Another enjoyable but frustrating day at Willinghurst today - I had thought I'd drawn a good pitch in peg 11 on New Lake as the wind was blowing right into my corner and I could access the platforms to my left and right on the pole, plus I could also fish to a third platform on the feeder.
In the end I never had a bite from the platform to the left, I got battered by rudd on the platform to the right and could only manage 5 carps on the tip from the other platform. (I couldn't muster a bite on the long pole shallow either and this is how the big weights on the lake where caught.) Total weight 22-10-0. Oh well, maybe next time!!!
Bit of a shorter write-up this time as it takes a bit of catching-up after a White Acres festival – plus I fished badly and didn’t really catch much, things that don’t normally make for very interesting reading!!!
My draw today saw me on peg 27 on John's Lake at Willinghurst – I nice looking pitch and an end peg on the day to boot! I set-up three rigs to start with: a margin line in front of peg 28's platform at top kit plus 4 with black Hydro, 0.17 main line, a 0.3g V6 and a 15cm 0.13 hooklength into an LWG (eyed) size 16; a 5m line at top kit plus 4 to the left (5m as peg 28 would've fished it) with white Hydro, 0.17 main line, a 4x14 Roob and a 15cm 0.13 hooklength into an LWG (eyed) size 16; and finally a line at 14.5m on the deck with hard pellets (white Hydro, 0.17, 4x14 Roob, 0.13, LWG (eyed) 16 with a hair-rigged pellet band).
This kind of thing was very few and far between!
To cut a very long and boring story short I essentially caught a nice 8lb carp on the deck at 14.5m in the first hour, had nothing for two hours, caught another carp in the fourth hour on the long pole shallow, had nothing for ages then caught 3 carp down the edge in the last 20 minutes! 24-10-0. Enough said!!!
Personally I tend to work away from home quite a bit during the week and I often find that time really drags between Monday morning and Friday afternoon – well the same certainly isn’t true of a week at White Acres! One minute you are queuing to get into the clubhouse for the pre-festival briefing, the next you are putting your hand into the bag of dreams for the fifth and final time!!!
Nice and sunny for the final day
Going into today’s match (the final day of the 2016 Milo festival) I’d managed to recover from Monday’s blow-out and had somehow clawed my way back to be tying on points with my partner in crime Claire ‘Bagger’ Hollis. As if the pressure of vying to be the best angler in your own household wasn’t enough, not only would we end-up drawing in the same sub-section of 9 we’d also end-up fishing next to each other – what were the chances of that?!? (The answer is 1 in 35, but I’m sure you get my meaning …)
Pollawyn is one of the older lakes on the White Acres complex and is home to the famous High Bank, an area known for big bags of large carp that often fall to pellet waggler or straight lead tactics. However, the Match Lake (as it is sometimes known) also includes a number of much narrower arms that are normally devoid of carp and that can be extremely hard work as small silver fish are the more reliable target. Like most people I was therefore hoping for a nice pitch on the High Bank and was extremely disappointed to draw peg 48, a spot at the tackle shop end of the middle arm and as far from the High Bank as it was possible to get!
Having said that, when I actually got to the peg my mood lifted somewhat – festival pegging meant that 48 has 3 spare platforms to one side (the next angler to my right was the afore mentioned Bagger on 52) and the bay formed by pegs 49, 50 and 51 was full of cruising carp, all of which were seemingly sunbathing or getting ready to spawn.
A two Coke's hangover?
My pre-match plan for drawing a peg down the one of the arms focussed on fishing for roach and perch on light rigs in the margins at top kit plus one or two, and on fishing for skimmers into the deeper water straight in front at top kit plus two or three. I set-up rigs to cover these options and as I could access peg 49’s platform I also put together a big fish margin rig in the hope of snaring a barbel or carp later in the match. Due to an overhanging tree I couldn’t cast a feeder or bomb towards the vacant pegs to my right so instead I set-up a long pole mugging/dobbing rig as a few cruisers had started drifting through my peg before the start. This rig consisted of white Hydro, 0.19 Guru N-Gauge main line, a large Preston jigger float fished at a fixed depth of 15” (via the nifty use of some float stops) and a 15cm hooklength of 0.15 into a size 16 LWG (eyed).
