Sunday, 26 January 2014

26 January 2014, Heath Vale (Basingstoke Canal)

Like many of today’s modern match anglers 99% of my fishing time is spent on commercial lakes and ponds – even though I was brought-up fishing the upper Thames around Lechlade, Kelmscott and Radcot, rivers and suchlike nowadays hold little fascination for me. However one exception to my natural water aversion (if you can call such an obviously manmade structure ‘natural’) is the Basingstoke canal – the last time I’d fished the venue was way back in August 2011 when my Godalming Midweekers team somehow defied all odds and gained promotion from the division 2 national to the top flight, so despite a shocking weather forecast I was really looking forward to today’s club match on the Heath Vale stretch.

Will Raison’s Canal Roach on Breadpunch DVD – classic!

As per usual a plan of attack started to form during the week preceding today’s match and that plan had three main options:
  • Punched bread over liquidised bread for roach
  • Half a lobworm over chopped worms and dead maggots for perch
  • Pinkie over groundbait for roach/skimmers

Having not fished liquidised bread for a number of years I decided to do some homework, digging out some old fishing magazines and watching the excellent V2V DVD featuring Will Raison fishing with bread on the Kennet & Avon canal. As ever there is some conflicting advice to be had, with many magazine articles insisting that your liquidised bread should be as fine as possible and as a result elaborate processes involving freezing, defrosting, refreezing and super fine flour sieves are needed – however I have to say I agree with Will Raison’s view, namely that in order to attract the better stamp fish often needed to win canal matches it is better to have your liquidised bread fairly coarse, so as a result I prepared my feed by simply liquidising a whole sliced loaf (crusts included) and passing the resulting crumb through a pinkie riddle.

The Basey at Heath Vale



After a cracking breakfast at Willow Park it was soon time to decamp to the venue – a stretch of the Basingstoke Canal known as the Heath Vale section. There were 11 of us fishing today and (as the pegging saw 5 pegs below the bridge and 6 above) my calculator tells me I had a 36% chance of drawing one of the four end pegs on offer – though of course you won’t be at all surprised to hear that I drew a peg slap bang in the middle of the upstream section, pretty much as far from an end peg as I could’ve been! However as the pegs were nicely spaced I wasn’t too unhappy with my draw, especially as I had a fantastic looking bush trailing into the water on the far bank!!!

Roach rig components

Prior to the start of the match I set-up two rigs for fishing with bread at top kit plus 3 straight in front – with the canal being about 12m wide in my peg this put this initial swim just my side of halfway. The rigs were similar as they were both made-up of Sensas Series 6 pencil floats on 0.11 main line to 0.08 bottoms – however the heavier rig consisted of a 0.6g float, a size 18 Gamakatsu Green hook and double number 4 elastic whereas the lighter rig had a 0.4g float, a size 20 hook and double number 3 elastic. Both featured a number 10 stotz at 20cm from the hook and a bulk of number 8s at 40cm – each float was set so that the hook was 5cm off bottom. (The plan was to use the same rigs at the same depths on different swims by adding a pole section and fishing the same depth as the original swims a little further to the left or right.)

I also had a 4x12 Chianti rig on standby if I felt the need to fish with a spread-out shotting pattern, plus the components for putting together a perch rig for under the far bank bush were also close to hand.

Unfortunately this was a very accurate forecast!

On the whistle I fed a nice big ball of liquidised bread and set about my business with the heavier rig and a 5mm punch – I always like to start heavy as in my experience the bonus skimmers often appear at the start of a session and as time goes by the fish get smaller and smaller, leading to a switch to a lighter rig/smaller punch later in the match.

The first hour went fairly well with 22 roach hitting the net – however the stamp was rather small and no bonus fish appeared. (I can remember fishing a match on the Basey a few years back when the chap next to me put over one hundred fish on the scales for less than a pound – my fish weren’t quite that small, but then again they weren’t far off!!!)

