Today’s match was the second round of the Guildford Angling Centre 2013 summer league on the canal bank of Gold Lake at Gold Valley – an event I’d been really looking forward to following my usual working week stuck in an office and commuting up and down to London every day!
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| Gold Lake has been on fire lately |
Regular followers of the Gold Valley Facebook page and the angling weeklies will know that the venue has been producing some really big weights over recent weeks, with Gold Lake itself producing numerous 200lb weights. All-in-all everything looked sock-on – as we sat in the clubhouse waiting for the draw the weather was perfect (warm, but sunny with broken cloud and a southerly breeze) and there were big fishing showing themselves all over the lake!
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| Looking right from peg 13 |
Today’s dip into the bag of dreams put me on peg 13 – pretty much in the middle of the bank, and right in the middle of my 5 peg section. In front of me was basically open water – the two islands on the canal bank side of the rope being at least 5 pegs away on either side. It has to be said that the right margin looked extremely fishy, with some tasty overhanging brambles and some very inviting looking reeds!
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| All the gear ... |
My basic Gold Valley summer plan consists of four tactics and three lines – the method feeder to the rope, the straight lead/pellet waggler at 25m and a strong pole rig for the edge. I’d use this combination of approaches on virtually every peg as it gives the best chance of catching the big, wily carp needed to put together a decent weight and make an impression on the match. (Quite often in the angling press you’ll see features on catching bags of skimmers and other silvers at Gold Valley, but for my money such tactics are a waste of time and it’s always carp that win the matches!)
As a result, before the start I set-up the following rods/rigs:
- 10’ tip rod, 8lb Daiwa Sensor mainline, small 30g Preston Innovations banjo feeder to a 10cm hooklength of 0.19 N-Gauge with a size 14 QM1 and a hair-rigged bayonet (for an 8mm pop-up boilie). I also added two number 8 stotz an inch from the hook to stop the boilie popping-up too far
- As above but with a 1/3 ounce Guru square bomb free running to a 30cm hooklength with a hair-rigged pellet band (for an 8mm pellet or a Ringers Banded Allsort)
- 11’ pellet waggler rod, 6lb Daiwa Sensor mainline, 6g Preston Innovations Dura pellet waggler (the slim version with a disk) to a 25cm hooklength of 0.19 N-Gauge with a size 14 Drennan Eyed Barbless Carp Feeder hook and a hair-rigged band
- Red Hydro top kit, 0.21 Reflo Power direct to a size 12 MWG, the float being a 0.2g SconeZone V6
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| Duck and cover! |
The first hour started badly – mainly due to my difficulty in casting reasonable distances with a short rod (the central rope was about 45m away) and pellets not sticking on the banjo when giving it the ‘big one’! During this opening 20 minutes I’d already fallen three carp behind Shaun Sylvester on the peg to my right but I had been heavily loose-feeding with 8mm pellets to 25m.
This seemed to draw every duck on the venue into my peg, but four bites on the bomb at least saw me finish the first hour on four small carp for about 15lb. After a slight lull more heavy feeding saw two good carp (probably 10 and 8lb) in the net – so after 90 minutes I was finally getting into the swing of things with 40-45lb.
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| The Preston Innovations Dura pellet waggler |
Thankfully by now the ducks had moved away (no doubt full after gorging themselves on my pellets), and as those around me were doing likewise it was time for the pellet waggler! (Is there are better phrase in fishing than ‘time for the pellet waggler’? I think not!!!)
To cut a long story short I basically spent the remaining three and a half hours of the match on the pellet waggler and caught decent carp at regular intervals through to the end – the best feeding pattern on the day seemed to be to feed heavily with 3 or 4 pouches of 8-10 8mm pellets then have 5 casts with no feed. The majority of bites came within 3 seconds of the waggler landing with the fish generally self hooking themselves against the weight of the float and then trying to pull the rod in!
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| A tasty looking margin swim to the right |
I did feed my right-hand edge swim with groundbait (Sonubaits 50:50), dead maggots and corm regularly from about 90 minutes to the end, but only actually fished it for two very short periods (two minutes or less) as the main 25m line simply kept on producing. (Even though I knew that the only way I could catch Shaun was with a good run of bigger (12-15lb) carp from the margin, I knew from experience that I couldn’t afford to ignore the smaller (5-8lb) fish I was catching on a fairly regular basis from the 25m line.)
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| Winner Shaun Sylvester weighing part of his haul |
In the end my four nets went 140-6-0, second in section behind Shaun’s 178-10-0 but just in front of Paul Taylor’s 135-8-0 and Ryan Coates’ 124-0-0. I was also fourth overall – and picked-up £30 for a triple default section win!
So once again I’d sat next to the winner again, but as you can see it was a close run thing with Shaun really benefiting from an 18-20lb beast hooked with two minutes to go and landed ten minutes after the whistle!!!
Overall top 4:
- Shaun Sylvester, peg 15, 178-10-0
- Pete Franklin, peg 5, 177-2-0
- Martin Johnson, peg 9, 166-12-0
- Phil Morris, peg 13, 140-6-0
Today’s section winners:
- Pete Franklin, peg 5, 177-2-0
- Shaun Sylvester, peg 15, 178-10-0
- Giovanni Barbato, peg 22, 92-6-0
- Gareth Phillips, peg 23, 84-6-0
League standing after round 2:
- Pete Franklin, 2 points, 277-9-0
- Phil Morris, 3 points, 248-6-0
- Dan Cooper, 3 points, 156-12-0
- Martin Johnson, 4 points, 226-7-0
- Shaun Sylvester, 4 points, 218-6-0
- Giovanni Barbato, 4 points, 193-6-0
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| The final reckoning … |
Conclusions: a great day with my biggest weight of the season so far and new personal best for Gold Valley. A valuable second in section has also helped to maintain a decent league position going into the next round (two weeks time, again at Gold Valley but this time on Middle Lake). The most pleasing aspect of today’s match was probably my time management – despite getting-off to a bad start I managed to claw my way back into the match and by not gambling/wasting too much time on a cracking looking edge swim I was able to just about stay in front of Paul and Ryan (who were only a fish or two behind).
Until next time …
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