Dob, dob, dobbing
In my experience, trying to catch carp that you can actually see is a frustrating waste of time but as the angler on peg 48 yesterday only returned 8lb odd (for decent section points) I decided to give mugging a go as just one or two carp would be a massive bonus. I started on bread but soon switched to a luncheon meat hookbait and in the first 90 minutes I managed five bites – four carp in the net and one length of broken Hydrolastic being the result!!!
Whilst I tried mugging, each and every carp that had my meat wafted past its nose turned away in disgust, the bites that I did muster actually came by flicking (dobbing) my rig into likely looking spots along the far bank without seeing a fish present. It’s also surprisingly difficult to tell which is the head end of a stationary fish at distance and on a number of occasions a fish swam off after I tried to mug it via the tail!
About the only thing that was feeding!
Unfortunately the next two hours were desperately slow – the cruisers disappeared from the peg and I literally couldn’t buy a bite on any of my silvers rigs, despite spending most of the time fishing with a single maggot hookbait. I also tried fishing to peg 49’s platform – this was equally fruitless, but luckily I had those 4 carp in the net and a 16lb cushion on the clicker already secured.
The view to the right
With about 90 minutes to go and nothing to lose I decided to take the time to set-up another rig. This one was for fishing to some rushes at 16m along the far bank to the right and would be a real pain to fish given the steep banking behind my peg and the need to break-down the pole (though in all fairness I was already doing this when fishing 14.5m of pole when mugging/dobbing).
I had intended to fish this with a pole mounted pot but given the angle of the banking I had to revert to feeding via a cupping kit – when reconnecting the two parts of the pole a pole mounted pot would submerge and lose its load but a large cup would stay afloat and cause the top part of the pole to bend instead.
Feel the burn
This made things even harder but was well worth it as I basically caught a fish a bung until the all-out!!! I would fill my cup with some chopped worm and caster, ship-out the first 8m, connect the second 8m of pole, feed, ship back, break-down the pole, ship back the final 8m, attach the top kit with the rig (best hookbait was half a worm), ship-out the first 8m, connect the second 8m of pole, drop the rig in, hook a fish, ship back, break-down the pole, ship back the final 8m, land the fish and repeat!!!
Towards the very end I had a large crowd of spectators (well two people) watching me and they must’ve thought I was a right numpty as by this point I was regretting being an unfit desk jockey as the lactic acid was really building-up in my arms and I could hardly ship in and out and I kept tangling the rig – holding 16m pole over my head was really taking its toll!
Gratuitous photo warning
However the effort was well worth it and in that last 75 minutes I boosted my weight from a decent enough 16lb to a whopping 57-10-0, more that I’d ever imagined catching from a peg down one of the arms on Pollawyn and incredibly this was enough for a section and a lake win to boot!!!
As it turned out I really needed those extra fish as Bagger had returned the best weight of the week from peg 52 (17lb odd, 2lb being the return from the same peg yesterday) and had scored a brilliant 7 points as a result.
Complementary polo
Today’s 9 points meant I’d finish the festival in fifty first place with a total of 28 points (dropping 2) – the same points total as Neil McKinnon, Simon Fry and Nathan Watson – one place behind my drinking buddy Tony Butler and just ahead of Bagger who finished her first 180 peg festival in a brilliant 82nd place. They say that actions speak louder than words, so I’ll finish up by saying that we are already booked onto the 2016 Maver and the 2017 Milo and Guru festivals …
I know that I’ve written this before but it’s happened again so I’m going to write about it again!!! After today’s fourth day of the 2016 Milo festival at White Acres I’ve now fished a mere eight matches at the world famous Bolingey lakes – however in that time I’ve only actually fished 5 different pegs as I’ve now drawn the same peg twice three times!!!
