What a difference a week makes! On the way to Bury Hill last week the temperature gauge in the car dipped as low as 4 degrees Celsius – however today on the way to our first visit to Sumners Ponds it was fixed at a balmy 17!!! Hopefully this would have a positive effect on what is apparently a very prolific match venue …
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| The usual pre-draw excitement! |
Today’s match was another Godalming AS and Woking DAA inter-club special, this time on the impossible to book Match Lake at Sumners Ponds, near Horsham, West Sussex. (I say ‘impossible to book’ as rumour has it there is a 3 year waiting list if you are looking to reserve it for a match!!!)
The complex itself is mainly a caravan/camping site with a nice onsite cafe and some nifty looking log cabins. There are a total of four lakes – two pleasure fishing ponds, a snake lake (Ribbon) and the popular Match Lake (which is situated down a track away from the main campus).
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| Looking left from peg 1 |
If you look at the Match Lake on Google Earth you’ll see that it is essentially an elongated oval with about 30 pegs and three central islands. However if you visit the lake in person you’ll only see two islands – the one nearest the car park has seemingly sunk and all that remains is an odd looking tree growing in the middle of the lake!!!
Today’s event saw approximately 25 anglers queuing for a dip into the bag of dreams, meaning that room would be at a premium and a good draw essential. As a result I was over the moon to draw peg 1 (the first peg in a clockwise direction from the car park) – this peg doesn’t have an island chuck (it faces the open water to the right of the sunken island), but it has loads of room to the right as there are no platforms in front of the car park. (To give you an idea I’d normally expect to see 5 or 6 pegs between myself and John Brownlie who was sat on the other end peg directly opposite.) To make things even better peg 2 to my left was in the bag but not drawn – happy days!
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| Pellet feeder gear |
I normally like to start each match fishing long (i.e. as far away from my own bank as sensibly possible) and work closer and closer as the day progresses. Today was no exception and my opening gambit was to cast a small pellet feeder at an angle of 45 degrees towards an overhanging bush along the margin in front of the car park at about 25m to my right.
Sport was hardly hectic but three small carp for about ten pounds in the first 20 minutes at least got my match underway with a few bites. (Gear for this approach was the usual 8lb Daiwa Sensor mainline into a 10cm hooklength of 0.19 Guru N-Gauge with a size 16 Guru QM1 hook and a hair-rigged pellet band. The feeder itself was a small 30g Preston Innovations pellet feeder – this was loaded with soaked micro pellets and the hookbait was a 6mm hard pellet.)
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| PVA bags made a big difference |
Whilst fishing the pellet feeder I’d been busy flicking 8mm pellets to a mark straight in front at a about 25-30m. This had soon led to numerous patches of bubbles rising to the surface so after a couple of chucks on the pellet feeder without the merest liner it was time to swap rods to the straight lead set-up. (Tackle was similar but the hooklength was much longer at 30cm and the hook a size bigger being a 14. The lead, which was free-running, was a 1/3 ounce square Guru model.) Given the fizzing and topping I was amazed when my rig (baited with an 8mm pellet) didn’t immediately induce one of those rod-doubling bites we all know and love!
In fact three casts and fifteen minutes passed with the only reward being a couple of half-hearted line bites, so it was time for another change – off with the light lead and on with a heavier 2/3 ounce version and a small PVA bag of 6mm pellets. This had the desired effect and three good carp in three casts prove that the smallest of tactical tweaks can often make the biggest of differences!!! Unfortunately after this good initial run things quietened down somewhat, but two more decent carp saw me end the second hour on a running total of about fifty pounds.
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| Kit for the TK+3 rig |
One of the advantages of fishing the tip is that you can often have a good look around and see what everybody else is up to – from my peg I had full view of the anglers on the opposite bank, plus by leaning forward I could see another ten or so to my left. I could tell that most people had caught a few but I couldn’t really see any single person absolutely bagging. By the look of the various multi-coloured elastics been stretched by some of Sumners Ponds’ resident carp I could also tell that most people were fishing short on the pole.
As the action on the straight lead had effectively ground to a halt I decided to set-up a rig to fish in a similar fashion down the slope at top kit plus 3 at a slight angle to the right. (This consisted of a 4x12 KC Carpa Force on 0.17 mainline to a 15cm hooklength of 0.15 with a size 16 Kamasan B911 eyed hook. Shotting was a spread bulk of number 10 stotz between 20 and 40cm from the hook and elastic was black Hydro.)
I kicked things off with a full cup of casters and soaked 6mm pellets, and went straight in with a full worm on the hook. This initially lead to a few iffy bites (probably from silver fish) but after a couple of minutes the float buried and a nice 8lb carp was soon in the net. Topping-up with a medium sized Cad pot only resulted in a few roach and a small tench so in went another full cup of casters and pellets – this immediately led to an obvious churning-up of the bottom of the lake and a few minutes later a second decent carp was in the net.
