You won’t be surprised to hear that it was back to Willinghurst for yet another go today, this time the open match spread across John’s Lake and New Lake. The weather forecast was reasonable (sunny spells with a light breeze from the east) and with a bacon sandwich having eased a mild hangover I joined the queue hoping for a nice pitch where I could while away the following six hours!
Pre-match banter no doubt!
Even though I had done quite well on New Lake a couple of weeks ago, and despite the fact that John’s Lake fished rather hard last Sunday, I was actually looking to get onto John’s and for once the drawbag was kind to me as a poker chip with ‘J7’ inked on the back heralded my destination for the day.
John’s Lake itself is basically a fairly long, fairly wide rectangle running from east to west (or west to east if you like) with about 50 pegs – the westerly end is slightly wider, but where I was (peg 7) it was about 40-45m to the far bank (not that you can chuck to it as there are normally anglers pegged on both banks). It looks pretty featureless from the surface but there is actually a shallow bar running through the middle – this is just out of pole range so is normally attacked with running line tactics.
Ironically I drew peg 8 back in August of last year and spent the day catching from just in front of peg 7’s platform as Paul ‘Tippy’ Taylor had kindly done a little foliage trimming the week before to make it accessible – knowing that this could work again today my first job of the day was to return the favour a do a little gardening of my own!
All the gear ...
Ignoring the shallow bar (by leaving my rods in the holdall) I set-up just two rigs before the start – my ‘sensible’ margin rig (black Amber Core elastic, 0.17 Guru N-Gauge main line, 0.3g SconeZone V6, 10cm 0.15, size 16 LWG (eyed)) and a rig for fishing hard pellets into the deeper water (black Amber Core elastic, 0.17, 4x16 Roob Titan, 15cm 0.13, size 16 LWG (eyed) with a hair-rigged pellet band). (Having carefully plumbed-up I found I could get away with just the one rig for the deeper water as the depth was exactly the same all the way from the bottom of the near shelf at top kit plus three to 14.5m. Adding an extra section to take me to 16m saw the depth decrease by an inch – presumably this was the start of the central bar so this was one of those rare situations where a 17.5m extension might’ve been handy.)
Looking right from John's 7
I kicked-off my match with a quick look at peg 7’s platform but after 5 minutes of missed bites from small fish it was out to top kit plus three in front where I immediately (and skilfully) foul-hooked a gudgeon on an over-sized White Acres 6mm pellet! The second drop led to another quick bite, this time from a small carp that turned into a 3lb tench at the net. I did eventually get a carp from this line at the half hour point but it was clear that the fishing was going to be tough as the anglers that I could see were also struggling for bites.
As a result I spent the bulk of the match rotating between two lines at top kit plus three, two lines at 14.5m, two lines at 16m and the line in front of peg 7’s platform, picking-up the odd fish here and there, normally getting a bite when returning to a line that hadn’t been fished for a while.
More gear ...
Going into the final hour I knew that I was miles behind Paul ‘Tommy’ Hiller (who was on a peg on the far bank at the westerly end of the lake) but I felt I was in touching distance of the other pacesetters so it was still all to play for!
Given the time of day I decided to put more emphasis on the margin line – this paid dividends with 4 reasonable carp in the final part of the match – though in the end it was a final carp from the top kit plus 3 line with 3 minutes to go that was to prove crucial!
The moment of truth!
I knew that things were going to be tight but when Tommy weighed 68lb, Tom Arnott 47lb and Jamie Mathews 41-11-0 I thought I was sunk as my clicker read 40lb – luckily my clicking was slightly under and my fifteen or so carp went 42-6-0, just enough for third on the lake and fifth overall (last in the frame)! That result means that I’ve now framed in 3 of my last 4 matches at Willinghurst, though on two occasions if I’d had weighed a pound less I’d be back to moaning about being ‘one out of the money’ again!!!
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