23 February 2013, Small Lake (Willow Park)

I started my last match write-up with a quote from Jon Arthur about people who only post details of matches where they’ve had a good result – I’m wishing now that I’d have saved that quote for this blog entry as this week I didn’t even induce a vague suspicion of a bite!!!

The Small Lake at Willow Park

After yet another weekend without fishing today saw me line-up with five other hardy souls to brave the arctic conditions at Willow Park for the Saturday open on the Small Lake. Despite living reasonably close to Ash I’ve only fished Willow Park five times in total and every visit has seen me on the Middle Lake – so when it was announced that the match was going to be a rover-style draw I wasn’t too impressed as the task of outwitting the venue experts just got a lot tougher!!! (I can understand why this match was made a walk-off but it really does load the dice in favour of the venue’s regulars and doesn’t do much to encourage new faces who by definition don’t have an intimate knowledge of the fliers.)

The tree overhanging my left margin

YouTube video of the view from my peg 

Prior to the draw I had a walk along the pegs in front of the shop and a quick scan of the results from the previous week’s matches on the white board in the cafe, so when I drew second choice of pegs I plumped for peg one as I wanted to experience the thrill of fishing an end peg for a change!

In all seriousness not knowing the venue very well at all I had to focus on what I could see to be fish holding features and the inviting looking long margin into the corner with an overhanging tree seemed to fit the bill perfectly – though unfortunately nobody had told the fish!!!

The dobbing rig

Given the nature of the lake open matches are restricted to float only I settled on two pole lines, the first of which was for ‘dobbing’ bread along the margin under the tree towards the corner – the basic idea of this method being that you search your peg with a highly visible bait (two punches of 7mm bread in this case) looking for the fish (as opposed to feeding a certain area in an attempt to have the fish come to you). It can be seen from the diagram above that the area under the tree was pretty deep for a margin at 3 and a half feet deep, and my rig was more often than not set at 3’ deep.

Long pole rigs

My other line was straight in front at 14.5m for which I set-up three different rigs to fish on the same spot – an 0.15/0.13/B911 size 18/4x14 KC Carpa Chimp rig on blue Hydrolastic for corn, an 0.13/0.10/B911 size 20 with a band/0.2g Mo Brown Slim’o rig on pink Hydrolastic for a 4mm hard pellet and an 0.11/0.10/Gamakatsu Black size 18/4x16 KC Carpa Chimp rig also on pink Hydrolastic for laying-on with single or double dead red maggot.

My bait selection

My bait for the today consisted of 4 slices of Warburton’s Toastie for punching, some frozen (then defrosted) red maggots and corn from my last outing to Furnace Lakes, a bag of soaked 2mm fishery pellets and a small amount of 4mm pellets – some straight out of the bag (for mounting on a hair-rigged pellet band) and some soaked for feeding.

Whilst I’d use the same rigs and feed in the same fashion if I fished the venue at this time of year again (I fed nothing under the tree and a total of no more than 10 dead maggots and the equivalent of three or four of the smallest Preston Innovations Cad pots of 2mm pellets on the 14.5m line) I never had a single bite all day!!! Whilst I felt I fished well I’d made a fatal error at the draw in selecting a corner peg with a freezing north easterly blowing into it, something I couldn’t recover from – something of a schoolboy error really!!!

Looking across the lake to pegs 27 and 28

In the end Rob Harvey fished a great match to win easily from peg 27, and Colin Carr tempted two nice carp from his right-hand margin to finish second from peg 28. Final result:

1. Rob Harvey 43-8-0
2. Colin Carr 9-0-0
3. Mike Hooper 5-10-0

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10 February 2013, Furnace Lake (Furnace Lakes)

I saw an interesting tweet from Pole Fishing magazine editor Jon Arthur the other week – it essentially suggested that some people only posted details of matches they’ve done well in. Read-on for evidence that this is not always the case!!!

The Big Lake at Furnace Lakes

Today’s match (only my third of 2013 and the first where I’ve been able to get on the bank on two consecutive weekends) was a three-way club match between Godalming AS, Dorking DAS and Woking DAA at Furnace Lakes. This was also my first trip to this venue, a nice looking place with a number of different ponds covering match fishing and specimen hunting.

This time last year Furnace was the place to go in winter with local legends such as Steve Gardner, Jimmy Bullard and Steve Sanders smashing-out huge bags of skimmers on a weekly basis – in fact prior to this match I re-read the Will Raison e-magazine from February 2012 where he absolutely bagged-up on the long pole with pellets! However word on the Match Fishing Scene website (special thanks go to Mark Hathaway) and results in the angling press suggested that those days were over with winning catches as low as 20 pounds with some very poor back-up weights …

Peg 14 on the Big Lake at Furnace

YouTube video of the view from my peg

Today’s match was on Furnace Lake, which is essentially a long rectangle with a dam at one end and platforms/pontoons on both banks – however it is pretty wide with probably 100m from bank to bank so the anglers on one side of the lake don’t really affect those on the other. My homework suggested that the target fish were skimmers in the 12 ounce to 2 pound bracket.

