Well it was a long time coming, but finally is was time to head back to White Acres for the first time since September 2012! Like many people we set-off for White Acres early in the morning (we were on the road before 4am) in order to have breakfast in the First Bite café and enjoy an extra day’s fishing whilst our accommodation is being prepared.
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| Acorn, White Acres |
Personally I always find I fish really badly on this first day and normally end-up catching next to nothing – luckily I’m used to this now and treat it as a way of hopefully getting all of by bad angling out of the way before the matches start!!!
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| Looking left from peg 10 |
Acorn has always been a favourite lake of ours so as the wind was blowing in its normal direction (towards the bank furthest from the entrance), we settled on pegs 10 (me) and 11 (Bagger). It has to be said the wind was pretty strong (even by Cornish standards) and the lake was surprisingly busy for a Saturday, with about a dozen anglers occupying their choice of the 19 available pegs.
Since our last visit the fishery team have laid a new path down to Acorn. This is a massive improvement but watch-out for the cheeky slope from the new exit from the car park – one of the first things I managed to do was to tip my seat box from the front of my barrow and see it roll a few yards down this new path!!! (I told you I fished badly on day one!)
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| The KC Carpa Force |
As this was to be the only pleasure/practice day of our 2 week stay at White Acres I decided to leave my ever faithful feeder rods in the bag and experiment with a number of short (top kit plus 3 at most) pole approaches.
The first tactic was to be worm over groundbait at top kit plus 3 straight in front for skimmers – the rig was based around a 4x12 KC Carpa Force on 0.15 Guru N-Gauge mainline into a 15cm hooklength of 0.13 with a size 16 Kamasan B911 hook. (I find these floats to be excellent but the shotting is understated – the 4x12 version actually takes 8 number 10 stotz.) As I was hoping for a mixed bag my elastic choice was white Hydro.
I kicked things off with a couple of balls of Sonubaits 50:50 with some softened micro pellets mixed in – unfortunately I couldn’t stick with this approach for very long as I was absolutely annihilated by tiny rudd and snapped-up by a foul-hooked carp!!!
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| The Mo Brown Slimo (2.0mm tips) |
Next up was a quest for some F1s on the deck at top kit plus 2 with hard pellets. The set-up for this approach was a 0.1g Mo Brown Slimo on 0.15 with a size 18 eyed B911 (with a hair-rigged pellet band) on a hooklength of 0.13. I normally like to use blue Hydro for F1s, but as there are lots of big carp in Acorn I once again settled on that great all rounder white Hydro instead.
This turned-out to be a great tactic that saw a string of F1s hit the landing net – the best feeding approach seemed to be to loose feed some 6mm pellets by hand in conjunction with a further 10 or 12 pellets tapped right over the float from a small Preston Cad pot fixed to the very end of my top kit. (I can only assume that the noise of the loose fed pellets drew the fish into the area and the potted bait focussed them nearer the hook.)
(Whilst this is a good approach for getting a few bites I’m not sure it is a match winning tactic on its own as the F1s are much smaller than the resident carp you can catch tight to the island or in the margins on Acorn.)
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| Gear for maggots in the margin |
Option 3 was another to rule-out – down the left margin at top kit plus 1 with maggots. I have seen people make this work on this lake but once again I was ravaged by tiny rudd!!! (In all fairness I did fish it rather early in the day – perhaps some carp would’ve moved-in later?)
(Tackle for this line was my standard light margin rig – a 4x10 Durafloat 10 on 0.17 into a hooklength of 0.15 with an eyed B911 size 16, the elastic being black Hydro.)
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| Silvers shallow hooklength components |
Plan D was one that I sincerely hoped I wouldn’t need to employ again over the next two weeks – silvers shallow with maggots at 5m. This is a tactic that is definitely worth pursuing when other carp catching approaches aren’t firing – but you’ve guessed it, I was battered by tiny rudd once again!!!
I had loads of fish on my Mo Brown Doco rig (mainline 0.13, hooklength 0.11, hook a size 16 Drennan Silverfish Maggot, elastic blue Hydro) but unfortunately they weren’t the dumpy 4 to 6 ounce jobbies that have got me out of jail on previous occasions!!!
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| Proper hooks for double dendras!!! |
The final approach of the day is one that really needs to be made to work if you are to do well on Acorn – double worm over groundbait tight to the near margin for Billy Bunters! (Tackle for this line was my standard heavy margin rig – a 4x10 Durafloat 10 on 0.19 N-Gauge straight through to a size 12 Guru MWG fished in conjunction with Preston Innovations 17 Hollo elastic.)
I kicked-off to my right with 4 full pots of 50:50 groundbait and it took the carp at least 5 seconds to arrive and start churning-up the bottom like there was no tomorrow!!! I caught two big carp immediately (I’m sure one could’ve been fitted for a saddle), before feeding another pot of bait and landing another.
Unfortunately this golden spell was short-lived and over the next two hours I only managed to land 4 more smaller carp – the main problem was that the majority of the carp I did contact were foul-hooked and unstoppable!!!
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| Bagger enjoyed herself! |
Conclusions: a good first day and some food for thought – some tactics didn’t work but two did, and at the end of the day that’s what practice/pleasure sessions are all about! Now all I need to do if to figure-out how to stop foul-hooking carp over groundbait down the edge …
Until Monday’s Gold match …
I've been in the same situation on Acorn and had tails waving at me while setting up. They were saying I'm here now get me out!!!!!
ReplyDeleteOne of the best ways is to fish a method feeder in amongst them. You don't get so many bites but you also don't foul hook so many.