Today was my final opportunity to fish until heading-off to White Acres for the 2015 Garbolino Spring Classic in twelve days time - so where better to challenge my brittle confidence than a bank holiday open match at Gold Valley against the likes of Paul Holland, Perry Stone and Tommy Hiller?
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| All the gear ... |
Gold Valley is no doubt one of the top match venues in the south of England (you can tell this from the numbers of anglers attending the matches run five times each week) - however it does have it's idiosyncrasies, the main one being the close proximity of one peg to the next and the insistence on not pegging matches so that each anger has a decent amount of room (by using every other peg or peg one, miss one).
Today's dip into the bag of dreams threw-up peg 109, a swim pretty much in the middle of the near side of Syndicate Lake. Like most of the pegs at Gold Valley, 109 is quite featureless - there is a dividing rope at about 40 yards but other than that it is simply open water. For company I had one of the co-inventors of Hydrolastic (Mickey Hughes) to my left and multi Fish'O'Mania and Maver Mega Match This finalist to my right.
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| A first chance to use the pellet waggler this year |
Prior to the all-in I put together three set-ups: a 6g Preston Innovations loaded pellet waggler on 6lb Daiwa Sensor main line to a 25cm hooklength of 0.19 N-Gauge to a size 16 MWG and a hair-rigged pellet band; a tip rod for swapping between a 24g Guru pellet feeder and a one ounce Guru in-line lead; and a pole rig for fishing on the deck at 5m that I didn't actually pick-up during the match so I won't bother describing!
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| The view to the left |
I started my match on the straight lead at 25m with loose fed 8mm pellets and by the end of the first 5 minutes I was already 15lb behind as Perry Stone snared a munter first cast on the pellet waggler - which took a detour through both mine and Mickey's pegs!!!
Despite this initial excitement the fishing turned-out to be pretty tough for most - Perry continued to pick-up the odd fish on the pellet waggler and bomb, but after 4 hours I'd only managed two below average sized carp and a skimmer - personally I was going nowhere fast!
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| PVA bags didn't work for me today |
With hindsight, during the first 4 hours I'd been fishing quite crudely - relatively heavy leads (one ounce) and thick lines (0.22 N-Gauge hooklengths), plus pretty noisey pellet wagglers (as good as the Preston Dura wagglers are under the right conditions). So with an hour to go I decided to scale-down my tip gear and swapped-in a much light one third of an ounce bomb and an 0.19 hooklength (as strong as 0.22 N-Gauge is it can be quite wiry, whereas the 0.19 is still strong but much more supple) and guess what? Two carp in the first two casts and two more before the end, basically doubling my haul from the first 4 hours!!!
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| The scores on the doors |
Clearly this late burst was never going to do be enough to do any damage to the leaderboard, but at least I'd been able to keep pace with Perry in the final hour and managed to put a face saving 42lb onto the scales.
Top 3 overall:
- L Vallance, 106-0-0
- T Moretti, 94-8-0
- P Stone, 89-0-0
(At this stage it is worth noting that Malcolm Bond should've won this match, but he was disqualified for falling foul of the script keepnet limits involved at Gold Valley - though that limit is a very generous 80lb!!!)
Conclusions: once again an interesting match where a learned a fair bit, mainly that it might be a little early in the year yet for super crude hauling tactics! It also drove home the value of being in tune with a venue (as the Gold Valley regulars are) - ultimately I've convinced myself that I could compete at Gold Valley, but I'd need to take-up residence before I can expect any brown envelopes!!!
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| Hindsight is a wonderful thing! |
Conclusions: once again an interesting match where a learned a fair bit, mainly that it might be a little early in the year yet for super crude hauling tactics! It also drove home the value of being in tune with a venue (as the Gold Valley regulars are) - ultimately I've convinced myself that I could compete at Gold Valley, but I'd need to take-up residence before I can expect any brown envelopes!!!
Until next time ...
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