My first visit to Gold Valley since April and a very successful one too! The match itself was an invitational event organised by local legend and matchangler.com head honcho Dave Johnson for a number of German and Dutch anglers visiting Gold Valley for a taste of British commercial style fishing - they'd spent the previous day being coached by England international Will Raison and had apparently bagged some typical Gold Valley munters on the pellet waggler and down the edge later in the day. As well as our fellow Europeans the match also included some top UK anglers in the form of Will Raison himself, Claire (Bagger) Hollis, Ian (Dicko) Dixon and co-inventor of Hydrolastic Micky Hughes!!!
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| Peg 17 is opposite the tiny island |
My draw saw me on peg 17 on Gold Lake - this is pretty much in the middle of the canal bank and slightly to the left of a small island that is situated halfway to the rope. (Interestingly Gold Lake is essentially a rectangular expanse of open water with only three randomly spaced islands the only visible features.) I'd actually hoped to draw an open water swim so I could focus on the pellet waggler so I was slightly disappointed to draw an island swim - however in my experience it normally doesn't pay to ignore an obvious feature if you are presented with one!
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| As ever, robust gear for big carps! |
Before the all-in I set-up 3 rods - pellet waggler, straight lead and pellet feeder - the basic plan being to fish the pellet feeder to the island and the pellet waggler/straight lead into open water at 25m slightly to the left where I would be feeding 8mm pellets pretty heavily. As ever I'd be using robust gear - 0.22 Guru N-Gauge hooklengths on the straight lead/pellet feeder and 0.19 on the pellet waggler, coupled with 8 and 6lb Daiwa Sensor mainlines.
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| Trusty pellet feeders! |
As the island was a little to my right and essentially a sharp rectangular shape parallel to my bank I had access to both it's near and far sides - I started the match fishing to the near side with my small, 30g Preston Innovations pellet feeder and second cast a reasonable carp picked-up my 6mm hookbait that was immediately impaled on the size 16 QM1 it was hair-rigged to via pellet band. Even though I was off to a decent start the first hour on the pellet feeder flattered to deceive and ended with only 3 carp in the net for no more than 15 pounds.
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| No bites on the straight lead today |
During that first hour I'd been pinging 8mm pellets into the open water to my left at about 25m via my trusty catapult whilst waiting for the tip to wang 'round, so as the island swim was less than hectic I decided to give both the straight lead and the pellet waggler a bash. Given the cool, showery conditions it was little surprise that the pellet waggler didn't fire but I was rather concerned when half an hour on the straight lead yielded nothing either. A switch to the pellet feeder over this line did lead to a few bites however, and by the end of the second hour I'd added another small carp and about 8 pounds of not very big skimmers to my tally.
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| Yours truly and Mr William Raison |
Given the size of the skimmers and the lack of any real carp action from the open water swim I switched back to the island at the start of the third hour. By once again casting to the near side I was soon into a run of 3 or 4 carp on the bounce - however this soon dried-up and when a return to the open water swim returned nothing I was starting to get a little worried that I was going anywhere fast!
Luckily the turning point in my match was just around the corner and came when I started casting slightly beyond the back of the island. This basically led to a bite a chuck and my only challenge was ensuring that any hooked carp swam away from the island into the open water and not further around the back of the island across a rather sharp underwater obstacle - I did so by standing-up on my footplate, holding my rod above my head and praying during the initial stages of each battle! Most of the time this worked well, but I did lose the lot 3 times - not that I'm tight, but those pellet feeders are £2 a pop!!!
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| Brown envelope time! |
Until next time ...
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