As I was loading the car this morning I saw a single magpie. Then just as I was contemplating not even bothering to fish (after all it is “one for sorrow”) I saw a further pair together. Whilst I was trying to figure-out if the “two for joy” had cancelled-out the initial dose of bad luck I saw another lone magpie – all this and I was trying to wean myself off my superstitions by intentionally not wearing my lucky red T-shirt today!!!
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| Team Bagger's pegs |
Today’s match was round 5 of the Godalming AS teams of four held on Richardson’s Lake at Marsh Farm. Last time I was handed the drawing honours I saddled us (Team Bagger) with the weighing-in duties – despite this I was made captain for the day again and luckily (magpies or no magpies) fortune was on our side on this occasion and not only had I managed to avoid the dreaded scales I’d also managed to put us on some pretty decent pegs!!!
Personally I found myself on peg 11, on the outside of a bend with the ends of two different islands in range of a 25m chuck – nice! Not only that, but being on a kind of point I also had lots of open water to go at and peg 10 to my right was vacant – first hand experience shows that any extra room can be a real bonus at Marsh Farm so I was more than happy with this arrangement, especially as the anglers to my left seemed to be squeezed into a line with no spare pegs between them!
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| The SconeZone V8 |
As ever on Richardson’s Lake my plan of attack was two-fold – a small pellet feeder to the central island straight in front and delicate pole rigs for fishing on the deck at top kit plus 4 to the left and right.
Gear for the pellet feeder was my usual arrangement of a small 20g Preston Innovations pellet feeder on 8lb Daiwa Sensor to a 10cm hooklength of 0.19 Guru N-Gauge with a size 16 QM1 and a hair-rigged pellet band. Feed was simply soaked 2mm fishery pellets and the main hookbait was the ever reliable 6mm hard pellet, though I did have some fluro boilies and 3 bottles of Kiana Goo in reserve.
On the pole I had some new floats to try today – the SconeZone V8 in 0.2 and 0.3g sizes. These are lovely looking bits of kit with a fantastic finish, a strong looking eye and a perfect body shape (something between a Chianti and a pencil float) for fishing pellets for shy biting fish. The rigs where made-up on 0.11 Reflo Power mainline to 15cm hooklengths of 0.10 and size 20 Tubertini 808s – the elastic was pink Hydro.
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| Looking right towards the gap between the islands |
The weather today was unseasonably warm and sunny with not a breath of wind – conditions that are normally the kiss of death on this and many other venues. I was contemplating this point after a biteless first half an hour on the feeder when first drop in on the pole with a 4mm expander saw a four ounce skimmer in the net. (I’d been feeding small amounts of soaked micros via a cupping kit between casts on the feeder from the start.) This at least got me off the mark but I’d already fallen 8 or 9 fish behind Simon Duke to my left on peg 12 – a fact compounded when I couldn’t buy another bite on the pole!!!
Before switching to the pole I’d removed my hooklength from the feeder rig and made 3 quick casts to get some bait down – this seemed to do the trick as after those 10 minutes on the pole the rod slammed ‘round with a nice tench first chuck back on the tip. This opening tinca tinca was quickly followed by two more and a nice skimmer before the feeder line suddenly faded – this time I re-fed with 4 feeders’ worth of bait before switching back to the pole and picking-up a nice little crucian. (I also managed to bump another decent fish being too clever for my own good by trying to feed via a pole-mounted pot with a fish on – when I tapped the pole to release the pellets I gave the fish every excuse it needed to shed the hook!!!)
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The shadow starts to form in front of the island
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The re-feeding tactic didn’t work as well this time and only one skimmer hit the net after returning to the pellet feeder line. The pole was also pretty slow so I had a quick re-think and came-up with the “Goo bombe” – a clever combination of soaked 2mm pellets compressed in a medium Preston Innovations pellet punch with some Perfect Peach Goo in the middle!!! (Hopefully this would see a nice ball of pellets fall to the deck where they would break-up releasing the sweet smelling Goo – well that’s the theory anyway!) This tactic seemed to work to a certain extent as two nice skimmers fell quickly to a 4mm expander before the line once again faded.
