One of the beauties of fishing is that it is an outdoor sport – personally I spend five days a week commuting to London and back, and being constantly stuck in an office means I’m often daydreaming about my day on the bank at the weekend. However, at the end of every summer there seems to be a point where the weather takes a turn for the worse and we start down the path towards the cold, dark days of winter. Yes, you’ve guessed it – today was that day! I had been looking forward to today’s match, but that fact that it poured with freezing cold rain from the beginning of the match until fifteen minutes after the “all out” took the edge off of my enjoyment somewhat!!!
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| MBK Baron’s Ponds |
MBK Leisures has three main sites – I can only remember visiting the Pump Station once, but I’ve written about the Colour Ponds on numerous occasions. Today’s match was held on the Big Lake at Baron’s Ponds – also known locally as St Patrick’s Lane. As the name suggests this is quite a big lake (40-50 pegs) with an island at one end and a damn wall at the other.
My draw put me on peg 11 – the venue isn’t permanently pegged, but on the day peg 11 was two or three from the corner where the damn wall is sited and I had my back to the causeway between the Big Lake and the Small Lake. I had vacant platforms to my left and right – this might sound like a really good thing, but I’d hate to fish a match were every peg was in as the platform to my right was only 6 or 7 metres away!!!
Given the rain I was quite happy to find myself fishing under a tree – it was a bit of a parrot cage, but nothing too serious as I’d be using a 10’ tip rod. Having drawn a peg towards the damn wall I was miles away from the central island and hence had open water in front – as the venue is double-banked I had an angler directly opposite me at about 50m.
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| Gear for making PVA bags |
Having not fished the venue for a good few years I did my usual trawl through the angling forums, websites and Twitter during the week to try and build a plan. I could remember reading an article on matchangler.com ages ago where Ian Dixon bagged-up on quality roach, but some of the match results on the MBK website suggested that carp would be the target.
A quick walk around the venue yesterday (when the weather was much, much better) led to a chance encounter with fishery owner Kenny Wright who implied that the roach weren’t showing in great numbers and that bigger fish were falling to sweetcorn on the short pole. As a result my opening tactics were to be the straight lead with optional PVA bags of 6mm pellets and the pole at top kit plus 3 with corn and soaked 2mm pellets.
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| Much better weather the day before the match! |
I started the match by feeding a small amount of bait over my pole line then cast my bomb rig to about 25m – on the hook (well hair) was a bright yellow Ringers Allsort and in this instance I had chosen to attach a small PVA bag of pellets. I was willing to leave this first cast in the water for anything up to 20 minutes, when after 6 or 7 the tip slammed ‘round and I found myself attached to a very angry carp that took ages to land – having said that at about 7lb this fish was very, very welcome!
No further bites followed in the next half an hour so I decided to give the pole a try – as the water was quite deep (about 6’) and as I was looking to catch carp this rig consisted of a 4x12 KC Carpa Force (which actually takes the shot associated with a typical 4x14) on 0.15 Guru N-Gauge mainline to a hooklength of 0.13 with a size 16 Kamasan B911 hook. The shotting pattern was a spread bulk of number 10 stotz starting from 20cm from the hook and elastic as white Hydrolastic.
Unfortunately, despite a large amount of fizzing, I couldn’t muster a bite on the pole so it was back to the tip – what happened next can only be considered a complete and utter disaster! I’d gone in again with a yellow Allsort and a PVA bag of 6mm pellets when after 3 or 4 minutes the tip slammed ‘round and the clutch started spinning – so far, so good. However, as casting was quite awkward (given the overhanging tree) and as I was double-banked I’d put the line into the clip to ensure I didn’t go past the halfway mark. Yep you’ve guessed it – the carp continued to strip line from the reel until it hit the clip, at which point the rod hit it’s maximum and the 0.19 hooklength that normally looks as thick as old rope rapidly turned into a pig’s tail made of ultra fine cotton!!!
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| Looking right from peg 11 |
After that ‘interesting’ first hour the final four hours were frankly a long, hard slog – the influx of cold rain seemed to kill the sport for the majority of the twenty-odd competitors who were by now huddled under umbrellas or putting their Gore-Tex clothing to the test.
No further bites materialised on the straight lead or top kit plus 3 pole lines, and a new line opened for roach at 13m with casters over Sensas Match Blend was equally fruitless. I did however manage a handful of small perch on worm over chopped worm and caster fairly close to the bank at top kit plus 2 to my left, so at least I had the pleasure of watching the float dip a couple of times!
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| Pre-match hype, but no Sky TV cameras on the day! |
Eventually the final whistle was blown and it was time to pack-up – I can assure you that putting away wet gear in the pouring rain is certainly not on my list of top ten things to do on a Sunday afternoon!!! However on the plus side that early carp turned-out to be enough to sneak a default section win after Pete Worsfield’s last gasp double on the short pole next door propelled him into the frame.
Overall top 4:
- Andy Rogers, 15-0-0
- Chris Kampa, 13-5-0
- Jim Findlay, 13-0-0
- Pete Worsfield, 12-0-0
Section winners:
- Gary Woking, 9-12-0
- Phil Morris, 7-13-0
- Brian Stevens/Keith Jeffries, both 7-6-0
So congratulations to Andy, Chris and Jim for successfully overcoming the conditions to fill the top three places – they were in different areas but were all pegged fairly close to the island and presumably shallower water. (I’m not totally sure but I think their catches were made-up of small roach and perch as opposed to bonus carp.)
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| Luckily this doesn’t apply to matches! |
Conclusions: having read the above you can probably guess the two conclusions I’m going to draw today – that fishing in cold rain isn’t as enjoyable as fishing in glorious sunshine and that lost fish cost matches!!! I’m the first person to berate people for tales of broken lines and hook pulls in the car park after matches so that incident will haunt me for a few weeks yet, especially as if the carp on the other end had weighed 7-4-0 or more I’d have won three matches in a row …
Until next time …
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