For cricket it’s Lords, for rugby see Twickenham and for football look no further than Wembley – whilst Bolingey may not be the official spiritual home of match fishing it has become a mystical venue, hidden deep in the Cornish countryside and only to be match fished by the country’s elite anglers in the major spring and autumn festivals …
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| Welcome to Bolingey!!! |
… until now that is! Whilst it has always been possible to book a pleasure fishing trip to Bolingey via a weekly White Acres fishing permit, 2013 has seen the introduction of regular Friday White Acres residents matches at the venue. Numbers are limited to 32 and by the time we booked-in at about 9am on Saturday nearly half the places had gone already – so it’s obviously proving popular, with those in the know booking their places early!!!
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| Bolingey plan and pegging |
The Bolingey complex is made-up of 3 lakes – to my knowledge each is officially nameless so I normally refer to the them as ‘the one nearest the car park’, ‘the one with the island at the back’ and ‘the other one’! In total there are 50 pegs (though a couple are intentionally overgrown and unfishable) and as of last year there is now an on-site clubhouse serving teas, coffees, bacon sandwiches, soft drinks, etc. and small items of terminal tackle.
I feel it’s also worth pointing-out that the entrance fee today was £21 - £15 pools and £6 day ticket. Some anglers have questioned this pegging fee as a Bolingey pleasure session doesn’t attract any charge (over and above that for a weekly White Acres fishing permit) – my view is that there are 2 options: pucker-up and pay the £6 to fish the match or do something else instead!!!
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| The point of the island opposite peg 26 |
Over the years Bagger and myself have fished Bolingey on four occasions – each time on ‘the one with the island at the back’ somewhere between peg 8 and peg 22 (the widest parts of the lake). Each time we’ve absolutely bagged-up with estimated weights (easily) between 150 and 200lb – though as we all know doing so in a pleasure session when the lake is half empty and you can choose a couple of flyers is very, very different to doing it in match!!!
Today the bag of dreams chose me peg 26 – this is on the same lake and is an end peg (if you can have end pegs on a rectangular lake with swims on all four sides) opposite one of the ends of the central island. The peg is actually quite narrow with only about 20m to the island (however it really opens-out to the right and pegs 23, 24 and 25 have more like 30m to work with) – though it does offer a great deal of open water and a nice long margin to the left.
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All the gear …
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Bolingey is revered as a venue where luncheon meat rules the roost – however its overuse has seen quantities limited to 2 pints in the major festivals and a complete ban in pleasure sessions/the new Friday residents matches. Other than that the rules are the same as for the regular Monday, Wednesday and Thursday White Acres residents matches – here’s how I split my 8 pint bait allowance (once again only using 7 pints to ensure I was well within the limit):
- 2mm pellets (2 pints)
- 6mm pellets (1 pints)
- 8mm pellets (2 pints)
- Corn (1 pint)
- Red maggots (live, but bagged so dormant) (1 pint)
- Worms
- Sonubaits 50:50 groundbait
As you can guess my favoured approaches are based upon the use of pellets and worm over groundbait, with the corn and maggots only really there as a plan B.
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| Components of the heavier 5m rig |
It is no exaggeration to say that I was into a carp within 10 seconds of the whistle blowing – as ever I’d loaded my 20g pellet feeder with a minute or two to go before the ‘all in’ and a waiting fish nearly pulled the 10’ tip rod from my hands as I was stinking the line!!! So by 1203 (today’s match was fished from noon until 5 o’clock) I had 5 pounds towards my total and I was wondering if I was going to fill my 3 nets with feeder-caught fish – however the answer was a definite ‘no’ as by 1230 I’d only added a tiny F1!!!
During this opening half an hour I’d been throwing 6 and 8mm pellets by hand to my 5m line and as the feeder to the island had pretty much died after that mug carp it was time for the pole. Whilst setting-up before the match I’d been in two minds as to go with a lighter or a heavier rig for fishing hard pellets on the deck on this line – in the end I’d settled on a lighter rig consisting of a 0.1g Mo Brown Slim’o (2mm tip) on 0.15 mainline to a 15cm hooklength of 0.13 with an eyed Kamasan B911 size 18 and a hair-rigged pellet band (elastic was white Hydro).