The start of the fourth hour (1300) saw the sun moving to such a position that a nice shadow started to form in front of the island – this coincided with a great run of fish on the feeder with six good skimmers and a tench in as many casts in what is usually the hardest part of any match at Marsh Farm!!! Following this golden half an hour/40 minutes the pattern for the day continued as after a run of fish the swim died so it was in with 5 feeders’ worth of bait and back onto the pole. Unfortunately this only led to a few very iffy, unhittable bites – normally a sure sign that tiny micro skimmers are the only fish in the peg – so as a result I opened a new pole line to right in the same depth of water as the original. This can often lead to a run of fish but today it certainly didn’t!!!
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| Looking left from peg 11 |
Today’s match was a five and a half hour affair running from 1000 to 1530 so it was always likely that the best part of the match would be from about 2 o’clock through to the end. This theory was proved correct as the final 90 minutes yielded an excellent return of 5 skimmers, 1 tench and a bonus 3lb common carp on the feeder, plus 3 further good skimmers on the (original) pole line.
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| Results for A and B section … |
By the time the scales for my section arrived at my peg Andy Rogers was leading from Ken Russell with 26-7-0 to 16-13-0 – as a result I was mightily pleased to see my mixed bag drag the scales down to 35-8-0. As things turned-out this was enough to win the section and the match as a whole.
Overall top 4:
- Phil Morris (Team Bagger), peg 11, 35-8-0
- Darren Dodge (matchangler.com), peg 32, 32-0-0
- Claire Hollis (Team Bagger), peg 25, 30-15-0
- Andy Rogers (Guildford AC), peg 3, 26-7-0
Section winners:
- Phil Morris (Team Bagger), peg 11, 35-8-0
- Claire Hollis (Team Bagger), peg 25, 30-15-0
- Darren Dodge (matchangler.com), peg 32, 32-0-0
- Percy Allan (Trev’s Tornadoes), peg 45, 22-5-0
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| … and those for C and D |
Not only that but the rest of Team Bagger had pulled-out all of the stops as Bagger had done brilliantly to hammer Dave Johnson off the next peg and win B section with 30-15-0 (enough for third overall), Dave Woolgar did the business with a second in C section and Paul Etherington had done really well to secure a mid-table finish in D section from a very poor peg. This gave us a total of 9 penalty points and a clear victory from Chertsey Bait and Guildford AC who both finished on 13 points.
Top 3 teams on the day:
- Team Bagger, 9 points
- Chertsey Bait, 13 points (on overall weight countback)
- Guildford Angling Centre, 13 points
- Matchangler.com, 53 points
- Guildford Angling Centre, 64 points
- Chertsey Bait, 80 points
- Trev’s Tornadoes, 87 points
- Team Bagger, 89 points
- Brian’s Bandits, 111 points
- Team Rog, 116 points
- Buster’s Bandits, 122 points
Today’s result has kept Team Bagger in fifth place, but we’ve closed the gap on Trev’s Tornadoes to 2 points and we’re just about in striking distance of Chertsey Bait in third who are 9 points better off. Going into the final round it is for matchangler.com to lose as they are ahead of Guildford AC by a seemingly unassailable 11 points.
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| Happy days!!! |
Conclusions: there has been a lot written in the angling press about the future of team fishing so I’ll chip in with my view. Basically winter leagues and nationals involving teams of 10 or 12 fished on natural venues are now completely off the radar for the typical match angler – there are many reasons for this but the main one is that the best anglers gravitate to the best teams, making it impossible for the lower-profile teams to compete so they eventually give-up. Having said that the buzz of winning today’s team event was awesome – it was only a low profile club event, but being able to share success with your teams mates is brilliant. As a result smaller teams of 4 matches will continue to increase in popularity, especially as they can be fished on local commercial-style venues where the creature comforts we have all become accustomed to can be enjoyed with our mates – roll-on round 6 in two weeks time!!!
Until next time …
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