Pre-match re-fuelling in the lodge
The peg that I drew today (26) is one that I fished back in June 2013 and this was my pitch for the first match I ever fished at Bolingey – I’d pleasured fished there four times before that but June 2013 was my first stay at White Acres following the creation of the Friday residents' matches at Bolingey. On that day I managed 69-6-0 and came absolutely nowhere – however that day was a one-off match and most of my fish where caught down the edge over groundbait, a day very different to today as groundbait is now banned and section points are where it’s at!
My view is that 26 is an interesting but not a prolific peg – you can tell this as it is the in the section based on the back lake that includes the lower weight pegs (8, 13, 14, 19, 21, 22, 24, 25 and 26 for those familiar with the venue). It offers the point of an island directly in front at about 20m – this sounds like a good feature but unfortunately today there were lots of overhanging branches to get caught on, meaning that casting a bomb or feeder tight to the bank was virtually impossible. There are a tight grouping of pegs in front of the island to the right, but there is a good amount of open water to left. However the best looking feature in this peg is the fishy looking indent in the near margin at top kit plus 3 to the left.
All the gear ...
Prior to the all in I set-up a number of rigs, including: my usual 10’ tip rod with a free-running 19g Guru square lead for fishing with bread as close to the island as I dare; a top kit plus 2 rig for fishing with meat on the deck (black Hydro, 0.17 main line, 4x14 Roob, 0.15 hooklength into a size 16 LWG (eyed)); lighter and heavier margin rigs (both featuring 0.3g SconeZone V6s, but one with black Hydro and 0.19 into 0.17 and one with red Hydro and 0.19 straight through to a size 14 MWG); and finally a rig for dobbing in the margins with 10mm disks of punched bread.
Playing a small carp on the bomb
Whilst setting-up I’d actually seen a few swirls along the left-hand margin so this seemed to be the obvious place to start my match. I did so with a rig that might seem quite unusual as it was based around a jigga float – such floats are normally associated with up in the water fishing, but my thinking was that such a set-up would allow me to search the different parts of my swim and to control the way the hookbait fell through the water. This worked a treat and I was soon landing a smallish carp that took a liking to my bread.
Unfortunately this was to be the only bite I could muster here so after 20 minutes it was time to switch to the bomb and bread. First cast to the point of island led to a steady pull and another smallish carp in the net, but subsequent casts were biteless, meaning I’d end the first hour with about 8lb in the net and absolutely no freebies fed!
Looking towards the island and the open water
You can tell from the last sentence above that I was somewhat paranoid about killing my peg with too much feed too early today – the carp in Bolingey are infamous for being very hard to catch before 4 o’clock so I was adopting a Steady Eddy feeding pattern!
At the start of the second hour I picked-up the 5m rig, placed a piece of 8mm meat on the hook and added 5 or 6 samples to my pole-mounted pot – after shipping-out I fed those cubes of meat over the intended spot and flicked the rig past, allowing the hookbait to eventually settle over the loose-feed on a tight line. This led to a bite after 3 or 4 minutes, but unfortunately the target soon fell-off – luckily the next 3 bites saw 3 carp in the net, patience being the key as the bites certainly weren’t coming immediately. Unfortunately the fish soon disappeared and following quite a long dry spell the first 3 hours had evaporated with just 21lb on the clicker …
Looking left towards peg 8
Somewhat earlier than I’d intended (at 3 o’clock) I started feeding my margin line with hemp and corn. Half an hour later, with no bites or signs activity, I fed a big pot of live maggots. This led to an instant response and I then caught fairly well until the end, the best hookbait being one or two dendrabena worms. Unfortunately I did lose a few in the brambles further down the peg but at least I’d caught enough to save face in front of the scalesmen!!! (In one particularly bad piece of angling I looked at my float, looked up at a plane that was flying fairly low overhead, then looked back to find that my float had disappeared and had been replaced with a couple of feet of red Hydro hanging from the bush.)
