish of the day in the net just as the final whistle blew!)
By the time the scales reached my peg my Apollo Godalming team were actually 2-0 up but luckily I was able to do my bit for the team as my 19-8-0 of carp and skimmers were enough to make it 3-0 – the Warlingham angler in the next section (J Gibbon) would make it 3-1, but Bagger was soon on hand to make it 4-1 and give us an unassailable lead. (Colin Underwood would also go on to clinch the final section to make it 5-1.)
Individual top 3:
J Gibbon, 23-12-0
C Underwood, 23-0-0
P Morris, 19-8-0
So after 12 years of hurt the unthinkable has happened – we’re into round two of the Angling Times Supercup 2015!!!
Team selfie
Conclusions: Over the years I’ve been lucky enough to win a few individual matches and do reasonably well in some White Acres festivals – however nothing competes with sharing success with your mates, so I’m pretty sure today is already going to be one of the most memorable of 2015!!!
If I was to be asked such a question, I’d say that the worst weather conditions for fishing at Marsh Farm would be those bright, sunny, still days – on that basis today’s match (with heavy showers and near 50mph winds) should’ve been a proper bag-up session!
Cracking weather forecast!
Despite predictions of terrible weather conditions today’s event (an inter-club match between Godalming AS and Woking DAA) saw an amazing turn-out of 44 anglers grace the banks of Richardson’s Lake at Marsh Farm – a fact even more amazing when you consider that the recent Wednesday matches have been won with weights not even close to 30 pounds!
My dip into the bag of dreams saw peg 8 bubble to the surface – a pretty wide peg in the area just down from the favoured pegs directly in front of the tackle shop. (They are favoured as you can pick-up the Wi-Fi from the clubhouse and they’re a short walk from the shop if boredom really sets in!)
Hooklength components for the cage feeder
During the week I’d devised lovely plan consisting of fishing a pellet/cage feeder to the island, long pole to the left with loose fed maggots and long pole to the right with 4mm expander pellets over softened micro pellets/groundbait – however given the super-strong winds I decided to leave the pole in the bag at the start and instead went with just the two tip rods.
The first featured a 24g Guru pellet feeder and a 10cm hooklength of 0.19 N-Gauge to a size 16 QM1 with a hair-rigged pellet band; the second a 10g Drennan cage feeder with an additional 5g stick-on weight – I find the 10g feeder to be the perfect size for those hard days but I add an extra weight as I find 15g to be a much better for accurate casting. The hooklength for the cage feeder rig was 18 inches of 0.13 to a size 20 LWG – ideal for a single maggot and the prospect of some decent tench and skimmer bream.
Fish on
Like most Godalming AS club matches at Marsh Farm today’s competition was scheduled for 6 hours – though I’m not sure why as in my experience the fishing really tails-off here after 3 or 4 hours! I spent the first hour on the cage feeder 6-8m from the far bank – hopefully into the deeper water just before it starts to shelve-up before the shallow far margin. Despite dropping my feeder in roughly the same spot a number of times (no mean feat given the mega left to right wind that was blowing) my Old Ghost Green Alga and single dead white maggot could only tempt a single bite – a feisty one pound crucian that nearly dragged the rod in (serves me right for being on Facebook rather than paying attention).
Going into the second hour I decided to give the pellet feeder a go a little further up the shelf and almost instantly switched my 24g Guru model for a small 30g Preston effort in order to combat the ever increasing wind. Unfortunately no bites materialised on this, so as Ken Russell on the peg 9 was catching a few on the pole I decided to set-up a rig for fishing at top kit plus 3 – as far as I dared venture for fear of snapping a section or two!
The pole also failed to yield any bites so by twelve thirty I was back on the cage feeder – just as I was starting to get a little despondent (peg 8 is too far from the clubhouse to get the Wi-Fi and the 3G signal around Milford is patchy) the tip pulled ‘round and a nice 3lb bream was soon in the net.
Even more surprisingly another one snapped-up my single dead white maggot hookbait next cast – game on! The following cast was fishless but a switch to a shorter 12 inch tail and double maggot saw a smaller specimen hit the landing net. Things then started to dry-up, but a switch back to an 18 inch tail eventually led to another skimmer, leaving me in a decent position going into the final two hours.
Duck!
As is often the case at Marsh Farm the final third of today’s match was absolute torture and I could only manage one more bite – a reasonable fish that inexplicably fell-off half way back to the bank. (As ever I was pretty sure this mistake was going to cost me come the final reckoning.) Well at least the weather improved – well it stopped raining for the last hour anyway!