My choice of bread for punching

Things started to slow at around 11 o’clock so I decided to re-fed with a smaller ball of liquidised bread – this brought the fish back into the peg and by switching to the 0.4g rig with a 4mm punch I got to noon with 47 fish in the net. (I normally use a clicker to ensure I don’t exceed keepnet limits on carp matches, but they are also extremely useful for monitoring your catch rate on canal competitions.)

Around 12 o’clock the catch rate dropped-off again so I decided to open a new line at TK+4 to my left – however this never really got going and by 1245 I was only up to 55 fish and going nowhere fast!!!

Now that’s what I call a feature!

Word on the bank was that some decent stamp roach and the odd bonus skimmer/perch were being caught with 6 anglers admitting to 3 pounds plus. At this point it dawned on me that even though I was catching at a fairly good rate, the fish I was catching were so small that it was unlikely I could get to three pounds by the end of the match even if I could maintain the same catch rate (which itself was rather unlikely). At this point I abandoned bread fishing for roach and decided to fish exclusively for big perch – this was off course a massive gamble and could lead to a blow-out, but what’s the point fishing conservatively in an individual match just to save face when it means you have zero chance of winning?

So I jumped off my box and set-up a new rig based on 0.15 Guru N-Gauge straight through to a size 12 MWG with a 0.2g SconeZone V6 and white Hydro – this rig was for catching big (potentially three pound plus) perch with half a big lobworm for bait so there was no room for light lines and super-soft elastics. (I would’ve fished with black Hydro, but because the towpath was rather narrow I had to break-down my 10 and 11.5 sections separately then ship the rest of the pole over a hedge in order to ship back from the far bank bush so white Hydro seemed a better compromise.)

Plumbing-up under the far bank bush I found a nice three feet of depth so I was more than happy to fish tight to it – to start with I didn’t feed anything but dobbed about with just the hookbait to see if any resident perch were at home. Unfortunately this didn’t lead to any bites so five minutes later I was in with half a cup of chopped lobworms/dendras and dead maggots. As it happened by 2 o’clock I’d nothing to show for my constant lifting and dropping other than 2 very iffy bites (which could’ve been down to a passing leaf or crayfish).

Gear for the perch rig

Going into the final hour I decided to give my bread lines another go, but all that got me were 6 tiny roach for less than 2 ounces so it was back on the worm for perch!!! Just as I was about to give-up the float finally slid under and after a pause (to count 1, 2, 3 in my head) a firm strike was met with some solid resistance – at 12 ounces it wasn’t a big perch but it was certainly bigger than the roach I’d been catching!

As there were still 20 minutes to go I was hoping that a shoal had moved in and that the one I’d snared was the runt of the litter – unfortunately this wasn’t to be and the float didn’t go under again until 5 seconds before the final whistle when a 2 ounce specimen (which was probably shorter than the lobworm hookbait) decided to impale itself on my size 12 hook!

The view to the right

Match secretary Roger Howe was soon ‘round with the scales and despite my best efforts I could only muster 2-2-0. However some of the others had done much better – the overall top three reading:
  1. Chris Kampa, 7-8-0
  2. Andy Rogers, 6-11-0
  3. Lee Simmons, 4-6-0

(Looking back my 61 roach probably weighed 1-4-0, with a 12 ounce and a 2 ounce perch making-up the rest of my 2-2-0.)

Were these actually my downfall today?
 
Conclusions: During the second half of the match I was concerned that I’d spent too much time fishing for perch and should’ve stuck with the roach. However with hindsight I should’ve spent the first half an hour of the match fishing for roach, figured-out that the stamp I was catching wasn’t good enough to do any damage then spent the following four and a half hours fishing for perch. As advised by Lee Simmons after the match I should’ve also put a perch line in down the middle of the canal – I already knew that this is a good line on the Basey, however that far bank bush was just so appealing I couldn’t help myself!!!

