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!!!
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