Chris Hancock fished the match then had to get on the scales!
In the end I weighed 79-4-0 for fourth in section (6 points), so if my clicking was correct I’d put 60lb in the net in the final 90 minutes – 75% of my weight in 30% of the allotted time! (I did jokingly say to the angler on peg 25 that in future I’m going to spend between 12 and 3 in the Bolingey Inn before fishing for the final 2 hours only.) This was a decent return after a slow start but frustratingly I was only beaten by 98-4-0, 91-10-0 and 80-12-0 for the section – I could’ve easily have won section if I’d have started feeding maggots sooner and/or landed all of the fish I hooked (damn that low flying plane), but that’s fishing I guess!!! Anyway I’m now up to a mighty 21 points and into 86th place, the same number of points as Bagger who has a higher aggregate weight and is in 81st place …
Superstar!
I’m going to finish this blog entry with a photo of All the Gear, No Idea cohort Claire ‘Bagger’ Hollis who smashed-out a tremendous 130-12-0 from peg 11 to win her section and to finish third on lake, less than 20lb behind the eventual winner Carl Williams. (Five times world champion Alan Scotthorne drew the same peg on Monday and could only manage 114-8-0.) Well done Bagger!!!
On my first visit to Porth Reservoir (during last year’s Maver festival) I drew on the far side of the lake, meaning I had to load my gear onto the boat and walk up and down the steps behind the dam wall before meeting the boat over on peg 80. I thought that this was a bit of a pain, but trust me it’s nothing compared to having to get your gear down Cardiac Hill and having to yomp 6 miles to peg 38!!! (Imagine the slope between the tackle shop and Jenny’s multiplied by ten – luckily I had Andrew Crocker to help me out, otherwise I could’ve had a runaway barrow on my hands.)
All aboard!!!
Having said all of that I really enjoy going on Porth Reservoir – the fishing is very different to the other days as it is traditional silverfish fishing on a ‘natural’ venue and I think that this is a nice change when compared to the other four days of carp fishing. (Plus of course Porth on a Wednesday means Bolingey on a Thursday!)
Peg 38 is on the car park side of the venue and has one of the furthest walks (only 39 and 40 are further), and being at the opposite end of the venue to the dam wall it is probably one of the shallowest (peg 89 is the end peg on the far side but it is nowhere near as far up the lake). All of the pegs in this area have very shallow margins and overhanging trees that extend for a fair distance from the bank – luckily I was forewarned about this and had my waders and platform ready to go.
Feeder gear
Rightly or wrongly I’m not normally one of those people that rushes to check the weigh sheet to see the weight that was returned from my peg on the previous day – personally I think it can be misleading as you can’t get a view of how the angler fished the peg, the weather or how hung-over the guy was from just looking at a single number. However I did notice a comment on Paul Holland’s Facebook feed that he was beaten into second place by the angler that sat on peg 38 yesterday and that the angler in question had done so with three big bream in the last half hour on the waggler.
Day three pegging
Having picked-up this information I’d be foolish not to use it and tackled today’s match with a 3 pronged attack: firstly a waggler to be fished through the water at depths between 4 and 7 feet at a distance where I could ping casters via a catapult (so certainly no further than about 20m); secondly a cage feeder with a long (75cm) tail to be fished at about 28-30m; and finally a Hybrid feeder to be fished at range (50 turns) for bream. As I was going with the waggler today I decided to leave the pole in the bag – this may or may not have been a mistake but I guess we all live and die by our decisions!
Landing a small skimmer on the feeder
I started the match on the cage feeder arrangement: one of my Daiwa Tournament Pros set at 11’, a Daiwa TDR3012 loaded with 6lb Daiwa Sensor, a 15g Drennan cage feeder attached to a Preston paternoster link held in place by a large Guru float stop either side (fixed rigs are allowed at Porth Reservoir) finished-off with a 75cm hooklength of Guru N-Gauge to a size 18 LWG hook. This worked well to start with and I was soon netting a few small skimmers that pulled the tip around just a few seconds after the feeder hit the lake bed.