After those two good carp from the TK+3 line things once again went rather slow with only small roach to be caught – a sure sign that there weren’t any feeding carp in the swim! Quick looks on the pellet feeder and straight lead also failed to produce any proper bites, so a little earlier that I’d have liked (1330) it was time to attack the margins …
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| Gear for the deeper right margin |
I’ve written before that I like to hold-back and feed my margin lines as late as I can – such a tactic seems to produce quicker bites and more fish in the net (even though I’m actually fishing such margin swims for a shorter amount of time). As today’s match was being fished from 1000 to 1600 I ideally wanted to start feeding/fishing any margin swims from 1430 onwards – however such an approach relied upon being able to catch at a decent rate from other parts of the swim up until that point, but as I wasn’t I found myself mixing-up some Sonubaits 50:50 groundbait, soaked micro pellets and dead red maggots an hour earlier than I’d have liked!!!
Being ‘end peg Billy’ for the day I decided to start with a TK+3 margin line to the right (towards the unpegged area in front of the car park) – as this part of the swim was pretty deep for a margin at nearly 2 and a half feet I tackled-up with a 4x12 KC Carpa Force with a stem trimmed to 85mm. As I was expecting to catch big fish and to be using either two whole worms or 8-10 dead red maggots as hookbaits the rest of the rig was consisted of 0.21 Reflo Power straight through to a size 12 Guru MWG hook coupled with red Hydrolastic.
The initial feed was two full cups of my groundbait/pellet/maggot mix and 10 seconds after dropping-in with a bunch of maggots on the hook I was attached to an angry double-figure carp. A few bites from silver fish followed, but another full cup of feed soon saw another big carp in the net.
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| Robust kit for the shallower left margin |
After those two quick carp from the right margin sport once again slowed and the only bites I could muster where from small roach. Being about 2 o’clock by this point I decided to give myself a couple of options and fed 3 cups of my margin mix to the right, another full cup of casters/pellets at TK+3 straight in front and 2 cups of groundbait/pellets/maggots on a new swim tight to the left margin at TK+2.
Whilst deciding which of these swims to fish first I stood on my footplate in order to try an detect any signs of feeding fish. Nothing to the right. Nothing on the down-the-shelf line. Masses of churning and tail patterns to the left!!! During a hectic final 2 hours I only fished this left margin line and was rewarded with 7 or 8 good carp (including 2 that must’ve been knocking on the door of 20lb each) for well in excess of 100lb – interestingly the fish didn’t need much encouragement and I probably only fed an additional 3 cups of bait during this final period.
(Gear for the left margin was similar to that for the right but as the depth was only 18 inches the float selected was a 0.2g SconeZone v6.)
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| Lots of big weights today |
Being on an end peg is often a double-edged sword – you normally get a bit of extra room or a corner to fish to, but you regularly get the pleasure of the scales! Today was no exception and after weighing-in only a handful of good bags of fish I soon developed a new found appreciation for the guys at White Acres that seem to do this all day, every day!
I was last to weigh and hence I knew I needed the best part of 160lb to eclipse Mick Fletchers' stonking return of 158-0-0 – I knew I had a good weight but was amazed when my five weighs totalled a whopping 189-2-0 for the victory and a new personal best (by nearly 40 pounds)!!!
Overall top 4:
- Phil Morris (Godalming AS), peg 1, 189-2-0
- Mick Fletcher (Woking DAA), peg 8, 158-0-0
- Dave Steer (W), peg 15, 132-4-0
- P Dove (W), peg 10, 108-4-0
Today’s section winners:
- Stuart Kendall (W), peg 3, 83-12-0
- Trevor Haskell (G), peg 17, 94-0-0
- Adi Hoile (W), peg 20 (something), 93-5-0
In total a dozen anglers put more than 75lb each on the scales – including Bagger who came-up trumps with a new personal best of 91-8-0 (just behind Trevor on the next peg and a fish or two short of the magic ton). Awesome!!!
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| Will I find the answers in here? |
Conclusions: I finished last week’s blog bemoaning my performance in coming last in section in the final round of the Guildford AC summer league at Bury Hill and noting that a mere 3 pounds more would’ve seen me move from eighth to second overall – then I go and smash the best part of two hundred pounds from a venue I’ve never even seen before! I guess this sums-up the difference between an average club angler like myself and the superstars we read about in the magazines and see fishing the big money finals on TV – whilst I can often put a result together fishing venues I’m familiar with using approaches I’m confident in (e.g. the method and down the edge with groundbait), the range of things I’m good at is actually quite narrow. This is in complete contrast to the likes of Will Raison, Des Shipp, etc. who have seemingly mastered all forms of course angling – now where’s my copy of this month’s Match Fishing magazine!!!
Until next time …
