Today was the first day of the Old English Cider festival at White Acres – in this festival the 80 competitors are split into four sections of 20, and each section is then split into 4 sub-sections of 5 anglers with a sub-section winner scoring five points, second place four points, etc., etc. It is a four day festival and the points gained each day go towards your final total with no concept of dropping your worst score (as is the norm with the five day spring and autumn festivals). My lake rotation was to be Python, Trewaters (both lakes), Twin Oaks (both lakes) then Acorn or Canal.
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| The famous Python Wides* |
Python is one of the older lakes on the White Acres complex and is wedged between Jenny’s Lake and Pollawyn. It is a snake lake with about 40 pegs – the majority of the pegs in the twenties and above (plus those with single digits) have the central island within reach on the pole, though there is a bulge in the lake from peg 12 to 18 where is it up to about 30m to the island. This area is known as the ‘Wides’ and is the best part of the lake as you can catch to the far side on the tip and down the middle shallow on the pole. Python is mainly stocked with F1s, fantails, tench and skimmers, with proper carp being quite few and far between.
I drew peg 10 – last peg on the Wides (well just about), with rushes on the far side, and some on the inside to the right as well (the bank on the left margin was featureless). I was pretty happy with this draw as peg 11 was the only peg to my left in my section (so I wasn’t competing against the better pegs in the Wides proper) and the 3 pegs to my right didn’t have any far bank features and it narrows quite considerably as you follow the path to the tackle shop.
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| 20 and 30g pellet feeders set-up today |
Whilst setting-up my box and side tray I could see a few fish topping and moving about in the rushes opposite, so I fancied this as my main line of attack and tackled-up my two Preston 10’ Mini Carp rods with a pellet feeder on each – both with small Preston inline models, but one with a 30g version the other a 20g model. (I normally prefer the 30g version as it is better for casting, but in the past I’ve found you lose a lot less F1s on the retrieve with a lighter method or pellet feeder.) Hooklengths were on 0.19 Reflo Power and featured Guru QM1 hooks with a hair rigged pellet band – size 16 for a 6mm hard pellet and a 14 for an 8mm fluro pop-up. (The fluro pop-up hooklengths also included two number 8 stotz an inch from the hook to keep the boilie fairly close to the mouth of the feeder.)
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| Both pole rigs were straight through on 0.13 |
I also set-up 3 pole rigs – a 4x10 KC Carpa Shelf for fishing shallow, a 4x12 KC Carpa Chimp for fishing in front of the reeds to my right and a 4x10 Preston Dura Float Plus 6 for fishing tight to the bank on my left. All rigs were tied to 0.13 Reflo Power – the shallow rig included a hooklength of 0.11 with an eyed Kamasan B911 size 18 and a hair rigged bait band, the other 2 straight through to an eyed B911 size 18 again. (Python isn’t stuffed with double figure carp so I felt 0.13 line combined with an eyed hook provided a good balance between strength and finesse.)
I’m pleased to say the match itself went surprisingly well – I started on the 30g pellet feeder to the rushes on the far bank and in total landed about 30lb of small (one pound or less) F1s and tench on a pretty consistent basis during the first 4 hours or so. (I didn’t even pick-up the 20g version, and the fish seemed to take an equal liking to my 6mm hard pellet and 8mm fluro pop-up hookbaits.) As sport on the tip slowed during the fourth hour I switched to the pole for the last part of the match. I fed a couple of balls of Sonubait’s Supercrush Green groundbait on both margin lines and fished a worm over the top – this led to some small perch, a 1.5lb perch and 2.5lb tench on the line to the right in front of the rushes and a double figure carp (that took me nearly 20 minutes to land on Preston 11h Hollo elastic) tight to the bank on my left!!!
That carp was of course a massive bonus and boosted my weight to 46-0-0 – I was up and running with a very pleasing section and lake win! (The other section winners in my rotation were Ricky Lale (23-2-0), Claire ‘Bagger’ Hollis (17-9-0) and Brendan Turner (15-0-0).)
After day one there were always going to be 16 anglers tied on 5 points at the top of the table, but currently the top five is:
- Will Sweeney (5 points, 102-4-0)
- Paul Hardman (5 points, 76-1-0)
- Rich Britton (5 points, 64-15-0)
- Clive Hamilton (5 points, 64-6-0)
- Alan ‘Big Hair’ Symonds (5 points, 52-14-0)
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*Photo courtesy of http://wiganangler.blogspot.co.uk
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