Yours truly giving it the big one ...
After half an hour or so this dried-up so it was onto the waggler line that I had been feeding with casters from the off. By varying my depth I was able to put together and few roach and some more blade-type skimmers on single maggot, but after about 2 hours I couldn’t buy a bite on either the waggler or the cage feeder so I gave the Hybrid feeder the big one into the middle of the lake and settled down to a nice Brie and chorizo sandwich.
Plenty of water to go at!!!
As expected this didn’t yield any pulls – frankly I’ve no confidence on this tactic at Porth Reservoir so next time I’m there I’m either going to fish it exclusively all day or leave it in the bag (probably the latter). Re-energised after my tasty lunch it was back to the waggler and cage feeder – I could get a few bites from small fish on both approaches for a while before each line died so I kept swapping as bites began to fade.
A fish on the waggler - but not the biggy!!!
With about 45 minutes to go I hooked into a big fish on the waggler – I’m certain it wasn’t a pike as very few had been seen in our section and it wasn’t as though I was reeling in a small fish that suddenly turned into a very big fish. I’d been playing it with kid gloves for about 90 seconds when disaster struck – the fish came off and I reeled in to find that my maggot hookbait had flipped over the point of the hook. To say I was gutted would be the understatement of the year!!!
However, luck was on my side to a certain extent – following a few more tiny skimmers on the cage feeder I hooked into a better fish and this time made no mistake as a nice 2lb sample slid into my landing net. Happy days!
Luckily I remembered my platform this week
In the end my collection of roach and skimmers went 5-7-0, narrowly beating other weights of 5-6-0 and 5-2-0 for third in section and 7 points – however that lost fish certainly cost me 1 point (6-3-0 was second in section) and possibly 2 as only 8-8-0 won the section. Swings and roundabouts I guess – at least I’m in the top 100 now (albeit in 99th place).
With hindsight, and even though I hooked a big fish on it, I’d probably leave the waggler in the bag next time and go with a long pole approach as to be honest I spend very little time fishing a traditional waggler at home and I’m more comfortable on the pole. I’d also have set-up a short pole line to fish under the tree to my right as there were probably a few valuable perch to have been caught down there.
One of the great things about any fishing festival is that by fishing for four or five days in a row you soon get the chance to redeem a blow-out – as my first day of the 2016 Milo festival at White Acres was a complete disaster today’s match couldn’t come around soon enough!!!
Always nice to wake-up to a view of Jenny's
Today’s draw offered the choice of three lakes – Acorn (Bagger’s favourite), Canal (Bagger’s nemesis) and the off-site Trewaters (which has two lakes and hosts 2 sections on the 180 peg festivals). As luck would have it we both drew on Trewaters – Bagger on the top lake and myself on peg 47 on the bottom lake. (Don’t worry – we fished on Acorn on Saturday so Bagger has already had her Acorn fix this week.)
Peg 47 is at the back of the bottom lake at Trewaters and is a nice enough looking pitch – every swim at Trewaters has access to a central island but 47 has a nice selection of bays and reed beds, and in my mind at least has a little more room than some of the other pegs.
Day two pegging
As I see it there are two main advantages of fishing one of the 180 peg White Acres festivals (as opposed to the smaller festivals such as the Garbolino Spring Classic) – firstly the fishing times of 12:00-17:00 give you a bit of a lie-in and more margin time; and secondly the pegging is normally every other peg. However, as our rotation is two anglers short this week it means that each day two pegs won't be drawn – as luck would have it peg 45 wasn’t drawn today meaning I had a spare peg to my right and a grand total of three spare pegs to my left, very nice!!!
