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.
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