I think it was Robert Burns that said 'the best laid plans of mice and men often go awry' – well having not fished for the best part of 3 months (in order to avoid struggling for a bite in the wintery conditions that seemed to have settled over the country for a lifetime), the most anticipated comeback in British match fishing history (sic) left me soaking wet, freezing cold and rather peeved after only being able to generate the measly sum of two bites!!!
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| Gold Valley Waterfowl Sanctuary |
After some good looking match results I’d decided to kick-off my spring 2015 campaign on the banks of the southern bagging Mecca that is Gold Valley – however, when news filtered through last night that yesterday’s match had been won with a lowly 36 pounds my plan of fishing positively for carp was hastily replaced with much more cautious skimmer-based thinking!
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| Gold Valley, Middle Lake peg 84 |
Having said that, my 'more cautious skimmer-based thinking' was immediately thrown into disarray when I drew peg 84 – an end peg flyer in the far corner of Middle Lake – the lack of open water meaning it was likely to be carp or bust, with hopefully tonnes of carp taking shelter along the long margin parallel to the pegged bank!!!
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| The usual pellet feeder gear |
Given the nature of my peg I decided to leave the pole in the bag (if I had drawn an open water peg I’d have certainly fed a 14.5m line with groundbait and dead maggots for skimmers), and instead put all of my eggs into one basket by setting-up just a single pellet feeder rod – the intention being to search the long, parallel margin for carp and to fool them with a nicely presented pile of pellets and a hookbait they just couldn’t resist!
(Gear for this rod was the usual 8lb Daiwa Sensor mainline, small 30g Preston Innovations pellet feeder stopped by a Guru speed bead, 10cm hooklengths of 0.22 N-Gauge to either a size 16 or a size 14 QM1 hook with a hair-rigged pellet band or bait bayonet.)
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| Looking left towards the clubhouse |
Prior to the 'all in' I was that confident of bagging-up that I actually put all three of the keepnets that I had brought with me into the water – a real show of bravado given the fact that the weight limit per net at Gold Valley is 80 pounds! However, after the first hour came and went with no proper bites to show for my efforts and the entire lake seemingly fishing rock hard this choice seemed rather foolish to say the least!!!
Personally I’m a massive fan of method/pellet feeder fishing – however when the fishing is difficult such tactics can seem very, very crude and there are times when such an approach just isn’t going to work. So having had a few liners but no proper bites I decided that a switch to a more discrete tactic was in order, so I was soon up off of my box and into my rod bag for my second tip rod – this one was rigged-up with a 20g Guru inline lead and a 12 inch hooklength of 0.22 N-Gauge to a size 14 QM1 with a hair-rigged pellet band. Thankfully the switch paid-off and on the second cast (with a bright orange Ringers Allsort on the hair) the tip smashed ‘round and I’d at least managed to avoid the dreaded blank with a 4lb common carp.
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| A very rare occurrence!!! |
That fish hit the net at precisely 12:19 and my second (and final) fish of the day didn’t come along until 15:38 (22 minutes from the 'all out') – if you have any ideas on how to make 3 biteless hours seem exciting in an online match fishing blog please send me your thoughts on the back of a postcard or a sealed down envelope!!!
The second fish was of a similar size (and fell to the same tactics) to the first so my first outing of Spring 2015 saw me put a titanic 8-0-0 on the scales – not quite the start I’d been dreaming about since Christmas!
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| Scales!!! |
- Perry Stone, 145-3-0
- Tommy Hiller, 93-0-0
- Mike Halstead, 60-4-0
- John Clarke, 51-8-0
- G Anderson, 37-0-0
- Charlie Dalton, 33-4-0
So congratulations to Perry Stone who fished a great match from end peg 87 (pegs 85 and 86 are currently out of action whilst a new car park is being constructed), catching consistently from his left-hand margin and on the tip casting diagonally to the parallel bank in front of peg 85. (I know this as I sat opposite him all day - lucky me!)
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| All the gear ... |
Conclusions: as is often the case in winter and early spring, many carp venues can be very peggy as the fish tend to shoal together in tight groups - as a result a few anglers can have a very good day whilst the others struggle. I don't normally like to make such excuses, and I'm happy to admit that 3 months of not fishing has left me extremely rusty, but whilst my pellet feeder tactics are crude compared to the rigs needed to catch roach and F1s, they are extremely effective when fishing a peg full of feeding carp and I'm certain that if there had been a decent number of fish in my peg I would've caught more than the two that I did manage - roll-on summer!!!
Until next time ...
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