The scores on the doors
As is often the case the Grim Reaper was soon at my peg with the scales and my crucian and four skimmers could only pull the dial ‘round to 9-11-0 (to be honest that’s a lie – the scales were those new digital ones that nobody trusts). Here the top scores on the day:
Nick Stunt (Woking DAA), 17-13-0
John Brownlie (W), 16-9-0
Ian Covey (Godalming AS), 15-0-0
Pete Worsfold (W), 14-3-0
P Makins (W), 12-11-0
Section winners:
Ken Russell (G), 11-8-0
Adie Hoile (W), 12-10-0
G Whiting (W), 12-2-0
Colin (Legend) Underwood (G), 12-1-0
So congratulation to Nick Stunt on taking the spoils and to Woking DAA for picking-up most of the prizes!
All the gear ...
Conclusions: Well as predicted that final lost fish really cost me as it probably would’ve put me in front of Ken Russell and into the money as a default section winner – though as ever I’m the one saying that tales of lost fish in the car park after a match count for nothing! I could also claim that two further bites from decent bream would’ve won me the match – but if it was as simple as that why couldn’t I manage it?!?!?!
Following last week’s slightly abortive return to match fishing I was really looking forward to today’s match – especially as some long awaited sunshine was forecast at last!
Pre-match debrief
According to Google Maps, the Rushmoor Lakes complex (located near Tilford, Surrey) is only 14 minutes from my house – but despite this fact today’s visit was to be my first to a venue described as 'a superb day ticket fishery for all types of angler from the novice to the more mature angler' on their website.
The lake we were fishing today is what I’d call a typical flooded valley – Kingfisher Lake is long and thin, with a shallow, narrower top end that gets progressively deeper as it moves towards the man-made dam at the bottom end. The venue is also one of the prettiest that I’ve come across – there are trees and rhododendrons everywhere, the banks are lined with bark chippings (so thankfully no mud) and the general feel is typical of the nearby Frensham Common.
My dip into the bag of dreams yielded peg 11 – a swim slap bang in the middle of the dam wall with local legends Mick Redman on peg 9 to my left and Trevor Haskell (sporting a pair of those funky new Guru daps) to my right on peg 11 for company. Plumbing-up revealed in excess of 3 feet tight to the empty peg 10 to my left, a fairly rapid increase in depth as I came away from the bank for a few meters before the plummet dropped-off a cliff into the abyss beyond about 5 meters!!!
Pole gear for silvers
Having not fished the venue before I did the usual asking around during the week and information from Barney’s Worms supremo Giovanni Barbato indicated that we were fishing for quality roach with natural baits and small carp with more modern baits such as corn. Given the nice weather (and my loathing of fishing on the deck on deep venues with a pole) my pre-match plan looked like this:
Just off the bottom in 6 feet of water at an angle to my left with maggots for roach at top kit plus one
Pole shallow at 13m (again with maggots for roach)
Tight to the spare peg to my left with corn and pellets for carp
Tight to the spare peg to my right with groundbait and dead red maggots for carp
Hopefully such a plan would cover a few bases, though when fishing somewhere for the first time I think you need to keep an open mind and it pays to have an eagle eye on what everybody else is doing!
I decided to start short with maggots
On the whistle I fed a small handful of corn and 6mm pellets on my left-hand margin line and picked-up the rig for fishing on the deck at top kit plus one – this set-up consisted of a 0.2g SconeZone V8 on 0.13 mainline to a 15cm hooklength of 0.10 with a size 20 Tubertini 808, elastic was yellow hydro. (Whilst aimed at roach, the inclusion of a half sensible hooklength and hollow elastic gave me half a chance if I hooked a small carp or other bonus fish.)
Sport was hardly hectic, but during the first 60 minutes I at least managed a few bites on single maggot and ended-up putting 5 or 6 roach in the net. From my vantage point in the middle of the dam wall I could see what virtually every other angler was up to, and with the exception of Dave Lake’s first cast carp and Colin Underwood’s early chub, most seemed to be really struggling with bites very few and far between.
The decline of the short line coincided with the clouds clearing and the sun appearing – a very welcome sight following last week’s soaking at Gold Valley! This gave me all the incentive I needed and I was soon shipping out my shallow rig to 13m and spraying maggots about like there was no tomorrow. (The shallow rig was identical to that used for fishing short with the exception that it was set-up to fish through the water to 3 feet.)