The view from the car park
The banker tactic at Trewaters is normally to loose feed pellets tight to the island and fish a method-style feeder over the top for the resident carp and F1s. As I had plenty of room today I actually set-up two tip rods – one clipped-up to fish to the left and right of some reeds that were pretty much directly across from my platform, and another to fish into a small bay further to the left. As there were clearly a few fish moving around the island I decided to start on the bomb & bread before actually feeding anything – despite rotating through my three different lines (and expecting instant action) the first twenty minutes or so only produced one carp and one small F1 so it was soon out with the catapult and the battering of the island with White Acres 6mm pellets was soon underway.
The gist of my approach now was to only catapult pellets to the spot just to the left of the central rushes but to rotate around all three spots with a 24g Guru Hybrid feeder in a very regimented fashion. I would cast to a given spot and leave the feeder in for a maximum of 90 seconds – if I had a proper pull or a liner from that spot I would cast there again, but if not I would move along to the next line, and so on and so on. This worked to a certain extent, though two things soon became apparent – the line where I was catapulting pellets produced very little and it was very, very difficult to get two bites in a row from the same spot!!!
Carl Willims on 43
After two hours and with just 20lb on the clicker I decided that there were fish hanging around the island but they weren’t too interested in feeding and hence it was time to look elsewhere (I don’t think that fishing the feeder was the problem either as the guys to my left and right had both fished with a long lining swinger rig to the island on the pole and had probably caught less than I had by this point).
I did have a little dabble on the 5m line that I had been drip feeding with 6mm meat, but as soon as I saw that a carp or two had instantly moved over the two pots of groundbait that I’d fed into 15 inches of water to my left at top kit plus two I knew I’d only be fishing in one fashion for the remainder of the match!!!
By the end of the session I’d actually opened a total of five different margin swims – that line to the left at top kit plus two, followed by lines at top kit plus two the right, top kit plus three left, top kit plus three right and finally top kit plus four left. I felt I had to do this (as unlike the anglers to my left and right, who both battered me with over 100lb each) I had no cover in my margins and hence the fish wouldn’t really settle in one spot for very long.
Ever get the feeling that somebody is watching you?
In the end my fish weighed 54-12-0, good enough for fourth in section (6 points) – not a spectacular weight and miles behind the 87-10-0, 110-1-0 and 112-4-0 that formed the top 3, but much better than yesterday!!! (As a result I've moved-up to a mighty 119th place!)
Interestingly I scaled-down my gear from yesterday and fished with 0.15 mainline and an 0.13 hooklength in the margins. Despite hooking into some pretty decent fish I only lost two – one that I allowed to swim under my platform and one that was probably foul-hooked and would’ve be hard to land on 0.19 or 0.22. Food for thought anyway!!!
A mere 219 days after the conclusion of the 2015 Maver festival I once again found myself at White Acres, this time unbelievably excited for the start of the 2016 Milo. The 2015 Maver was my first 180 peg White Acres festival and I was pleased to finish in the top half (79th to be precise) with a total score of 24 points (dropping 3). (The scoring went 4-5-3-9-6.) In order to create some form of progression I have two aims for this week’s festival – to score a minimum of 5 points each and every day and to grab a place in the top 50. Will I achieve these aims? Only time will tell!!!
Here we go again!!!
Friday’s random draw placed Bagger and myself into section/rotation B – as a result we will be fishing the following lakes in the following order: Twin Oaks/Trelawney, Trewaters/Acorn/Canal, Porth Reservoir, Bolingey and finally Pollawyn (also known as the Match Lake). Our rotation is full of top anglers but two stand out as real superstars – the formidable James Dent (Barnsley Blacks) and long-serving Daiwa Dorking caption Steve Sanders.
Despite praying for Twin Oaks 16 (the best peg in the country) my first dip into the bag of dreams of the week put me on Trelawney – this is a lake I’ve not match fished for nearly two years but is one I was fortunate enough to win a residents gold match from in June 2014 with 87-12-0 of carp and F1s on pellet feeder and jigga (not that I’m living-off past glories or anything).
