I’ve been trying to think what exactly makes Bolingey my favourite fishing venue. Driving along narrow Cornish country lanes with high hedgerows to get there is certainly part of it, as is a sense of being close to the seaside (which exaggerates the feeling of being on holiday). The complex itself sits in something of a tree-lined bowl, creating a nice feeling of seclusion and an escape from the real world outside. Then last but not least there are the delicious fried egg/bacon sandwiches to eat and the monster carp to catch!!!
My home for the day was to be peg 3 – this is a short walk from the car park/tackle shop and is towards the middle of the non-causeway bank of the first pond on the left. As a result this peg has no obvious features – the lake at the rear of the complex is the only one with an island and obviously only corner pegs 1 (John Pilling), 7 (Bagger (of course)), 46 (Tom) and 50 (Ian Turner) have a right angled bank to fish to. As a result I decided to focus on fishing short today and unusually I put three nets into the water before the start – I wasn’t at all confident of catching in excess of 60 let alone 120lb but even a blind squirrel finds an acorn once in a blue moon and adding an extra net when catching close-in can be a real kiss of death. (Three clichés in the same sentence – awesome!!!)
All the gear ...
I set-up rigs for fishing at top kit plus two slightly to the right and at top kit plus one slightly to the left – both were mounted onto black Hydro top kits, featured 4x14 Roobs and were tied on 0.19 Guru N-Gauge main line. However as I was going to fish with sweetcorn on the longer line I went with a 15cm hooklength of 0.15 to a size 16 LWG (eyed) and as I was going to be fishing with big pellets (the over-sized White Acres 8mm jobbies) on the other I went with a hooklength of 0.17 to a size 14 MWG with a hair-rigged pellet band.
The view to the left
Peg 3 is a great spot for tree lovers as it features nice specimens on both the left and right – unfortunately this makes the peg quite enclosed and meant I could only fish my margin lines on a top kit only. (This didn’t bother me as I know from experience that big carp can be willing to feed extremely close to anglers/nets when they are in the mood and quite often fishing along the margin at top kit plus two can be a really obvious thing that everybody does and is something that the fish have wised-up to.) I set-up rigs for fishing as tight to the bank as I possibly could to the left and to the right – both were mounted on red Hydro top kits, consisted of 0.19 straight through to a size 14 MWG and had SconeZone V6 floats. (The depths were different but both were between the ideal 12 and 18”.)
Surveying the carnage from another lost foul-hooker
The first half of my match today can be quickly and easily summarised as: fished the two short lines; hooked seven carp; lost six; landed one; each and every one was foul-hooked. In short – an absolute nightmare!!!
The left margin
As a result I started to feed and fish my margin lines much, much earlier than I’d have liked – I really wanted to save them until the final hour and a bit but by two thirty I had to stop fishing and foul-hooking carp on the short lines for the sake of my own sanity and pole float collection!!!
For margin feed I had two pints of casters (left-over from yesterday), two pints of sweetcorn and tow pints of live maggots. I started by using-up the casters and sport was fairly good – however switching to feeding full pots of live maggots was much better. Between two thirty and four I actually caught quite a few smaller fish (carp and F1s), boosting my weight from a meagre 4-5lb to somewhere around the 45lb mark.
The right margin
The final hour should be the best at venues like Bolingey but as I had to start fishing the margins much earlier than I’d have liked sport predictably started to fade when it should’ve been getting better and better – things also weren’t helped when I started to get carried away with feeding by hand, a series of lost foul-hookers being the result. However by returning to feeding via a cupping kit only and being really patient I managed to induce three proper bites in that final hour – this doesn’t sound like many bites but they were all from proper zoo creatures and added a further 30-35lb to my total.
That's more like it
All too soon it was 5 o’clock and Cornwall’s answer to Laurel and Hardy (Andy Dare and Ricky Dennis) appeared right on time with the scales – John Pilling was first to weigh and would go on to win the lake with 81lb. Frustratingly my catch went 77-6-0, less than one fish behind and yet again I was one out of the money as weights of 140+ (Geoff Edwards), 110+ (Scott Walker), 100+ and 90+ (Dave Gibbs) filled the frame leaving John to take the section prize. Oh well not to worry – it was a lovely day out and we had fish and chips from Port & Starboard on the way back to the lodge so “all’s well that ends well” as they say!!!
No comments:
Post a Comment