Today’s Godalming AS club match was the third of four matches in a row on non-Godalming waters – recently we’ve been to MBK Coloured Ponds and the Basingstoke Canal, today’s match was on the Small Lake at Willow Park and next week there is a joint outing with Woking DAA to the Big Lake at Furnace Lakes.
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| Willow Park, Small Lake |
Despite being well renowned and fairly local I’ve only fished Willow Park seven times in the last five years – six of those visits have been to the Middle Lake and the only previous time I’ve been on the Small Lake I managed to blank!!! So as you can imagine I was looking for a better result this time around and as the weather forecast was for an almost spring-like day expectations were high …
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| All the gear ... |
The Small Lake at Willow Park features 34 pegs – however some of these are incredibly close together and as a result today’s match organisers imposed a 20 peg limit. In the end only 16 made it to the draw enabling the pegs placed into the bag of dreams to be spread-out a little further.
A look on the Willow Park web site revealed that the last few matches on the Small Lake had all been won from peg 1 (the peg that I blanked from on my previous visit) so of course that was the one that everybody hoped to draw – in the end my sticky mitt stuck to peg 23, about as far from peg 1 as it was possible to get! However I was in good company as I had Godalming legends either side – Perry Grey on peg 22 to my left and Colin Underwood on 24 to my right (peg 23 wasn’t in).
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| Pole rig components |
On the open matches on this lake tactics are restricted to float only – however this rule does not apply to club bookings where legering is allowed. (Of course the organiser of each club match could choose to impose the float only rule if they saw fit.)
As my peg didn’t offer any obvious features (naturally I’d drawn a peg as far from a corner as it was possible to get) I decided to initially attack my peg with 13m of pole for skimmers and the straight lead for carp at about 25m. The pole rig featured pink Hydro, 0.13 Guru N-Gauge mainline, a 4x16 KC Carpa Chimp and a 15cm hooklength of 0.10 Reflo Power to a size 20 Tubertini 808. (Shotting was a simple bulk of number 8 stotz at 40cm with two number 10 droppers.) The bomb rod was set-up with my usual arrangement of 8lb Daiwa Sensor mainline, a one third of an ounce Guru square bomb and a 30cm hooklength of 0.19 N-Gauge to a size 14 QM1 with a hair-rigged pellet band.
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| Groundbait mix for the pole |
On the whistle (we were fishing from 10 until 3 today) I fed 2 balls of groundbait (Sounbaits F1 dark with added dead fluro pinkies and red/white maggots) on my pole line and flicked an 8mm pellet on the tip rod to about 25cm. This first cast (which lasted 20 minutes) led to two definite twitches, but despite firing-out a few loose offerings via a catapult no proper bites materialised.
The second cast (25 minutes this time) was even less eventful and I didn’t notice even the slightest of line bites. As a result of this lack of action and the fact that it was a nice sunny day (though of course pretty cold as it is still early February) I decided to set-up a waggler to fish through the water over the 25m line – I’d love to be able to say that this was the turning point of my match and I went on to bag-up, but I’m afraid I never had a bit on it! (Oh well, ‘nothing ventured, nothing gained’ as they say!!!)
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| Direct sun and a good ripple made it difficult to see my float |
By 11 o’clock my pole line had been given an hour to settle so it was time to give it a go. After ten fruitless minutes I was about to give-up and revert to the tip when the float dipped and a nice big (2lb) skimmer was soon pulling a decent amount of pink Hydro from the end of my pole – off the mark at last!
Given the way I was facing (directly into a low, bright sun) and the significant ripple created by a strong cross-breeze I was really struggling to see the float so I had a quick cast on the straight lead whilst I set-up a feeder rig on my second tip rod to fish over the pole line. As luck would have it the tip was soon flying ‘round as an ill-fated 8 ounce skimmer managed to foul-hook itself against my 8mm pellet (it wouldn’t have got it in it’s mouth that’s for certain)!
Once the new feeder rig (which consisted of 6lb mainline, a small Drennan cage feeder and a 45cm hooklength made-up of 0.13 to a size 18 Guru LWG) was ready I had a couple of drops over the 13m pole line. No further bites materialised from this line so it seemed churlish to ignore the skimmer I’d snared on the long line so I clipped my feeder rig to 30m and had 5 quick casts to get some bait down. Again this new tactic didn’t explode into life as I’d hoped and by one o’clock I’d only managed to miss two twitches (probably from roach) on double-dead red maggot and to strike in a fantastically ridiculous fashion at what was clearly an obvious line bite!!!
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| Feeder gear |
A quick look on the pole only yielded a small roach so a quick re-feed with 2 more balls of groundbait was in order before returning to the feeder rig, this time with a shortened (30cm) hooklength and a switch to double/triple dead fluro pinkie hookbaits – this did have the desired effect and 2 skimmers in a row were quickly dispatched into my waiting keepnet.
However the action once again tailed-off so I decided to be bold and re-fed the feeder line with 5 large cage feeders’ worth of bait – the response was hardly hectic but eventually two more skimmers fell to triple pinkie hookbaits and just as I was about to start packing-up (with fifteen minutes to go) the tip slammed ‘round and a real bonus of a 4lb F1 (yes, a 4lb F1) made it’s way into my net! Hoping that a shoal of oversized F1s had moved in I quickly recast but the final action of the day was to be a tiny skimmer on the whistle.
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| Results part 1 |
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| Results part 1 |
In the end my 7 skimmers, 2 roach and 1 F1 pulled the dial down to 10-4-0, enough for a section win and not too far behind the frame. Overall top three:
- Alex Boxall, peg 1, 21-10-0
- Chris Kampa, peg 12, 19-10-0
- Paul Etherington, peg 16, 12-3-0
Section winners:
- Andy Rogers, peg 10, 12-1-0
- Brian Stevens, peg 18, 11-13-0
- Phil Morris, peg 23, 10-4-0
Well done to Alex for the win from fancied peg 1 and to Chris Kampa for snaring two big carp on ultra-light waggler gear – the first of which seemed to take about half an hour to land!!!
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| Who turned out the lights? |
Conclusions: I guess today was typical of a winter match with the clear water and bright sunshine seeing few fish feeding, the winning weights being made-up of small numbers of big fish. This can of course be very frustrating as good angling is often not rewarded with a bite – however a good draw can see less experienced anglers grab the limelight so in many ways the weather is a great leveller, and when it comes down to it winter fishing is still miles better than lying on your sofa watching TV!!!
Until next time ...
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