Day one pegging
My peg (20) wasn’t one that I’d fished before but certainly looked an interesting one – even though Trelawney has pegs all around its perimeter, peg 20 is effectively an end peg as it sits at the end of an elbow with a large bay to the right. All of the pegs on Trelawney provide access to the central island but as peg 20 is relatively narrow and it is unusual in that I could reach the point of the island with 14.5m of pole.
45 degrees
Given the large bay I decided to set-up my box at an angle of 45 degrees to the right (as opposed to facing the island directly) – this allowed me to fish to the reeds along the near bank on the tip and made fishing the long (11.5m) margin easier. I also rigged-up for lines tight to the island and a shallow rig into the open water to the right of the point of the island.
It’s worth noting at this point that the wind was blowing the right way (from the tackle shop end and around the corner into my peg) and before the start there were lots of fishing moving in the margins (though with hindsight these fish were probably spawning bream and not the big carp I thought they were).
One of the F1s that fell to bomb & bread
I started my match swapping between the bomb & bread to the rushes to my right and the long margin (also to my right) on the pole – the first hour saw lots of knocks on the float from that margin line but the only proper indications came to the bomb & bread in the form of two decent F1s.
If that first hour wasn’t bad enough then second and third were frankly terrible – I literally couldn’t buy a proper bite anywhere in the peg and I can’t remember catching anything of note at all, a couple of 4 ounce skimmers from the 14.5m island line probably being the only fish caught.
I spent too much time doing this today!!!
In a vain attempt to salvage a few points I finally decided to set-up a scratching rig at the start of the fourth hour – this rig was for fishing at top kit plus 1 into the deeper water and consisted of a 0.2g SconeZone V8 on 0.13 N-Gauge into a 15cm hooklength of 0.11 and a size 20 LWG. The intention was to catch whatever I could (roach, rudd, skimmers) on casters and at least see out the match with a few bites – but I couldn’t even do that!!! It was as if the lake was devoid of the silver fish that are normally everywhere and all I caught in the end were 3 decent F1s (which in all fairness probably weighed more than the bag of silvers I was targeting).
Good work Bagger!!!
In the end my five F1s and assorted bits and bobs weighed a disappointing 17-1-0, enough for 2 points as I at least beat the peg that wasn’t drawn!!! (My old mate Chris Couch was in the same section and couldn’t help a huge grin when his fish went 23lb odd – well done mate.) On the plus side Bagger was also in the same section and put a terrific 69-2-0 of margin caught carp on the scales from peg 28 for a fantastic third in section (7 points) – well done!!!
In hindsight I got my match all wrong. I fished far too heavily (in terms of line diameter and hook size) and fed too aggressively from the start as I thought I was going to bag-up on big carp – instead I should’ve eased my way into the match, fished a lot lighter (for F1s) and generally responded to the way the fish were reacting on the day. So after day one I’ve already failed in my aim of gaining five or more points each and every day, and my aim of a top fifty finish is also looking unlikely as I’m currently in 152nd place!!!
Today’s match saw another return visit to Willinghurst and for once the forecast was fairly settled – yet another harsh frost first thing but the experts were at least predicting plenty of sunshine and very little wind. My draw would see me on Old Lake once again – as my regular peg 10 wasn’t in the hat I had to settle for peg 11 instead! This was the peg that Pemb Wrighting won from on my last outing two weeks ago and to add to the pressure I was sandwiched between venue expert Kris Fields (13) and Delcac’s Jamie Granger (9), plus I was on the same lake as Apollo Guildford’s Luke Sheriff, Lee Simmons and Tony Corpes – and as if that wasn’t enough I also had to contend with bagging machine Rob Harvey and All the Gear, No Idea stalwart Claire ‘Bagger’ Hollis!!!