Sunday, 19 January 2014

19 January 2014, Pond 4 (MBK Coloured Ponds)

Today’s match was a Godalming AS versus Twyford & District Fishing Club event held across MBK Coloured Ponds 2, 3 and 4 – regular readers (and those from the south east of England) will know that this is a pretty decent commercial fishery located near Rake, Hampshire. Despite being easily accessible from the A3 the venue itself is very secluded and provides the leafy, ‘getting away from it all’ backdrop we don’t always get with today’s modern fisheries. Unfortunately, being set in a valley it can often be colder than average and is prone to freezing in the winter. Luckily, despite it being the middle of January, there was no overnight frost last night and in fact today’s weather forecast was for bright sunshine, mild temperatures and absolutely no wind – perfect!

Sitting by the side of the road in the dark waiting for a lift! #oldskool

As my good friend Dave would be travelling to the venue from his home in Guildford via a route that naturally passes pretty close to my place he kindly offered to pick me up on the way today. As a result I soon found myself sitting on my seatbox by the side of the road in the pitch darkness – being early on a Sunday morning I was pretty much left to my own devices, but a wily fox and an old boy on a bike both gave me rather bemused looks as they trotted/rode by!

Peg 6 on Pond 4 – Ron’s favourite no doubt



Being a joint venture today’s match saw an excellent turn-out of 26 competitors – having access to all four of the match lakes it was decided not to use Pond 1 but instead peg 8 or 9 anglers on each of Ponds 2, 3 and 4. This would mean a total of 12 favoured corner and 14 potentially less prolific open water pegs in the bag of dreams – though of coarse the near 50:50 odds of drawing the sort of peg I wanted didn’t stop mean drawing peg 6 on Pond 4 (slap bang in the middle of the bank and as far from a corner as it was possible to get)!!!

Having said that it was a nice enough looking peg and I had a spare platform to my right/two the left – I also had the bonus of being able to ship my pole back to 13m without having to break-down (a luxury not afforded to all pegs along the road bank on this venue).

The best laid plans …

Looking back at some old blogs I realised I’d drawn the peg to the right (number 5) back in May and finished second on the lake with 50lb plus of carp caught on the bomb over heavily loose-fed 8mm pellets. Of coarse those are very much summer tactics and would almost certainly lead to a DNW in the middle of January – as a result I settled on a more prudent two pronged attack based on the straight lead/pellet cone and the pole at 13m with groundbait for some Arnold Rimmers (a little joke for you fans of Red Dwarf and juvenile bream out there).

I also seriously considered setting-up a waggler to search my peg for carp with a nice bright grain of corn – however this is not an approach I’ve ever tried before so I decided to stick to what I know (i.e. fish the tip instead) and build a weight of skimmers on the pole (at least until those in the corners made such tactics null and void by bagging-up on carps).

Bait and tools for the pellet cone

On the whistle I fed my pole line with 2 balls of groundbait (taken from a mix made-up of half a kilo of Sonubaits F1 Dark, a big handful of soaked micro pellets, half a pint of dead fluro pinkies and quarter of a point of dead red maggots) and cast my straight lead set-up towards the middle of the lake. (The rig consisted of a white 8mm Ringers pop-up boilie impaled onto a Guru bait spike that itself was hair-rigged onto 12 inches of 0.22 Guru N-Gauge and a size 14 QM1. Two number 8 stotz pinched onto the line an inch above the hook kept the boilie tantalisingly close to the deck and things were completed with 8lb Daiwa Sensor main line.)

Unfortunately a carefully timed 15 minutes came and went without even the slightest indication of a fish so I reeled in, replaced the boilie with a bright orange Ringers Allsort (a bottom bait) and added a small pellet cone of soaked 2mm pellets bound with some Sonubaits Stiki Pellet powder. Sadly another 15 minutes ticked by without any action, so with half an hour gone it was time for plan B! (On the plus side the only person to have caught a carp on my lake by this point was Brian Stevens one of the middle pegs on the far bank – as far as I could tell none of the fancied corner pegs had yielded early bonus fish.)

