This time last year I drew on Harris Lake at Marsh Farm and promptly blanked. Not only did I blank- I was beaten off the next peg by Dave Johnson!!! As a result I swore I’d never fish a match on Harris Lake ever again – so as you can imagine I was a little concerned when I heard that today’s Godalming versus Farnham club match was to include the whole of Richardson’s Lake plus a section on Harris. This gave me a 3:1 chance of being on Richardson’s – so of course I drew 13 on Harris!!!
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| Unlucky for some??? |
Having plenty of time to set-up (and wanting to avoid another blank at all costs) I decided to cover a few options. Firstly I set-up two rods – the first was my usual ‘take no prisoners’ feeder kit featuring 8lb mainline, a 24g Guru pellet feeder, 0.19 N-Gauge and a size 16 QM1 with a pellet band; the second was a more subtle set-up for the same far bank line featuring 4lb Daiwa Sensor, a one third of an ounce Guru square bomb trapped on the line a by a large Guru float stop and a 12 inch hooklength of 0.15 into a 16 QM1 with a band. I also set-up 2 pole rigs to catch roach either on the deck and/or up in the water at top kit plus 2 and a final rig for fishing chopped worm/caster at 13m for (hopefully) tench and cruians.
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| The view to the left ... |
I spent the first hour on the tip – I did manage a tench second chuck on the pellet feeder, but no further indications on either the feeder or straight lead left me wondering if the obviously low water level of the lake was going to make such tactics a non-starter today.
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| ... and to the right |
During this time I’d been feeding the top kit plus 2 line with casters and the first 4 drops with the deck rig (yellow Hydro, 0.11, 4x14 Chimp, bulk plus one dropper, 0.10, Tubertini 808 size 22) saw three decent roach in the net. A few missed bites then saw a switch to the shallow rig (same again but a 4x10 Chianti set at 18 inches) – this led to more missed bites before I quickly couldn’t get a bite on either!!!
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| Fishery or wildfowl sanctuary? |
The next three hours (1145-1445) were then very tough with only a tench and a small crucian out of the blue on the bomb & pellet rig, despite my constant rotation and trickle feeding of the three lines. Things did pick-up towards the end with a tench and two more crucians on the method (which I’d swapped to from the pellet feeder), though just as things were getting going it was 1530 and time for the final whistle. In the end my fish went 17-10-0 – not bad, but only good enough for fourth in section behind 20lb, 21lb and 25lb.
Until next time ...
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