Despite the terrible weather forecast (more of which later) we had a decent turn-out of 29 anglers and my draw saw me on peg 14 on the far-side of the lake, next to one of the four end pegs on the day. (This saw me nearly as far from the dam wall as it was possible to be on the day, something I was fairly happy with as presumably the lake becomes shallower the further from the dam you go.)

Drennan stainless cage feeders

Prior to the match I’d settled on a three pronged attack – a traditional open-end feeder approach, coupled with two long pole lines (one with groundbait and dead maggots, the other with pellets). My feeder rig was very simple – the usual Preston Innovations 10’ Mini Carp rod and 8lb Daiwa Sensor main line coupled with a Drennan stainless cage feeder and a ready-tied Preston Innovations hook-to-nylon featuring a size 20 hook and 18 inches of 2.5lb line. The feeder in question was the micro version – this is a very small feeder that normally only carries a 10g loading. Whilst I’m more than happy with the size of the feeder I don’t think it is heavy enough for accurate casting, so as you can see from the photo above I’ve added an additional 5g in the form of a stick-on feeder weight.

Today's pole gear



It was pretty deep at 14.5m (6-7’) and given the fairly strong right to left cross wind I settled on 4x16 KC Carpa Chimps with a spread bulk of 5 number 8 and 3 number 10 stotz positioned between 20 and 40cm from the hook. Main line was 0.11 Reflo Power and the elastic was pink hydro – the rig for the groundbait/dead maggot line featured a 0.10 hooklength and a size 20 Gamakatsu Black, that for fishing over pellets a size 20 Kamasan B911 with a hair rigged micro pellet band.

Another view of peg 14

By the time the all-in was called at 1015 the weather had already started to deteriorate (it had been raining since at least the time I peaked through the curtains at 0645) and things looked set for a grim old day, but I was happy to be on the bank so I set about feeding 2 balls of Marukyu EFG120 and some dead maggots on my left-hand pole line and slipped two dead red maggots on my feeder hooklength before casting to about 30m with a tiny load of the same groundbait and 4 or 5 freebie maggots.

No indications on the tip so I reeled-in after the predetermined 5 minutes to find a two ounce skimmer had attached itself without bothering to give me a pull that I could see – well at least I hadn’t blanked and perhaps I was going to bag-up after all? To cut a long story short that wasn’t to be and except a few liners I had a very uneventful following three hours wondering if was possible to get any colder/wetter!

During this time I did have a couple of goes on the pole but I’d actually packed it away by 1300 – not because I didn’t think it was going to work, but because holding in the freezing rain made my hands so cold I couldn’t feel them properly!!! With 2 hours to go I was being royally bashed-up from the anglers either side (Ian Covey to my left and P Worsfold to my right) – they were hardly bagging but were doing well on the day taking the odd skimmer here and there whilst I was left pulling my hair out (not that I have much to spare these days).

My mini 'spods'!

Desperate tactics were needed to avoid a blow-out so I removed my hooklength and slipped-on a large Drennan open end feeder and ‘spodded’ 6 feeders worth of groundbait, dead maggots and 2/4mm pellets. Half an hour later I was still wondering if I’d done the right thing when the tip pulled ‘round and I was into a decent skimmer – in fact I hooked five skimmers in six casts and put four in the net. Losing a fish led to another quiet spell so I repeated the ‘spodding’ effort, and with fifteen minutes to go I latched onto the first of three more fish in a row.

Ian Covey

So like the rest of the field I’d been battered by the weather but at least my 8 skimmers was a reasonable return and my final 7-13-0 was a significant improvement on the 2 ounces I had in the net with 90 minutes to go! However I hadn’t done enough to trouble those next to me and I’d been well and truly banjoed, with both anglers weighing 14-3-0, enough for joint second just behind the winning 14-6-0. My weight was good enough for fourth in section and as the fourth place overall (Ian Farmer) came from my section I just missed out on an unlikely triple default section payout as they only paid the top 3!

Final result – congratulations to those that made the frame, and to all of those that braved the elements:

First: G Whitting (14-6-0)

Joint Second: P Worsfold and I Covey (both 14-3-0)

Fourth: I Farmer (10-14-0)

As a footnote I’d like to add that today was the first time I’d fished a lake where the water-level had noticeably risen during a match – it must’ve risen 6 inches and the sluice between the Big Lake and the pond below resembled the weir at Buscot I used to fish when I was at school!

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03 February 2013, Pond 3 (MBK Coloured Ponds)

In total MBK Leisure control the fishing on ten or so lakes spread across three separate sites near to Rake in Hampshire. These are available on a day ticket basis, but Godalming AS normally hold two or three matches a year on MBK venues as the fishing is normally pretty good and it isn’t too far to travel.

