It seems to me that every time you fish a match you have to learn something you can take into the next one. Sometimes you learn loads by sacking-up, destroying the opposition and winning the match by a country mile; other times you learn loads by making a pig’s ear of things – try and guess which one I’m going to be talking about following today’s match at Sumners Ponds!!!
Foggy again!!!
Prior to today’s match I’d only fished three competitions on the Match Lake at Sumners Ponds, though each had been a successful in yielding weights of 76lb, 97lb and a personal best 189lb. However most of those matches had been held in the summer, and with the recent cooling of temperatures pre-match talk was that the fishing might be a little trickier than most were expecting. I had been hoping to draw one of the favoured pegs in the wider part of the lake either side of the sunken island or failing that a nice end peg with a bit of room – so of course I was rather disappointed to draw one of the narrowest pegs on the lake, in the middle of a long row of anglers with every peg taken!
The peg itself (I’m not sure what the permanent peg number would’ve been) was towards the carp park end of the furthest island and was only 16m wide. As the far bank was in range I decided to forgo my usual rod & line tactics and went pole only – a rig for the far bank consisting of a white Hydro top kit, 0.19 main line, a 0.4g Drennan Crystal Dibber (shotted with a 0.5g Drennan in-line olivette (that sunk the float to the orange tip perfectly)) and a 15cm hooklength consisting of 0.15 N-Gauge with a size 16 LWG and a hair-rigged pellet band, complemented with a similar rig (but featuring a 4x12 Malman Roob) for fishing on the deck at 5m.
Drennan Crystal Dibbers
My intended approach was very simple – to be patient and try and catch some of the resident carp that run to twenty pounds plus. Having said that I was almost certainly too patient during the first two hours as things were very, very slow and in fact I never had a bite! I spent this time mainly fishing to far bank, feeding 3 or 4 White Acres (over-sized) 6mm pellets at a time in a very frugal fashion (I probably only fed 20 in total) and flicking the rig in each and every interesting looking nook and cranny of the island. I also spent some time fishing the 5m line, and in fact I eventually moved the line to 13m as I felt the narrowness of the peg and the tightness of the pegging would see any carp very reluctant to come close to the near bank (though I managed as many bites at 13m as I did at 5m – none).
Lightish gear for silvers
By twenty past twelve I eventually decided to rig-up a silvers set-up to appease the boredom and avoid the dreaded blank – this set-up consisted of the pole fished at top kit plus 1 with yellow Hydro, 0.13 main line, a 4x12 SconeZone V8 and a hooklength if 0.10 into a size 20 Tubertini 808. This move was something of a success and I caught fairly well even though I only had micro pellets and dead red maggots as feed (with hindsight I clearly should’ve brought live maggots or worms/casters). I had mainly small roach, but also a bonus crucian and a nice twelve ounce roach to boost my weight significantly.
All the gear ...
However after an hour I decided to go back to fishing for carp to the island – this was because in my mind I had the wrong baits to target silver fish successfully, I had started too late to build a decent weight of silvers (and was hence was behind Dave Woolgar to my left and the Woking angler to my right who were doing the same), plus Godalming rod Ian Covey was catching carp from the margin of the end peg in my section, so catching carp from the island was the only way I could see of catching-up and getting into the money places. During the final ninety minutes I: tried to dob a cruising carp that completely ignored the pellet dropped right in front of its face, saw a large bow wave from island (whilst I was fishing at 13m) and was shocked when a massive carp jumped out of the water between Dave and myself – but had no bites!!!
Bagger in the money again!
In the end my hour of catching silvers got me 5-14-0, an interesting weight when you consider that 23-7-0 won the section and 26-7-0 was third overall – especially as 5-14-0 multiplied by five is 29-6-0!!! (Though of course fishing isn’t as simple as this, especially when fishing a venue such as Sumners Ponds that is full of big carp.) Well done to Woking match secretary Stuart Kendall for winning the match with 53-5-0 from the end peg in front of the sunken island (exactly where I’d hoped to draw) and our own Bagger for finishing third overall and taking a pound from local legend Dave Johnson!!!
