As my previous three weekends had consisted of two soakings and a non-fishing Sunday I was pleased to be back on the bank for this Godalming AS match at club water Busbridge – especially as the weather forecast had switched from heavy rain to a lovely sunny Autumn day!
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| Pre-draw excitement |
My dip to into the bag of dreams rewarded me with peg 16 – this is towards the shallower end of the lake and was exactly where I wanted to be as it was directly opposite the peg I’d won from back in March with forty plus pounds of decent bream. (For the write-up of that match and more background on the venue click here: 03 March 2013, Busbridge (Godalming AS).)
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| PVA and two different sized traditional feeders |
Two of the things that many anglers often overlook are central to the way I tend to approach each match that I fish – fish to your strengths and fish to win (without worrying about blowing-out). As a result for today’s match I’d left my waggler rods and pole at home and the basic plan was to go all out for big fish (bream in this case) on the straight lead with PVA bags after using an extra large feeder as a mini spod to get some bait down.
This would be a risky approach. However fishing for small fish on the waggler or pole would be playing into the hands of the top anglers that regularly fish Godalming AS club matches using such tactics – put simply, they are much, much better at it than me!!!
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| Looking right towards the boathouse |
On the whistle I kicked-off with six Drennan XL feeders worth of Sonubaits F1 sweet fishmeal groundbait, soaked micro pellets and dead red maggots before switching to the straight lead (a two thirds of an ounce Guru model) and attaching a 30cm hooklength of 0.19 Guru N-Gauge and a size 14 QM1. Unfortunately after 90 minutes I was biteless, despite trying various brightly coloured boilies and PVA bags of 2mm pellets smeared with different flavours of Goo!
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| A can of Coke and my lunchbox take pride of place |
At 1130 (today’s fishing times were 1000 until 1500) I decided to deposit three further extra large feeders worth of bait into the swim – this finally provoked a response as 10 minutes later the first bite of the day led to a 2lb skimmer on a white 8mm pop-up boilie. (The boilie was kept fairly close to the deck as there were 2 number 8 stotz an inch from the hook.)
Not for the first time I’m now going to write ‘unfortunately this was something of a false dawn’, so at 1215 I went for broke and fed 7 more ‘spods’ of groundbait, pellets and dead red maggots – this eventually saw the second skimmer of the day in the net as after the hookbait (a white boilie again) had been in the water for precisely 27 minutes and 43 seconds the tip the tip arched ‘round once more.
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| An illustration of just how clear the water was |
With 90 minutes to go I finally decided that investing three and a half hours for just two (albeit decent sized) skimmers wasn’t going to win me a bean so it was time for a change. Looking at my side tray I settled on the tub of dendrabenas that had been in the fridge for the best part of three weeks and two recent articles from Match Fishing magazine sprang to mind – the first was something that Tom Scholey had written about the use of finely minced worms at White Acres; the second was a piece where Cathal Hughes had described catching small hybrids/skimmers on the drop on the feeder in the recent World Pairs championship in Ireland.
I put some juicy worms to one side (to be used on the hook) and set about turning the rest to a fine mush with a pair of scissors – personally I only normally use worms for fishing down the edge for carp and I generally use two whole dendrabenas on the hook as a large target bait. As a result I wasn’t prepared for the smell as the brutality of my actions was quickly rewarded with a right old stink!!! Anyway the aim of the game was to draw in some smaller skimmers and roach with the finely chopped worms and to try and catch them on the drop by regular casting with an open-end feeder, so tackle-wise I swapped to a 45cm 0.15 hooklength with a size 18 QM1 attached ‘hook in the loop’ style and slipped on a 15g Drennan cage feeder.
This approach worked to a certain extent – by casting regularly and not sinking my line I was able to detect small taps on the tip pretty much straight after the feeder landed. I missed lots of bites and had two skimmers annoying fall off at the net, but at least I managed to increase my total by adding two small (8 ounce) skimmers, a roach and frisky perch before the ‘all out’ was eventually called.
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| Team Bagger stalwart Dave Woolgar’s walk of glory |
Given the peggy nature of Busbridge and the fact that the bream (and hence the big weights) are normally at one end of the lake or the other, today’s match was essentially split into two with an equal pay-out between those 10 anglers fishing the upper part of the lake and the 11 fishing towards the much deeper dam wall. In the end there was a very close finish between the top two in the match as a whole (with only 3 ounces separating them), though as it happened they were fishing in different sections.
Top section:
- Dave Woolgar, 20-5-0
- John Wilkins, 18-7-0
- Dave Carter, 13-11-0
Bottom section:
- Andy Rogers, 20-8-0
- Jim Findlay, 9-15-0
- Perry Gray, 7-10-0
(My 6 fish weighed a rather disappointing 5-3-0 meaning I would’ve had to triple my weight to sneak past Dave Carter for the final prize in the top section.)
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| Your nuts m’lord (one for the Two Ronnies fans out there) |
Conclusions: ultimately the question that has to be answered here is ‘was I correct to go all out for the win and fish exclusively for the better bream’? Based on today’s result (a blow-out) it would be easy to conclude that I made the wrong choice and had this been a team event or a significant individual league match then I’d be in 100% agreement. However as it was a pretty standard club match where the walk of glory and the associated bragging rights are the only thing that mattered then I’d say my tactics were spot-on – after all in terms of brown envelopes there isn’t a great deal of difference between one out of the money and stone cold last!!!
Until next time …
