Today was my debut for the Guildford Bait-Tech team on the first round of the 2017 Avon Valley summer league at Willinghurst. There were 11 teams of 5 fishing, with sections on Old Lake, Top Lake, New Lake and John’s Lake (2) – like most people I really didn’t want to draw on New Lake so obviously I landed on New Lake 14, a peg with very little form made worse by a strong wind blasting towards the opposite (car park) end!
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| Venue expert Shaun Sylvester opposite on peg 7 |
Given the nature of the peg and with peg 7 not that far away directly opposite I went for a pole only approach, setting-up rigs to cover the following options:
- Long pole (14.5m) shallow with a long line swinger rig
- Long pole (14.5m) shallow with a more conventional slapping rig
- Long pole (14.5m) on the deck with a hard pellets
- Short pole (top kit plus 3) on the deck (straight in front) with a hard pellets
- Short pole (top kit plus 3) on the deck (at an angle to the left) with chopped worm and caster for silvers
- Short pole (top kit plus 3) shallow for silvers
- Top kit plus 4 in front of the platform to the right
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| The view towards the cafe |
My initial plan to was to spend the first half an hour looking for carp then depending on how my peg and the lake were fishing seeing if it was worth fishing for silvers – as it turned-out I didn’t see any signs of carp on the short pole on the deck, long pole on the deck or long pole shallow lines and when I went on the silvers lines I couldn’t buy a bite on the tiniest piece of worm or a single maggot!!! So after an hour and a quarter I hadn’t managed a bite and was staring down the barrel of a disaster!
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| The vacant platform to the left |
Luckily another go at the long pole shallow (this time with casters instead of pellets) saw two decent carp hit the net one after another, then just as I thought I’d cracked it I couldn’t buy a bite anywhere in the peg for at least another hour, though bite number three (again on the long pole shallow with casters) was from a nice double-figure fish that ran me ragged before hitting the net.
Once again this fish was followed by a tortuously slow spell and I could only manage two more fish before the end – a smallish carp on a segment of worm from in front of peg 13’s platform and another decent fish on the long pole shallow, this time on pellet.
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| Immediate post-match verdict!!! |
In the end my 5 carp went 28-4-0, enough to beat five but also beaten by five (mainly by those on the bank in front of the cafe) – so 6 points (out of 11), not a great score but equally not a disaster on my debut!!!
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| That's me on the left feeling like John Terry!!! |
As it turned-out the other chaps had done brilliantly with Pete Franklin, Kris Fields, Jon Radford and Luke Sherriff all winning their sections meaning we’d won as a team with an amazing 50 points from a possible maximum of 55!!! (Drennan Bordon Aqua were second with 45 points, Woolmer third with 42.)
Until next time ...
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