Regular readers of this blog will know that Bagger and myself are regular visitors to White Acres and we’ve lost count of how many years we’ve been going for (though it is probably somewhere between ten and twelve). During this time we’ve both fished numerous festivals, though so far they’ve all been the smaller (seventy to eighty angler), four day affairs with the 2012 Olde English Cider festival and the 2014 Garbolino Spring Classic being personal highlights. However, following a frustrating 2015 Garbolino Spring Classic (where every peg on both lakes at Twin Oaks and Trewaters were used on each day) I decided to have a go at one of the main (180 angler) festivals, so when a space became available on the 2015 Maver festival I didn’t hesitate to book on!
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| Draw time!!! |
Before I knew it it was soon time for the first day draw and like all of the other 35 anglers in the queue for A section I was looking for a nice bunghole to get my festival off to a flying start – so peg 2 on Pollawyn really wasn’t the match winning peg I was looking for!!! (The draw for the 180 peg festivals are held in the clubhouse near to the entrance of the White Acres site and there are 5 separate draw queues (one for each section/rotation, which themselves are drawn on the Friday before the festival and published on the White Acres website) – the main point to note is that the whole process is very efficient and well organised.)
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| Pollawyn pegging |
Pollawyn (sometimes known as the Match Lake) is an unusually shaped venue formed from a main oval section with a central island, with 3 relatively narrow arms (each with their own island) attached to the oval section – take a look at the photo above (or better still have a view on Google Earth) and hopefully you’ll see what I mean!!!
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| The view to the right |
Peg 2 is down one such arm and whilst there can be red letter days when some carp do move into the arms they generally favour the High Bank and/or the more open water pegs (sub-section C), meaning a match on a peg down one of the arms will often be a scratching affair with roach, rudd, perch and (to a certain extent) skimmers being the main targets.
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| Softly, softly ... |
With this is mind I set-up rigs accordingly: a 10’ tip rod with a 24g Guru X-Safe mini hybrid feeder and a 10cm hooklength of 0.22 N-Gauge to a 14 QM1 with a hair-rigged pellet band (heavy gear I know, but on the very slim chance that I did hook a carp it would be a huge bonus and I really wanted to get it out); a 4x14 Chianti on 0.13 into an 0.10 trace and a size 18 Tubertini 808 for fishing 6mm meat on a top kit plus 2 for skimmers; a 0.3g SconeZone v8 on 0.15 into 0.13 and a size 18 LWG (spade-end) for fishing next to some brambles on my right hand margin for big perch; and finally a scratching (catch all) rig consisting of a 4x10 Chianti on 0.13 into 0.10 and a size 20 808 with yellow Hydro for fishing on the drop at either top kit or top kit plus 1 along the left hand margin for anything that would take a maggot!
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| The Guru hybrid feeder |
On the whistle I started on the hybrid feeder to the island and after 2 fruitless casts I already knew I was highly unlikely to see a carp all day as deep down inside I thought that my best chance was to effectively mug one at the very start of the match – or to not get one at all as it was unlikely that a carp would move from the main bowl into my peg once that match had started (given the pressure that 36 anglers would place on the venue).
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| All the gear ... |
As a result I was soon I feeding my right margin with chopped worm, picking-up my scratching rig and feeding maggots to the left with a view to building a weight of silver fish – to cut a long story short I followed this pattern for the rest of the day to end-up with exactly 15lb of perch and the odd roach. (I didn’t catch anything on the hybrid feeder or at top kit plus 2 on 6mm meat, all fish fell to either the scratching rig or to the sturdier margin rig with worms.)
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| Light, but balanced |
I was fairly pleased with this weight as the narrow pegs on Pollawyn can be notoriously hard – however, this was only good enough for 4 points (out of nine) as I was beaten by most of the pegs in my sub-section on the other side of the island, plus I was beaten by the angler on peg 1 who landed a 6lb carp on the whistle to do me by 2lb!!! Anyway at least I wasn’t miles behind and last in section (I’m currently 115th out of 180 overall at the moment) – plus of course there are still 4 days to go with a nice day on either Trewaters or Jenny’s to look forward to tomorrow …
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