As close as I ever get to a corner at MBK!

Even though I intended to target skimmers and other small fish on the pole I had to pay heed to the fact that the lake is full of carp – as a result my pole rig featured a compromise between finesse and reliability: the main line was 0.13 Guru N-Gauge to a hooklength of 0.11 Reflo Power and size 20 Tubertini 808 (which would no doubt be marketed as a size 18 if it was produced by Drennan or Kamasan). The float was a 4x14 KC Carpa Chimp (the best ‘go anywhere, do anything’ pattern ever created) shotted with a bulk at 40cm and 2 number 9 stotz pushed together at 20cm – the rig was set an inch or two overdepth. Things were finished-off with pink Hydrolastic (if I had more top kits I’d fit some with the new, softer yellow Hydro – but more of that later).

The next three hours actually went rather well – as far as I could tell nobody was catching carp and I was managing to maintain a reasonable run of small skimmers on single or double dead red maggot hookbaits. With the help of a small (1lb) carp I’d probably managed the best part of 9 or 10 pounds before the peg really seemed to die at about one thirty …

Looking left to John Wilkins on peg 8

During the proceeding 3 hours I’d re-fed a couple of times with a small ball of my groundbait mix and always seen an immediate response. However with 90 minutes to go I decided to open a new line with a slightly different plan of attack – as a result I plumbed-up two new rigs for fishing at 13m still but at a 45 degree angle to my left (putting the new swim at about 8-9m directly in front of the vacant peg 7). The first rig (pink Hydro, 0.13 main line, 0.2g SconeZone v8, 0.11 hooklength, size 20 Tubertini 808) was for targeting small fish with expander pellets, the second (blue Hydro, 4x12 KC Carpa Force, 0.15 main line, 0.13 hooklength, size 18 Kamasan B911) was aimed at catching carp on corn.

This new line was fed initially with a sprinkling of micro pellets and 3 grains of corn whilst the original pole line was topped-up with 3 full size balls of groundbait – ‘he who dares Rodney, he who dares …’!!! In order to give these lines time to settle/recover I turned to my tip rod and had a quick cast on the straight lead (no feed) with the 8mm white pop-up boilie rig – a fifteen minute cast saw a tantalising liner, but despite crouching over the rod in intense anticipation it never did slam ‘round with that mystical 20lber on the other end!

A look on the new line with the lighter rig and a 4mm expander failed to produce a bite in the following 5 minutes, so it was back onto the original line to see if any skimmers had returned – luckily a few had and I was able to keep things ticking over to the end of the match with some more small fish. (It is worth noting that the stamp of these fished had diminished dramatically and despite thinking to myself at least 3 times that I should swap to a lighter elastic I continue with the pink Hydro and ended-up bumping as many fish as I landed. I also tried both rigs on the new line a few times but no bites materialised.)

Worth the weight (sic)?

Given that today’s was match was split across 3 different lakes it was decided to structure the pay-out accordingly with prizes for the top two on each lake (but no overall 1, 2, 3). Here are the results …

Pond 2:
  1. A Clayson (Twyford), 29-5-0
  2. M Grace (T), 20-13-0

Pond 3:
  1. P Etherington (Godalming), 24-9-0
  2. L Prater (T), 13-1-0

Pond 4:
  1. L Giles (T) & P Morris (G), both 10-7-0

As you can see I managed to tie with Lee Giles for top spot on Pond 4 – agonisingly close to an out-and-out lake win though it is well worth noting that there were other weights of 9-5-0, 10-3-0 and 10-5-0 so it could’ve been a lot worse!!!

The final reckoning

Conclusions: as always in these situations it is very easy to focus I what could’ve been done to put that extra fish in the net. For instance, with hindsight fishing the tip for a total 45 minutes was a waste of time and not doing so would’ve certainly put another 8 ounces to a pound in the net – however on another day the tip could’ve wrapped ‘round three times putting a potential 20lb in the net! However I do regret not scaling down my elastic in the final hour – this was just plain laziness and cost me a lake win!!!

