Prior to this match I was expecting a very hard but very sunny day at Marsh Farm – as it turned-out I was only half right as it was rather cloudy!
 |
| A good book and some suntan cream |
Today’s event was the first proper match of the Godalming AS 2013/4 calendar and was afforded the title ‘Summer League #1’ – this led to a decent attendance of 24 forming a queue for the al fresco draw, with everybody looking for a peg on the end of the wind that had being blowing from the north/east for well over a week.
 |
| Peg 40 on Harris Lake at Marsh Farm |
For once my drawing hand deserted me and out popped number 40 on the far side of Harris Lake – certainly not in a noted area and about as far from the downwind end peg as I could get! The water was once again crystal clear (even clearer in fact than the match three weeks ago), with the bottom of the lake visible to a distance of 6 or 7 metres!!!
Given the water clarity I decided to leave the pole in the bag (I can never catch on it even when the water is coloured on Harris Lake) and went with a single feeder rod approach – the opening gambit was a 30g Preston Innovations pellet feeder with a hooklength for use with a 6mm hard pellet (10cm of 0.19 Guru N-Gauge into a size 16 QM1 with a hair-rigged band).
Feed for today was a pint of soaked 2mm fishery pellets – some left plain, some dyed yellow and some coloured red. I also had some Kiana Goo (more of which later) plus 6mm hard pellets and Ringers fluro pop-ups for hookbaits.
 |
| 30g small (left) and 25g micro (right) Preston Innovations pellet feeders |
On the whistle I cast my feeder towards the central island (not too close given the water clarity) and sat back in expectation – nothing first chuck but casts 2, 3 and 4 all saw some form of line bite or other. Unfortunately nothing materialised from this initial spell then things went very quiet until a savage bite out of the blue on the hour mark saw a 2lb tench in the net.
After a couple more casts I switched down to a 25g micro pellet feeder and was rewarded with a 3lb tench on the second cast – perhaps it would be a good day after all?
 |
| Godalming AS legend Colin Underwood |
Unfortunately the following four and a half hours were frankly soul destroying as despite trying a micro cage feeder with a long tail and various tricks with the pellet feeder I never had another sniff of a fish! (Having said that my day wasn’t as bad as some as in my six peg zone four of the other anglers only managed a single rudd between them!!!)
Surprisingly the top 4 weights today all came in a row from the bank nearest the tackle shop, with Godalming AS stalwart Colin Underwood winning the day with an excellent near thirty pound return from peg 7:
- Colin Underwood, peg 7 29-10-0
- Paul Etherington, peg 8 25-4-0
- Trevor Haskell, peg 11 17-0-0
- Gareth Phillips, peg 14 16-11-0
One of the advantages of going 270 minutes without a bite is that it gives you time to take photos and record videos! The video above shows a 30g Preston Innovations pellet feeder loaded with 2mm pellets being dropped into a bait tub of water – personally I have great confidence in this kind of feeder for fishing to a far bank margin and the clip shows just how good the presentation can be. (The hookbait here is an 8mm fluro pop-up with 2 number 8 stotz an inch from the hook.) The main thing that strikes me is that only two thirds of the pellets spill from the feeder initially, leaving the bulk of the feed to be released on the retrieve.
 |
| Plain, yellow and red micro pellets plus 3 flavours of Kiana Goo |
As noted above I also was also playing around with colourings and flavourings today – unfortunately the day was so hard it is impossible to draw any conclusions!!! However the use of boilie dyes to colour micro pellets deserves further investigation – the mixing of yellow 2mm pellets into green groundbait certainly looks good to the (human) eye!
The flavours were provided by Kiana Goo – Perfect Peach and Tutti Frutti in the power smoke version, plus some Almond Supreme in the bait smoke style. (Power smoke is a very thick oil ideal for smearing onto PVA bags or loaded pellet/method feeders, whereas bait smoke is much thinner and better for adding to the water used to soften pellets.) This is not very scientific, but I have to say that both of the fish I caught today were done so after applying some Tutti Frutti Goo!!!
I think we’d all agree that there is no magic bait that is going to win every match – however despite Kiana Goo being something that is aimed at the specimen carp world I’ll be carrying a tube or two to possibly squeeze-out that extra fish at the end of match …
Until next time …
No comments:
Post a Comment