After 10 minutes or so of constant feeding I was soon into the first of a decent run of quality roach and by twelve thirty (today’s match was fished from ten to three thirty) I was confident I’d pushed my total up to a good five pounds or so. With nobody else seeming to have put a run of fish together I tucked into my tuna roll looking forward to the final three hours and building towards a decent total.
15g Drennan cage feeder and Preston Innovations feeder bead link
Unfortunately the fish hadn’t read the script and to cut a long story short I didn’t manage to add to my tally at all from twelve thirty to the final whistle at three thirty – and the people I work with think fishing is boring!!! (In order to appease the boredom I swapped between the long and short roach lines, tried my margin swim to my left, fed the margin swim to the right with groundbait/dead red maggots and even set-up a feeder rod to fish at 20m with a cage feeder and a long tail – none of which yielded a single bite!)
Having said that the entire lake seemed to switch off in the afternoon - Mick Redman’s late carp and Trevor Haskell’s skimmer being the only fish I actually saw after lunch.
The scores on the doors
Following the slow torture that was the final three hours of today’s match I was pleased to see the scales – and I was even more pleased when my bag of quality roach pulled the dial around to one ounce short of six pounds, enough for second overall on the day:
Chris Kampa, peg 21, 7-5-0
Phil Morris, peg 11, 5-15-0
Mick Redman, peg 9 & Perry Gray, peg 15, both 5-1-0
Not applicable
Dave Lake, peg 7, 5-0-0
So congratulations must go to Chris Kampa for clinching another victory with a couple of late carp from one of the pegs in the rhododendrons at the far end, and commiserations to Dave Lake for missing a pay-out by an ounce!
All the gear ...
Conclusions: At the end of every match I ask myself a simple question: 'If I could fish the match again, knowing what I know now, what would have I done differently?' I normally come-up with a nice long list of ideas, but today I think I stumbled upon the correct tactics (long pole shallow with maggots for roach) pretty quickly and 5 or 6 more bites could’ve been enough to win the match. All-in-all Rushmoor Lakes seems a pretty decent venue (it’s certainly a nice place to spend a day) and on another day I’m sure the weights would’ve been a lot better – roll-on summer!!!
I think it was Robert Burns that said 'the best laid plans of mice and men often go awry' – well having not fished for the best part of 3 months (in order to avoid struggling for a bite in the wintery conditions that seemed to have settled over the country for a lifetime), the most anticipated comeback in British match fishing history (sic) left me soaking wet, freezing cold and rather peeved after only being able to generate the measly sum of two bites!!!
Gold Valley Waterfowl Sanctuary
After some good looking match results I’d decided to kick-off my spring 2015 campaign on the banks of the southern bagging Mecca that is Gold Valley – however, when news filtered through last night that yesterday’s match had been won with a lowly 36 pounds my plan of fishing positively for carp was hastily replaced with much more cautious skimmer-based thinking!
Having said that, my 'more cautious skimmer-based thinking' was immediately thrown into disarray when I drew peg 84 – an end peg flyer in the far corner of Middle Lake – the lack of open water meaning it was likely to be carp or bust, with hopefully tonnes of carp taking shelter along the long margin parallel to the pegged bank!!!
The usual pellet feeder gear
Given the nature of my peg I decided to leave the pole in the bag (if I had drawn an open water peg I’d have certainly fed a 14.5m line with groundbait and dead maggots for skimmers), and instead put all of my eggs into one basket by setting-up just a single pellet feeder rod – the intention being to search the long, parallel margin for carp and to fool them with a nicely presented pile of pellets and a hookbait they just couldn’t resist!
(Gear for this rod was the usual 8lb Daiwa Sensor mainline, small 30g Preston Innovations pellet feeder stopped by a Guru speed bead, 10cm hooklengths of 0.22 N-Gauge to either a size 16 or a size 14 QM1 hook with a hair-rigged pellet band or bait bayonet.)
Looking left towards the clubhouse
Prior to the 'all in' I was that confident of bagging-up that I actually put all three of the keepnets that I had brought with me into the water – a real show of bravado given the fact that the weight limit per net at Gold Valley is 80 pounds! However, after the first hour came and went with no proper bites to show for my efforts and the entire lake seemingly fishing rock hard this choice seemed rather foolish to say the least!!!