Until next time ...

Sunday, 12 January 2014

12 January 2014, Busbridge (Godalming AS)

Like a great deal of the country the south east of England has been subjected to non-stop heavy rains and strong winds since my last match – this bad weather causing a lot of flooding along my local river Wey (though the only inconvenience I personally suffered was an 18 hour power cut on Christmas Eve when falling trees downed all of the power lines into Haslemere). However over the last few days the weather seems to have changed dramatically with mild, wet conditions replaced with a drop in temperatures and sharp frosts – ‘out of the frying pan, into the fire’ from a fishing perspective!!!

The usual pre-draw anticipation!!!

Today’s match was a Godalming AS club competition at Busbridge. I’ve written about this venue in previous blogs, but for the benefit of any newcomers to All the Gear, No Idea this venue is typical of a lake formed by building a dam and flooding a valley – it is quite long and thin (about 75 yards from bank to bank at its widest) and gets shallower as you move from the deep end near the dam wall (probably 12-15 feet) to the far end (which is only a couple of feet deep). The target species are bream/skimmers (if they feed) and dumpy roach (more reliable), though the venue does also contain a very limited number of specimen (25lb plus) carp. (Big pike are also present and especially active in the winter – though of course they don’t count in coarse fishing competitions.)

Looking right from peg 7 towards the dam wall



The last few matches I’ve fished at Busbridge have all been won from the shallower end of the lake, so like the rest of the 21 strong field I was looking for such a draw – so as you can imagine I wasn’t best pleased when peg 7 (one away from the end peg nearest the dam wall) appeared from the bag of dreams!!! This meant I’d be next to local legend Ian Covey (though I couldn’t actually see him due to the dense foliage between us) and something got me thinking about those anglers often referred to as ‘drawbags’ – all I can say is that if you get to your peg and you have Guildford AC stalwart Giovanni Barbato or anyone from Daiwa Dorking (especially Tommy Hiller or Pemb Wrighting) for a neighbour then you are either on a flier or at worse next door to one!!!

Like many swims on this venue, peg 7 is something of a bird cage with trees overhead and a very narrow, steep bank behind that makes fishing the pole impossible (unless you are willing to break-down section-by-section). As noted above it is also one of the deeper pegs on the venue and hasn’t won a match in the post-war era (this last point is unverified, but I wouldn’t be surprised).

New silver fish feeder hooklengths

As the pole was ruled-out for logistical reasons my pre-match plan was based around chucking a small feeder towards the middle of the lake with a waggler set-up for fishing as far as I could loose-feed maggots via a catapult with a reasonable level of accuracy. Unlike my previous match at Busbridge (where I went ‘all or nothing’ for proper bream) I also decided to adopt a ‘catch anything that swims’ mindset and to try and build a decent weight bit by bit – especially prudent as I’d blanked in my last match and not actually caught anything since early November!!!

Baitwise I had some Sonubaits F1 Dark groundbait (that had been in the freezer since the Christmas match and included some bonus dead pinkies), maggots (both dead and wriggling), (live) fluro pinkies and worms. (I also had my usual supply of pellets, boilies and Goo with me but they didn’t come into play on the day.)

Gear for the feeder

On the whistle I cast my feeder short of the imaginary dividing line between myself and the anglers pegged on the opposite bank and was pleasantly surprise to see the tip rattle immediately – a small roach was soon winging its way into my keepnet and although it probably only weighed an ounce I was relieved to avoid the dreaded blank!!! (Following a lost fish in my last match (from my only bite of the day) I’d invested in some Guru LWG eyed hooks and tied-up some 16s, 18s and 20s on 45cm of 0.13 N-Gauge – I started on an 18 today and coupled it with a 15g Drennan cage feeder and 4lb Daiwa Sensor main line. Hookbaits were typically live or dead red maggots.)

