Having not previously fished one of the 180 peg White Acres festivals before I’ve never had the chance to fish the infamous Porth Reservoir before, so over recent weeks I’ve been doing some ‘intensive’ research – if you can call looking at the White Acres website and re-watching Preston Innovations Winning Pegs 3 on YouTube that is!!!
Explorer 106
This research showed that Porth Reservoir is a big venue (as confirmed by Ordnance Survey Explorer 106), formed by flooding a valley via a huge dam wall at the western end. It also seemed that the dominant tactics involve either fishing for a bag of small roach/skimmers on the pole or waggler or to fish the increasingly popular tactic of the long range method feeder for proper bream.
Ironically I’d written-off my day on Porth Reservoir before arriving in Cornwall as tiddler bashing and long range fishing are amongst my least favourite forms of fishing – however if you read on you’ll see why you should fish every match with an open mind!!!
Porth Reservoir
As already mentioned, Porth Reservoir is a large venue and for most of the year it only sees specimen carp anglers. Given the size of the place there are some long walks and half of the pegs are on the far (north) bank of the lake and involve loading your gear on to a boat!!! My draw (peg 79) saw me on this far bank and no doubt like every Porth Reservoir virgin I loaded my kit onto the boat with a nervous smile – however I’d no need to worry as my stuff arrived safely and the rod bag that was lost overboard wasn’t mine!!! (I jest of course.)
Very picturesque!
My home for the day was the end peg in the 71-79 sub-section, though in reality it is in the middle of the bank as the adjacent sub-section runs from 81-89. However you’ll notice that peg 80 isn’t in – this gave me a spare peg to my left and the added bonus of a short walk as this is where the boat moors-up!
Didn't need those waders after all!
Despite bringing my waders and the legs for my platform barrow I didn’t need to use them as peg 79 has a nice wooden staging to fish from – it also has a nice overhanging tree to the left that extends out into the water about 5m, though there is another tree overhead that makes it a bit of a birdcage and the fencing behind makes the long pole a bit tricky.
Light gear for small fish
With these factors in mind I set-up three rigs before the all-in: an 11’ feeder rod with 6lb Daiwa Sensor main line on the attached reel (a longer rod and slightly lighter line than usual to help with casting) and a 30g Preston Innovations pellet feeder – this would be my bream rod and was clipped-up at about 50m; a 10’ feeder rod with 4lb reel line, a 15g cage feeder and an 18” hooklength of 0.13 to a size 20 Guru LWG – this would be my roach/skimmers rod and was clipped-up at 18-20m; finally a top two plus two pole rig consisting of 0.13 main line, a 4x12 Chianti and a 15cm trace of 0.10 to a size 20 Gamakatsu Black for fishing next to the tree for small fish.
I started on the close-range feeder
My thinking last night was that I’d target bream all day on the pellet feeder – however just after the draw I bumped into Kirsty (who used to work in the fishing lodge) who revealed that Richie Hull had done just that from the same peg yesterday and weighed only 10 ounces for last in section! Coupled with the sunny, flat conditions I had a change of heart and decided to give the small fish a go to see if fishing for them was to be a viable option.
Fish not pounds this time!
On the whistle I fed a few maggots and chopped worms next to the tree and picked-up my short range feeder rod. After 20 minutes I had 7 small roach in the net and was already on the way to overtaking Richie Hull’s weight, though I didn’t feel that I was catching big enough fish to do any good come 5 o’clock. As a result I nearly went for the bream rod but instead I thought I’d give the pole a quick try first – this proved to be a good move as by the end of the match I’d added a further 146 fish and had won the section by 6 ounces with 10-7-0!!!
Not quite enough to retire on!
In the end I didn’t even pick-up the pellet feeder rod and only gave the other tip rod another brief try at the start of the fifth hour when the pole line slowed right down – otherwise my catch rate was pretty consistent and I only lost two fish to pike, a good run in the last twenty minutes getting me a nice envelope!!!
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