Peg 11 is essentially the same as peg 10 that I’ve described in previous posts – there is a shallow bar running through the middle of the peg at a range of 20m and there is the far bank to chuck to at something like 40m. The deeper water between the bar and the far bank can also be productive but the near margin and the deeper water in front of the bar seem less appealing (as the fish are generally reluctant to come this side of the bar). As a result I decided to leave the pole in the bag and instead went with two tip rods – one clipped-up to drop onto the bar and the other for fishing into the deeper water beyond the bar and for fishing to the platform opposite.
All the gear ...
One thing that was very different today when compared to two weeks ago was the wind – two weeks ago there was loads of it blowing from right to left towards end peg 13 and today there basically wasn’t any at all! What was also very apparent were the number of cruising carp that could be seen just under the surface – I thought there were loads in my peg but when I wondered down to see Lee Simmons on peg 5 and Bagger on peg 3 it was like an aquarium!!! On the off chance that these cruisers were actually going to have a chew I also set-up a pellet waggler rod – this consisted of 6lb Guru pulse line with a link swivel trapped between some large Guru float stops (two below and one above) and a 25cm hooklength of 0.19 N-Gauge to a size 16 MWG with a hair-rigged pellet band. Floats would either be a 4g Drennan Carp Waggler or a 4/5g Drennan Shorty.
The view to my right
Given the overnight frost and the bright/still conditions I was expecting a slow start but I was rather hoping for more than two bites in the first two hours! I started with bomb and bread to the far side and had anticipated a few early mug fish to be hanging under the platform opposite – when these didn’t materialise I began rotating between the bar, the deeper water (fed with a few Ringers 10mm pellets via a catapult) and the far side. The first bite came at 1145 (we started at 1030 today) from the deeper water to a Ringers chocolate orange water on the bomb and the second from the far bank to a 24g mini Hybrid feeder – the first one made it to the net but unfortunately the second came off in a snag 5m in front of peg 10. So not a prolific start!!!
A photo of some pellets and two catapults!
The highlight of the third and fourth hours was a visit from Daiwa Dorking’s Dave Guntrip who exited with quote of the day: “the reason we all go fishing is because we f**king hate it.” Classic! On the fishing front things were still tortuously slow and despite rotating between my three legering lines and some rather frustrating spells trying to mug a cruiser on the pellet waggler I only managed to put two small carp in the net – one from the bar with a Hybrid feeder and a 6mm pellet hookbait and another from the far side with the same feeder but with a chocolate orange wafter on the hair.
Just like a mill pond
As with many venues the final two hours are normally the most productive on the Old Lake at Willinghurst – however when the first 90 minutes of those two hours only produced two more small carp I was staring down the barrel of a DNW. Luckily the final half an hour included a golden spell of two carp and two nice (3lb) skimmers in four chucks onto the bar with a Hybrid feeder and a 6mm pellet – this gave me a total of 7 carp and 2 skimmers, not a huge amount of fish but at least enough to make it worth troubling the scalesman on what had been a tough day for most.
Today's winner, Lee Simmons
In the end my nine fish pulled the dial down to a flat 40lb – as it turned-out this was good enough for fourth on the lake, better than I thought but annoyingly one out of the money as they were paying the top 3 on each lake today!
Willinghurst is certainly an interesting venue as the winning pegs seem to vary from week to week – today the three end/corner pegs failed to produce (despite having anglers of the calibre of Tony Corpse, Rob Harvey and Kris Fields sat on them) and the top three weights on the lake formed a triangle around the main bowl with Lee Simmons top from peg 5 (84-2-0), Luke Sherriff second from peg 24 (65-0-0) and Jamie Grainger third from peg 9 (62-8-0). (The top scores from John’s Lake were Jason Morgan (peg 37, 77-4-0), Giovanni Barbatto (peg 1 (flyer), 70-4-0) and Shaun Sylvester (peg 45, 53-8-0).)
So another hard but enjoyable day at Willinghurst - but more importantly it's now "next stop White Acres"!!!
