Today was my first day on the bank for over two months and I was seriously worried that I’d forget what to do – well if nothing else you’ll see shortly that my drawing hand was certainly able to recall what a flyer felt like!!!
Nice day for it!!!
Today’s match was the slightly belated Apollo Guildford Match Team’s Christmas bash held on the recently restocked Middle Lake at Gold Valley – this lake has been boosted with ghost F1s and loads of stockie (proper) carp so these were to be my target. (I had assumed that all of the older, bigger carp had been moved to Syndicate Lake, but this was later proved to be incorrect).
The weather recently has been pretty cold and yesterday saw rain all day – coupled with today’s bright sunshine things were always going to be tricky so I was very pleased to draw peg 61, a nice end peg with some recent form. Peg 61 is in a corner and has some rushes growing from a floating pontoon – this was just out of range of the pole (18m) but I still felt that this was close enough to form the main part of my attack as 16m of pole would put me pretty close and it really was a cracking looking feature.
End Peg Billy!!!
On plumbing-up the peg seemed quite shallow with the deepest water (3’ at the most) directly in line with the middle of the rushes where there was a V formed by the bottom of the slope of the long (parallel) margin and the ever decreasing depth towards the open water to the right. Having been away from the bank for quite I while I decided to keep things ultra-simple and made this the only line I’d gear-up for prior to the start of the match (I’ll let you decide if this was single-mindedness or laziness).
Starting hooklength components
Over recent months I've watched loads of videos with the likes of Des Shipp, Paul Holland and Andy Bennett sacking-up on F1s – however F1s are very few and far between in my part of the southeast of England and as a result I had to use a set-up that I’d normally use for summer carp fishing! This rig was based around a 4x12 Roob on 0.17 Guru N-Gauge, but at least the use of orange Hydrolastic and a hooklength of 0.10 flurocarbon into a size 20 Guru F1 Maggot hook lent a little finesse!
Guru pole pots
As I planned to drip maggots via small pole-mounted pot and attempt to have my target species follow my hookbait down to the bottom the shotting pattern was one number 10 Stotz at 6”, another at 12” and a small bulk at 19” – hopefully such a pattern would get my hook into the catching zone pretty quickly but still give a nice fall through the final foot or so.
All the gear ...
I was hoping to get off to a flying start but after the 60 minutes of dripping maggots and allowing my hookbait to fall though the swim I was still biteless – I was just about to set-up a tip rod when the little dimple of my 4x12 Roob left above the surface finally disappeared from sight and it was fish on! And then it wasn’t – I call tell you it’s not ideal when your first fish of the year comes off half way back to the bank!!! ‘Not to worry’ I thought to myself as I shipped-out again when the same thing happened 2 minutes later. After it happened for the third time I needed to make a change and swapped my F1 Maggot hook for a much heavier LWG – I was worried that such a pattern would be too coarse for F1s in clear water but I can honestly say I never lost another fish all day!!!
Switching to LWGs paid-off
By the end of the second hour I had 6 F1s and 2 stockie carp in the net – not huge fish but at least I was getting some action. The swim directly in front of the rushes then died and I was torn between starting a new line in open water to the right or trying closer to the long (parallel) margin – I had reservations about fishing further to the left as there was a steep slope and the water seemed too shallow given the bright, clear conditions but I shallowed-up and with an extremely long lash I gave it a go. 4 stockie carp in as many casts probably meant that this was the right thing to do!!!
Yours truly
Just as I thought I was going to empty it the fish seemed to spook away and I couldn't manage another bite from any line for the next 90 minutes. Luckily the fish returned in the final hour and I was able to pick-up one more stockie carp from the left and 2 F1s and 3 stockie carp from the original line – this gave me a total of 8 F1s and 10 stockie carp, not a bad day’s catch for the middle of winter.
Jason Morgan and his winning bag
In the end my fish went 26-5-0, good enough for third place overall behind the 3 carp caught by Lee Simmons (31-8-0) and the ten or so caught by today’s winner Jason Morgan (83-0-0). So all-in-all a good day – the weather was cold but lovely and sunny, I’d managed a few bites and the banter with the lads was a good as ever – lets hope 2017 brings lots more days like these!!!
