After a weekend with no fishing following our recent trip to White Acres it was back to Willinghurst again today. The weather was forecast to be a little wet in the morning but this didn’t deter another decent turn-out of 20 – not bad considering a number of the regulars were tied-up fishing the Avon Valley summer league.
They seek him here ...
Unusually it seemed that the open match was the only event taking place at Willinghurst today so the café was fairly quiet – venue regulars will know that the café has a fairly low ceiling and when a critical mass of over-excited anglers are in attendance a vicious circle is created as everybody has to shout to make themselves heard. (If Guru made ear plugs I’m sure they’d sell-out in the on-site tackle shop.)
Today’s match was spread across Old Lake and Top Lake – I was actually hoping to draw a nice open water peg so I could fish the pellet waggler, but instead I drew the narrowest one in the bag! My pitch for the day (peg 30 on To Lake) is very different to virtually every other peg on the complex – it’s basically an annex to the main part of Top Lake and is kind of like a snake lake with an island that can be easily reached with 14.5/16m of pole. It also has a bay to the right formed by the causeway of the Bomb Hole and long margins to the left and right – however these margins don’t look very inviting as they are clearly not very deep and shallow-up to nothing quite a way from the actual banking.
The Drennan Margin Crystal
Prior to the start I set-up two pole rigs and one rod: the pole rigs were for fishing the island at 16m left and right, were mounted on black Hydro top kits, included 0.17 Guru N-Gauge main line, featured 0.4g Drennan Margin Crystal floats (which are excellent) and had 0.13 hooklengths to size 16 LWG (eyed) hooks (tight to the island to the left it was 18” deep, to the right 15”); the rod was my usual X-Safe feeder rod set-up and was for fishing to the margin formed by the causeway diagonally to the right.
Ronnie or Reggie?
To be honest I really liked the look of the island and had really
thought that I was going to empty it from the start – however after an
hour I was still fishless and had nothing but a collection of scary
looking crayfish to show or my efforts. (No need to panic though as
summer opens at Willinghurst are six and a half hour affairs.)
My feeder chuck
Unfortunately after a further two and a half hours I only had three feeder caught in the net and I was on the verge of packing-up as the crayfish were driving me nuts – whenever I fished the pole across to the island the float was constantly dancing about and when I fished the feeder I knew I had to get a bite within 10 seconds as after any longer than this the crayfish would snaffle my 6mm pellet hookbait or devour my hair-rigged wafter one snip at a time!!!
Proper gear for down the edge
At 2 o’clock and with nothing to lose I decided to go down the edge
much earlier than expected. These margins really did look terrible and
plumbed-up even worse – at least 6” of bare steep slope was showing
above the water line and it was very, very shallow close to the bank (my
favoured 15-18”was only found at least 6’ from the bank, which would’ve
been a real nightmare with foul hookers as they could easily swim
between the float and the bank). I eventually settled on fishing 12”
deep which was more like 2’ from bank and something of a compromise and
not at all ideal.
The margin to the right
It looked more fishy to the left so I decided to start to the right leaving the left for the last (and hopefully most productive) part of the match. I kicked things off by feeding 4 cups of groundbait and went straight in with 2 big worms on the hook. Being so shallow I could actually see any carp in the swim and that groundbait did lead to an immediate response with some visible churning of the bottom – however initially carp were only coming into the swim individually and it was very difficult to induce a bite until a bit later when then they started appearing in groups of 3 or 4.
The margin to the left
By 5 o'clock I had landed somewhere between 10 and 12 decent (but not massive) margin carp and managed to lose 4 others (3 of which were definitely foul hooked). The right hand side remained the most productive and despite opening a line to the left it never really got going and only yielded one or two fish. Interestingly I didn’t really feed anything in the last hour as I could still see plenty of fish moving through the swim – at one point I could clearly see fish feeding at top kit plus 4 along the bank even though I had been feeding at top kit plus 2!!!
Star of the show!
In the end my 15 or so carp went a level 79lb - not a bad weight but once again not quite good enough as I ended-up 8th and they paid the top 7 (yes, *** *** of the ***** again). However my man of the match was once again our very own Bagger who tipped 85lb onto the scales to finish in 5th, one place above England legend Stevie Gardener and two above man of the moment Paul Holland.
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