Personally I’m a massive fan of method/pellet feeder fishing – however when the fishing is difficult such tactics can seem very, very crude and there are times when such an approach just isn’t going to work. So having had a few liners but no proper bites I decided that a switch to a more discrete tactic was in order, so I was soon up off of my box and into my rod bag for my second tip rod – this one was rigged-up with a 20g Guru inline lead and a 12 inch hooklength of 0.22 N-Gauge to a size 14 QM1 with a hair-rigged pellet band. Thankfully the switch paid-off and on the second cast (with a bright orange Ringers Allsort on the hair) the tip smashed ‘round and I’d at least managed to avoid the dreaded blank with a 4lb common carp.
A very rare occurrence!!!
That fish hit the net at precisely 12:19 and my second (and final) fish of the day didn’t come along until 15:38 (22 minutes from the 'all out') – if you have any ideas on how to make 3 biteless hours seem exciting in an online match fishing blog please send me your thoughts on the back of a postcard or a sealed down envelope!!!
The second fish was of a similar size (and fell to the same tactics) to the first so my first outing of Spring 2015 saw me put a titanic 8-0-0 on the scales – not quite the start I’d been dreaming about since Christmas!
Scales!!!
Having weighed-in my section I now know that my return of two fish was actually quite reasonable as most anglers around me weren't that far ahead - however the following results show that certain parts of the lake in fact fished very, very well:
Perry Stone, 145-3-0
Tommy Hiller, 93-0-0
Mike Halstead, 60-4-0
John Clarke, 51-8-0
G Anderson, 37-0-0
Charlie Dalton, 33-4-0
So congratulations to Perry Stone who fished a great match from end peg 87 (pegs 85 and 86 are currently out of action whilst a new car park is being constructed), catching consistently from his left-hand margin and on the tip casting diagonally to the parallel bank in front of peg 85. (I know this as I sat opposite him all day - lucky me!)
All the gear ...
Conclusions: as is often the case in winter and early spring, many carp venues can be very peggy as the fish tend to shoal together in tight groups - as a result a few anglers can have a very good day whilst the others struggle. I don't normally like to make such excuses, and I'm happy to admit that 3 months of not fishing has left me extremely rusty, but whilst my pellet feeder tactics are crude compared to the rigs needed to catch roach and F1s, they are extremely effective when fishing a peg full of feeding carp and I'm certain that if there had been a decent number of fish in my peg I would've caught more than the two that I did manage - roll-on summer!!!
Fishing at this time of year isn’t always ideal (especially if like me you can’t stand getting cold or you hate - Heaven forbid - getting your kit covered in mud), but after a couple of weeks sitting around eating turkey and mince pies the invitation to fish the prolific Match Lake at Sumners Ponds was one that was just too good to turn down!
The weather leading-up to today’s match had been mixed – generally temperatures have been above average for late December but the lake would certainly have been frozen solid just three or four days ago. On the way to the venue we were faced with patches of extremely thick fog and the forecast for the day was for light winds, cloudy skies and temperatures peaking at a measly 3 degrees Celsius.
Looking across the lake to the far side
The Match Lake at Sumners Ponds is fast becoming a favourite of mine – there is an excellent café and the lake is full of hard fighting, fast growing carp that probably average 8lb nowadays with lots of doubles, big doubles and twenties!
Interestingly, if you look at the venue on Google Maps you’ll see it shows three central islands – however when you get there you can only see two! This is because the island nearest the car park is now submerged, with only a rather odd looking tree sticking-up out of the water like King Arthur’s Excalibur. My draw today saw me on the right hand side of the lake (as you face it from the car park), in front of the sunken island, one peg to the right of the tree.
24g Guru pellet feeders were the order of the day
After setting-up my box and having a good look at the peg for 5 minutes or so I settled on a two pronged attack – a pellet feeder rod to be cast into the deeper water in front of the sunken island for carp and a pole rig to be fished at 14.5m slightly to my left for skimmers. (During the summer I would definitely have set-up rigs for fishing at 5m and in the margins, but given the fairly tight pegging and the time of year I decided such tactics were unlikely to be viable.)
Kit for the leger set-up consisted of a 24g Guru pellet feeder free running on 8lb Daiwa Sensor main line, stopped by one of the new Guru speed beads. Hooklengths were all 10cm of 0.22 N-Gauge – with a size 16 QM1 and a hair-rigged band for 6mm pellets, with a size 14 QM1 and a hair-rigged band for 8mm pellets and with a size 14 QM1 and a hair-rigged bayonet for 8mm pop-up boilies. (The final style of hooklength also included two number 8 stotz an inch from the hook to stop the boilie popping-up too far.)