MBK Coloured Ponds

Today’s match was due to be on the lakes at St Patrick’s Lane (also known as Barons Ponds), but there was a last minute switch to the Coloured Ponds – in the end we had 17 anglers spread across Pond 3 and Pond 4. These lakes are at the top of the site and the  main stocking is proper carp in the 2-6lb bracket and smallish (4-8 ounce) skimmers.

The four match lakes at Coloured Ponds are all simple rectangles with platforms along the two long sides of each lake – as a result you are facing the anglers on the opposite bank and on most pegs you have about 30m to the imaginary line that divides each lake in half. As with many lakes during the winter the carp tend to shoal together and the corner pegs dominate massively – I think it is fair to say that it is virtually impossible to win from a non-corner peg!

Pond 3, Peg 3

YouTube video of the view from my peg  

With that in mind I put my hand into the draw bag knowing there were 8 corner pegs and 9 non-corner pegs on offer and promptly drew peg 3 on Pond 3 – one of the pegs that isn’t in a corner! However the pegging was generous and I had a spare peg to my right, two empty platforms to my left and plenty of open water to go at – so having missed the two preceding weekends due to the snow and ice that has gripped the country I was still keen to get stuck in!

Four different lines fished today



Even though it was fairly mild on the day it has been very cold over the last few weeks with plenty of icy water going into the lakes – as a result I decided to cover a few options and let the fish tell me which would be best on the day! You can see from the sketch above that in total I fished four lines today – the straight lead into open water, a 14.5m pole line for carp at 10 o’clock, a line for skimmers at 2 o’clock and a long margin line in 3’ of water to my left.

Baits for the straight lead

I’d be trying a few new things today – one of them would be some of the much talked about Kiana Goo additive smeared onto a small PVA bag of 4mm hard pellets fished in conjunction with an 8mm fluro pop-up on the straight lead rig. (Tackle was my usual 8lb Daiwa Sensor mainline, two thirds of an ounce Guru square bomb, 12 inches of 0.19 Reflo Power with a size 14 Guru QM1 pinned down with two number 8 stotz an inch from the hook.)

All pole rigs included KC Carpa Chimps – I started with 4x14s for the two open water rigs and a 4x12 for down the edge. One of the other new things I was trying today for the first time was pink Hydrolastic – I used this on the skimmer line, blue Hydro for the open water carp rig and white down the edge.

On the whistle I fed a ball of Murukyu EFG120 with some dead maggots on the skimmer line and 10 4mm pellets combined with 5 grains of corn on the 14.5m carp line – then within 30 seconds of dropping in with a single grain of Jolly Green Giant on that carp line I was attached to a 5lb common! It took about 10 minutes to land on the fairly soft blue Hydrolastic but the relatively strong 0.15 mainline and 0.13 hooklength into a size 18 Kamasan B911 meant I was unlikely to be broken. I wasn’t too sure what my target weight was, but regardless I was off to a great start!

The evolution of the skimmer rig

I fed some more 4mm pellets/corn and prayed for another dip – but it didn’t come in the following 10 minutes so by 1030 I was onto the skimmer line. The diagram above shows how my skimmer rig evolved during the match – I started on a 4x14 Chimp with a fairly short length of line between the pole tip and float and a size 18 Tubertini 808 for the direct hooking of dead maggots. This led to a few skimmers but I was being plagued by tiny roach and the increasing wind meant it was difficult to control the rig and hence build a weight, so at about 1115 I cast my straight lead rig to 30m and dived into my box for a heavier 4x16 float and a hooklength for hair-rigging a hard pellet.

No bites had materialised on the tip after 15 minutes so I re-plumbed with my new skimmer rig and slipped-on a 4mm pellet – this saw a run of better skimmers, especially if I took the time to lower the rig in slowly on a tight line as the float would often simply ‘keep going’!

By this time I could see Guildford Angling Centre’s Luke Sheriff bagging from the far corner peg, but I knew the others on my lake were sitting it out for carp without a great deal of success – so I decided to catch skimmers if I could get a bite relatively quickly and only to fish for carp if the skimmer line faded or if one of the others also started catching on a regular basis.

In the end I had one more (two pound) carp on the 14.5m carp line, no bites on the straight lead (which I tried three more times) and nothing down the edge (it was worth a try as you never know your luck) – so 8 or 9lb of my 15-1-0 total was made-up of small skimmers and my decision was vindicated as this was enough for second on the lake. (I was miles behind Luke’s 50 odd pound but I’d beaten the three other corner pegs on my lake.)

Luke’s weight clinched the match from Frankie Bevan who was second with 38lb – I’d finished one out of the frame by a couple of pounds, but with Luke winning the match I’d done enough for a default lake/section win and had plenty of bites in the process! (The easy conclusion to reach here is that I should’ve spent less time fishing for carp and more time on the skimmers – however one more bite from a carp could’ve put me third so it was worth the gamble!)

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