However within 3 seconds of hooking into a typical Bolingey carp on this rig I knew I’d made the wrong choice!!! Despite dragging me through some tricky foliage to my left I managed to land the fish but it took so long that straight after dropping it into the net I was off my box setting-up a heavier rig – this time with 0.17 mainline to a hooklength of 0.15 with a size 16 Guru MWG (elastic was black Hydro). A few minutes later I was into another carp, and with the stepped-up rig I was able to land it without any drama – meaning that by the end of the first hour I was on 3 carp and an F1 for about 15lb.
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| Looking right to the end of the island in front of peg 23 |
After a decent enough opening 60 minutes the second and third hours can only really be described as ‘very slow’! I did manage a third carp on the 5m line pretty early-on, but this soon dried-up and all I could manage after this was an additional carp and 3 tiny F1s on the pellet feeder to the island – meaning I would enter the fourth hour with only about 25-27lb to my name. (Did I mention catching fish is much harder in a match than in a pleasure session?)
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| The left margin |
So with 2 hours to go it was clear I was going nowhere and my patient approach with the pellet feeder and hard pellets at 5m certainly wasn’t going to get me in the frame (though of course I still had the margins to try yet).
In order to ‘try and make something happen’ I decided to blast the margin of the island with 8mm pellets – this worked to a certain extent as it produced a carp on the straight lead (which was a nightmare to cast tight to the far bank given the overhanging foliage and the problems caused by fishing a 12” hooklength) and two more on the pellet feeder.
Recently I’ve been trying not to feed/fish my margin swims until as late as possible – feeding early seems to draw a few fish, but the sooner you feed the quicker they disappear!!! With only an hour and a half to go I’d waited as long as I possibly could so in went 4 full cups of Sonubaits 50:50 groundbait. This had an impact almost immediately – I could see tail pattern after tail pattern – but after 30 infuriating minutes I’d not received a single bite!!!
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| Not quite enough this time!!! |
By now the clock had ticked ‘round to 4 o’clock and my estimated 40lb wasn’t going to get me in the history books – time for one last roll of the dice and another 4 full pots of groundbait!!! (I was loathed to do this as experience has taught me that too much bait fed into a margin swim can lead to a nightmare with foul-hookers, but what choice did I have?)
Anyway, the gamble paid-off to a certain extent as I was able to land four big carp – three hooked nicely in the mouth and one in it’s side – for going on 30 pounds. However, as predicted, I had a shocker with foul-hookers and trashed rigs – I lost 6 or 7 good fish clearly not hooked in the mouth that screamed out of the peg at 100 miles an hour never to be seen again!!!
With a minute to go my float dipped one last time (tackle by the way was a 4x12 Preston Innovations Durafloat 10 on 0.19 Reflo Power straight through to a size 12 Guru MWG and 17 Hollo elastic, bait was two whole dendrabena worms) but even though they are a rarity nowadays I was hardly over the moon to finish on a 12 ounce eel!!!
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| A crowd gathers to watch the winner weigh-in |
In the end my two weighs gave me a total of 69-6-0 – a respectable return for a first match on a venue, but quite a way behind the 93lb that won the section! Overall results:
- J Vernon, 141-8-0
- A Longton, 117-2-0
- K Baxter, 114-2-0
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| Heave!!! Bagger and Bolingey co-owner Andy Dare in action |
Conclusions: an enjoyable day at an amazing fishery but I can’t help but feel I could’ve put a much bigger weight on the scales from what was after all a very good peg! The second and third hours are the obvious starting point – whilst the pellet feeder and the 5m line were decent options, I can’t help but think a 14.5m line (either on the deck or up in the water) to the left into the open water would’ve produced a few fish. Then of course we have the problem of foul-hooking fish over groundbait down the edge – as soon as I figure this one out I’ll let you know!!!
Until next week’s Olde English Cider festival …
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