The pole rig was made-up on 0.13 N-Gauge main line and featured a 4x14 KC Carpa Chimp with a strung bulk of number 10 stotz. The hooklength was 15cm of 0.11 finished off with a size 18 Tubertini 808. Elastic was yellow Hydro.
Spot the subtle Frenzee keepnet!
On the whistle I feed 4 small balls of Old Ghost Green Alga and soaked micro pellets on the pole line and settled down to fish the pellet feeder. First cast went to the mark at about 30m and after 10 minutes I reeled in and repeated the process – I did this for the first hour (rotating hookbaits as I went) without even the merest of line bites. Happy days!!!
A quick look on the pole with a 4mm expander pellet didn’t produce any bites either – this pattern continued through the second hour, so by 12 o’clock I was still fishless and staring down the barrel of starting 2015 with a Blankety Blank cheque book and pen!!!
New Guru inline lead with a stem
By this point I was getting a right old battering from the anglers on the pegs opposite (including my travelling partner Claire ‘Bagger’ Hollis who had gotten off to a flyer and was winning the match at this point with 4 or 5 proper munters) so I decided to try something different.
To this end I set-up a straight lead rod and started pinging 8mm pellets to about 25m. Frankly this didn’t work at all, but a half ounce roach on the pole and the smallest carp in the lake (at about 0-15-8) on the pellet feeder at least got me off the mark – though with just a pound in the net with only 2 hours to go it was highly unlikely I was going to trouble the scalesman’s lumbago!!!
Fluro pop-ups and bayonets did the business
With nothing left to lose I chose to focus my efforts solely on the pellet feeder through until the end of the match and decided to take a few feet out of the clip each cast in order to cast closer and closer to the sunken island. (I had been loathed to do this earlier as from where I was sat the shallow bar (which was clearly visible when the skies brightened) seemed very, very shallow and as it was early January and the water fairly clear I couldn’t see it holding any fish.)
Anyway, after a few casts and fishing closer and closer to the sunken island I was finally into one of Sumners Ponds’ proper carp – well at least for the few seconds before the fish swam across the bar and shredded my 0.22 hooklength!!! After a slight lull I then hooked and landed four big old boys in a row – I’d learned my lesson from that first fish and started standing-up and holding the rod over my head in order to keep the fish away from the rocky sunken island until they were into open water. I also managed a further 3 decent carp in the final 75 minutes, giving me a total of 7 proper fish in the final 2 hours to go with my pound from the first 3.
Scores on the doors volume 1 ...
... and volume 2
Regular visitors to Sumners Ponds won’t be surprised to hear that my fish weighed a total of 76-14-0 – not a bad average considering that two of the proper carp were probably only 5 pounds each. In the end it turned out that my closing efforts had shot me up the leader board into fourth place, just ahead of Bagger whose match faded away after that good start.
Top 6 overall:
Mark Tester, 131-8-0
Phil Tubb, 89-14-0
Kev Parker, 79-1-0
Phil Morris, 76-14-0
Claire Hollis, 75-5-0
Steve Tubb, 71-4-0
Silver fish pool winner:
Paul Ward, 16-12-0
So congratulations to Mark Tester for winning the match with a convincing tonne and thanks to Adam Tester for organising the match.
The fog starts to descend again
Conclusions: at this point I’m split between using the phrase ‘location, location, location’ and the phrase ‘a game of two halves’!!! Fishing where the fish are happy to hang out is certainly the key to success in the winter – in the summer it is definitely possible to get the fish to come to you with the right feeding pattern, but in the winter such an approach never seems to work. And whilst I’m happy to have salvaged my match and snuck into the frame I can’t help but think I should’ve tried fishing the obvious feature in my peg much, much sooner – isn’t hindsight a wonderful thing?!?!?!?
After a record breaking eight weekends in a row without fishing it was about time I got back on the bank – and what better way to do so than with the highlight of the season that is the Godalming Angling Society Christmas match!!!
3 blanks and 2 victories in the last 5 years
My record in this match over the last five years reads: 2009 blank, 2010 blank, 2011 winner, 2012 winner, 2013 blank so I went into today’s match knowing that a conclusive result was almost certainly on the cards! In all fairness a lot of people expect to finish this match with a dry net but some great prizes and a raffle in the pub after the match normally guarantees a good turn-out – today’s event saw 36 keen anglers grace the bank of Richardson’s Lake at Marsh Farm, the match having been moved from the River Wey due to some heavy rain during the week.
Not the number I wanted to see!!!
