So on to the first match of my White Acres 2013 fortnight – the regular ‘Gold’ residents match, today held across Twin Oaks, Acorn and Trelawney.
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| A decent turn-out of 54 all hoping for a flyer!!! |
White Acres regulars will be aware that the onsite fishery team normally run three matches each week – the exception being when there is a major 180 peg festival in progress. There are two conventional pegged-down matches of which each White Acres resident can opt to fish one each week – there is an entry criteria for the Wednesday ‘Silver’ match aimed to make it more accessible to club anglers, but in my experience the only real difference between the ‘Gold’ and the ‘Silver’ are the pools (£15 and £10 respectively). (The third match is the famous ‘Rover’ but more of that later in the week!)
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| Looking right from Trelawney peg 3 |
Every match angler’s favourite pre-match pastime is eulogising as to where they do and (more importantly) don’t want to draw in a given match – my view was that I definitely didn’t want to draw the middle of the lodge bank on Trelawney, so guess where I drew??? You can imagine my feelings when I managed to avoid all of the tasty pegs on Twin Oaks and Acorn and peg 3 on Trelawney appeared from the bag of dreams!!!
Trelawney is one of the older lakes on the White Acres complex and features 32 pegs with a nice feeder chuck to the central island – in fact you can reach the island with 16m of pole on some of the narrower pegs. This lake contains a good head of F1s and big, proper carp – however due to the age of the fish and the relentless pressure they receive Trelawney can be notoriously moody. One day the weights are through the roof, the next day it’s rock hard – I can certainly contest to the latter!!!
Peg 3 is a nice looking peg with a 25m chuck into a slight bay – on the day peg 2 to my right was the end peg (and hence would be hard to beat), but I had a spare platform accessible at 13m to my left as peg 4 wasn’t in.
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| The Preston Innovations pellet feeder |
On the all-in (White Acres residents matches are fished from 1030 to 1530) I cast my small 20g Preston Innovations pellet feeder and prayed for a mug Billy Bunter to get my match up and running – this wasn’t to be but instead in the first hour I managed a constant run of small skimmers and F1s, virtually one every cast in fact. (These fish weren’t huge but as my aim was 30lb and a section win they were more than welcome!)
(The best hookbait was a 6mm hard pellet and the feeder was simply loaded with soaked 2mm fishery pellets. The hooklength was the usual 10cm of 0.19 Guru N-Gauge to a size 16 QM1 with a hair-rigged pellet band.)
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| A close-up of the KC Carpa Slap |
Throughout the first hour I’d been regularly flicking small quantities of 6mm pellets to 13m, so when the feeder started to slow I gave myself 10 minutes to see if the long pole shallow would be any good today. Literally 9 minutes and 55 seconds into this spell I was just about to give up (as I’d not been given any reason to believe there were any of the target F1s in the area) when the float buried and I was attached to something substantial. After what seemed like a lifetime (as I was after F1s the rig was using was made-up on 0.13 mainline with a 0.11 hooklength and blue Hydro) a fantastic bonus of an 8lb mirror carp found its way into my net!!!
Following this success I scaled-up my rig (which featured a self-cocking KC Carpa Slap) to 0.15 mainline with an 0.13 hooklength to a size 18 eyed Kamasan B911 with a hair-rigged band – but never had another bite on it all day!!!
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| The Mo Brown Doco |
Following the carp I’d spent a further 20 fruitless minutes looking for another on the long pole shallow, before switching back to the tip for a few more small skimmers and F1s to keep things ticking over. However this line once again died at around 1300, so it was time to have a go for some weight building silvers shallow at 5m – the rig consisted of a 0.1g Mo Brown Doco float on 0.13 to 0.11 with a size 16 Drennan Silverfish Maggot hook and pink Hydro.
Unfortunately as per the previous session on Acorn all I could muster on this approach were tiny rudd and not the proper 4 to 6 ounce roach I have been lucky enough to catch on previous visits to Trelawney. As a result this tactic was soon shelved with another switch back to the pellet feeder for some more skimmers and F1s (which really had by now become very few and far between).
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| Always nice to have a spare platform within range!!! |
By about 2 o’clock it was finally time for a make or break attack on the platform to my left at 13m. To kick things off I fed 4 full pole cups of Sonubaits 50:50 groundbait – this was mixed fairly wet, but riddled to remove any lumps and fed loose.
In went the usual 2 dendrabenas (slapped on the water a couple of times to stop them wriggling and masking the point of the hook) but despite investing (or should that be ‘wasting’?) an hour on this line all I could manage were a few nuisance roach and perch. (There were definitely carp present as I foul-hooked and lost two, plus on a couple of occasions there were some major bow-waves as carp spooked out of the swim.)
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| Twin Oaks, Acorn and Trelawney were in today |
Fortunately after finally giving-up on the margin swim I returned to the tip with about half an hour to go to see if any fish had turned-up – and it was absolutely solid!!! A good run of better F1s and a bonus carp saw me finish on a high but with one regret – should I have ruled-out the margin and returned to the tip sooner???
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| The reward for a hard fought section win |
In the end my endeavours propelled me to a decent 41-12-0 – enough for a section win as those late fish on the pellet feeder had put me a good 5 pounds clear of peg 2.
Overall results:
- Ian Fisk (Complete Angler) 139-1-0, Twin Oaks 15
- Martin Williams (Sheffield) 85-12-0, Twin Oaks 12
- Paul Duffy (Trafford Angling) 77-11-0, Twin Oaks 21
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| Nets drying prior to the next skirmish |
Conclusions: not for the first time I managed to waste a good hour down the edge without really contributing anything to my total – when will I learn that if it doesn’t go under in the first 30 seconds it isn’t going to go under at all??? (With hindsight my 0.19 straight through rig may have been too brutal for the wise old Trelawney edge dwellers and perhaps a scaled-down 0.17 rig with an 0.15 hooklength and a smaller bait may have led to a few bites.) However the final result (a section win) was the one I’d aimed for – especially pleasing as the Olde English Cider festival is now less than a week away and section points are where it’s at!
Until tomorrow’s match at Trewaters …
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