This pattern continued for about 20 minutes when I decided that if I was going to build a weight of small roach then I’d be better off catching them closer in on the waggler as opposed to at range on the feeder – unfortunately for me (but very much to the amusement of Lee Simmons and Paul Etherington who were pegged opposite) my fish cast on the float saw me hooked-up in the overhanging tree above, so I was soon back on the tip and saw out the first hour with about 15 small roach for roughly a pound.

I should also mention that after about 45 minutes the tip pulled ‘round to the butt and for about 3 minutes I was convinced the bream had moved in and I was attached to a five pound specimen – that is until a 5lb bream turned into a 10lb pike with a one ounce roach in its mouth!!!

Waggler gear

At the start of the second hour I decided to give my (re-rigged) waggler another go and by casting over my right (as opposed to the usual left) shoulder I was able to avoid the troublesome tree and actually get my rig into the water! This improved both my catch rate and the stamp of fish I was catching – by varying the amount of maggots I was loose feeding and the depth I was fishing at I was able to maintain a regular stream of dumpy roach and rudd.

Interestingly I never plumbed the waggler line – instead I started at about 4 feet deep and simply kept adding a further 6 inches until I got a bite. Even though the peg must’ve been 12 feet deep the most productive zone seemed to be between 6 and 8 feet. (My waggler of choice was a loaded 3g Drennan crystal insert jobbie on 3.2lb Drennan Floatfish main line to a pre-tied hook-to-nylon consisting of a size 20 Silverfish Maggot hook and 25cm of 2lb line. This hooklength was attached via a tiny swivel tied into a figure of eight loop – the only other weights down the line were two number 9 stotz spaced at 30cm intervals from the swivel.)

The view to the left

The small fish kept on coming and combined with a couple of bonus 8 ounce skimmers I entered the final 90 minutes with an estimated 6 or 7 pounds in the net – word on the bank was that no proper bream had been caught, and whilst I knew I was behind Paul Etherington (who’d been catching small fish at an alarming rate in the waggler and short pole all day) I thought I was probably up there for second place with Wayne Hughes who had managed an unseasonal 6lb tench on the feeder!!!

As a result I continued on the waggler for small fish – though I very nearly swapped back to leger tactics when Lee Simmons opposite latched into a proper bream on the tip. Fortunately just as I was pondering a switch I managed a decent (one pound) skimmer on the waggler – this was to happen a further four times before the end (though I did loose one to another big pike that came out of the blue 10 feet from my extended landing net).

The all important results

Following the final whistle substitute match organiser Dave Woolgar was soon ‘round with the scales and I was pleasantly surprised when my catch pulled the dial down to 10-12-0 and was even more surprised to learn that I was top of the leader board so far. As expected I was soon relegated to second place when Paul Etherington’s excellent 16lb won the match, but I was more than happy to start 2014 with a frame placing given I thought I’d drawn a duff peg at the start.

Overall top 4:
  1. Paul Etherington, 16-1-0
  2. Phil Morris, 10-12-0
  3. Frank Bevan, 7-12-0
  4. Wayne Hughes, 7-6-0

Section winners:
  • Lee Simmons, 5-7-0
  • Dave Lake, 6-0-0

(In the end the pegs at the top end of the lake failed to produce and generally the bream/bigger skimmers didn’t feed in significant numbers.)

Vital winter gear!!! #flaskman

Conclusions: I think the most pleasing thing about today’s match was that I learned my lesson from my previous outing to Busbridge (where I’d blown-out as a result of focussing on big fish only) and was able to build a weight of small fish by plugging away and building a weight from numbers of small fish with the odd bonus mixed in. It was also interesting catching skimmers a long way off the bottom – like many people I normally either fish hard on the bottom or shallow (no deeper than two feet below the surface) but I’m now wondering if I’m missing out on a lot of fish that are swimming about in mid-water …

Until next time …