Marsh Farm is a decent enough venue, but the nature of the stocking means that it only really fishes properly from late spring through to early autumn. At this time of year very few anglers fish here, and those that do tend to sit on the single digit pegs opposite the car park/tackle shop at the entrance to the venue and to a certain extent create a virtuous circle between themselves and the fish.
In complete contrast the pegs at the far side of the venue don’t normally see an angler for months and as a result are devoid of feeding fish! As a result I inserted my hand into the bag of dreams looking for a nice low number – so you can imagine my feeling of doom when 31 stuck to it! (This peg is in the middle of ‘Cyanide Straight’, two along from where I (and the rest of the section) blanked last year.) To say I wasn’t happy was the understatement of the year!!!
Like a mill pond ...
Despite stating otherwise after the draw I did actually go to the peg and was pleasantly surprised to find that compared to the rest of the venue the Johnson’s bank was very sheltered – whereas it was blowing a gale on the rest of the venue, the pegs in the 30s were like a mill pond. The fish at Marsh Farm famously follow the wind in the summer, so perhaps the polar opposite would be true in the winter?
Before the all in I set up two rods – a 1/3 ounce straight lead with an 18 inch tail of 0.13 Guru N-Gauge into a size 20 LWG and a 3g loaded insert waggler with a similar 20cm hooklength (down the line I just had a tiny micro swivel and tow number 9 stotz). The intention was to ping a few white maggots towards (but not tight to) the far bank and to rotate between the waggler and bomb in the unlikely anticipation of avoiding yet another blank!!!
Sensible gear for the tip and waggler
Just before the 10 o’clock I dived into my bag for my phone and took a few quick photos of the peg – in doing so my battery went from fully charged to empty in a matter of seconds. I was now faced with the prospect of blanking and not even having Facebook to keep myself amused – shocker!!!
On the whistle I fed a few maggots and flicked out the waggler – I repeated the process every few minutes and before I knew it 45 minutes had passed without so much as the faintest dip of the float. However, even though I was feeding towards the far bank, on a couple of occasions I’d thought I seen a little dimpling down the middle. With nothing to lose I reeled my waggler to the midpoint of my peg – and it only went under! I can honestly say I’ve never been so happy to slip the net under a rather emaciated two ounce skimmer in my entire life!!!
Looking to the left from peg 31
Thinking it must’ve been a one-off I tried the trick again – and the float dipped for a second time! As the spot I was dropping on to was only about 12/13m out I decided to abandon the waggler and hastily set-up the pole. Whilst doing so I decided to flick my straight lead rig with a single maggot onto the area that I had been feeding – yes, you’ve guessed it, whilst I was putting my seventh section into the sixth the tip flew ‘round and am unexpected 2lb skimmer was soon in the onion bag!
To make things even better the first two casts on the pole saw two more 2lb skimmers in the net (one might’ve been foul-hooked in the fin but keep that to yourself) and things were getting serious!!! (The pole rig in question consisted of a 0.2g SconeZone v8 shot with 5 number 10 stotz on 0.11 main line to a hooklength of 0.10 with a size 22 Tubertini 808. Elastic was yellow Hydro.)
The SconeZone v8
Following this frantic action things did slow a little with only small roach, hybrids and skimmers falling to the pole – however given the time of year it was nice to be getting (fairly) regular bites. In an attempt to keep pace with Brian Stevens on peg 33 (who was absolutely motoring with a constant stream of big skimmers) I kept trying the tip – I did manage another big skimmer on the bomb and 6mm pellet, plus another smaller one on the pellet feeder – but with 45 minutes to go I decided not to gamble and sit it out for big fish but stuck to catching small fish on the pole in an effort to consolidate a place in the frame.
All the gear ...
In the end my fish went an unexpected 15-4-0, good enough for third overall behind Brian’s whopping thirty plus pounds and Chris Kampa’s excellent 18-13-0.
Top 6:
Brian Stevens, 31-4-0
Chris Kampa, 18-13-0
Phil Morris, 15-4-0
Dave Woolgar, 9-5-0
Ray Carter, 8-0-0
Nigel Calverley, 7-12-0
Interestingly all of the anglers in section where I had wanted to draw blanked apart from John Wilkins who managed a solitary fish – just goes to show what I know!!!
The Team Bagger AGM
Conclusions: The obvious point I have to make here is that fish do have fins and the pegs that the so-called ‘venue experts’ think are the fliers aren’t the best pegs every day – though having said that I’m looking forward to sitting on Twin Oaks 16 a couple of times next year!!!
