After a cracking walking holiday in the Lake District last week it was back on the bank again today and another go at an open match on Middle Lake at Gold Valley – there wasn’t a huge turn-out but it was a quality field once again featuring the likes of Daiwa Dorking’s Paul ‘Tommy’ Hiller and Mark Goddard as well as the usual venue experts in the form of Olly Tilley, Charlie Dalton and Eddie Green (the older version).
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| Peg 61 on Middle Lake |
Having fished a couple of competitions on this lake recently I had formed a pre-match plan that involved drawing a nice peg in the middle of the lake and fishing for the newly stocked carp and original skimmers with maggots over groundbait from front to back, ignoring the older/bigger carp and trying to build a winning weight by catching the smaller fish at a decent rate all day. Unfortunately this plan was somewhat scuppered when I drew peg 61, the corner peg nearest the clubhouse – this had been a great peg through the winter (as the new fish seemed to shoal-up next to the parallel margin), but since the weather has warmed-up and the fish have spread-out a quick look at the Gold Valley Facebook page revealed some really poor weights returned by some really top anglers!
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| Pre-match tidy side tray |
Being a rather warm day again there were quite a few of the older carp cruising about and as I had access to the parallel margin to my left I set-up the following before the start of the match:
- Mugging rig #1 featuring black Nick Gilbert Amber Core elastic, a top kit’s worth of 0.17 Guru N-Gauge, a 0.6g Drennan inline crystal dibber and a 25cm hooklength made-up of 0.15 line into a size 16 LWG with a hair loop
- Mugging rig #2 – same as above but featuring a hair-rigged pellet band instead of a loop
- A pellet waggler rod incorporating one of the new Guru foam wagglers (3SSG)
- A rig for fishing straight in front at TK+3 for the new carp made-up of green Nick Gilbert Amber Core elastic, 0.17 mainline, a 4x16 Malman Roob and a 15cm hooklength of 0.13 into a size 16 Kaizen
- A final rig for fishing tight to the parallel margin to the left consisting of black Nick Gilbert Amber Core elastic, 0.17, a 0.4g Drennan margin crystal and a 15cm hooklength of 0.15 into a size 16 Kaizen – this rig was slightly heavier than the one above as I was hoping some of the older carp might be lurking here alongside the newer fish and there was a snaggy looking overhanging tree to deal with!
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| Cheeky bow wave |
I started the match by feeding 4 balls of Bait-Tech Special G groundbait and dead read maggots on the TK+3 line (with hindsight this was something of a mistake but more on that later) and picked-up mugging rig #1 – a 7mm cube of luncheon meat was mounted on the hair and I began looking for cruising carp within pole range. By standing on the footplate of my box and wearing the correct eyewear (prescription Oakley sunglasses) I was able to spot a number of candidates and in less than 30 minutes I had three nice big carp in the net for 20 plus pounds – not a bad start when you consider that only a low 60lb weight was needed to pick-up money on Friday’s match on this lake!
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| The view to the left |
Inevitably the cruising carp disappeared so after 45 minutes it was time to switch my attentions to the smaller carp and F1s that had hopefully moved over my TK+3 line – in fact I knew that they had as this part of my swim was fizzing like mad and looked like a faulty jacuzzi! I thought the bottom felt a bit sticky when plumbing-up but as I’d never really experienced any silty swims on this lake before I ignored it, definitely another item for the ever growing cock-up list! Whilst there were plenty of fish present it was really hard to get a run of proper bites going, no doubt due to the fact that the fish couldn’t see my hookbait given all of the silt that was being churned-up!!!
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| Mid-match side tray carnage |
At this point I should’ve moved this line a meter or so to the left or right but instead I decided to let the fizzing subside and tried loose feeding live maggots via a pole mounted pot instead. This seemed to work for a while - until the fish came-up in the water that is, something that I’m still surprised by as this line was certainly no more than 3 feet deep! I hastily set-up a jigga rig and after landing 5 fish in as many minutes I thought I’d stumbled onto a winning formula before the fish disappeared on me – luckily a switch back to the long pole mugging rig got me another big fish on a 7mm cube of luncheon meat so I felt I was back on track for a decent score as at the halfway point as I reckoned on having about 40 pounds in the net.
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| Yours truly playing a late fish |
Unfortunately the second half of the match wasn’t as good as the first! I didn’t see a single muggable fish for the remainder of the match and the supply of stockie carp from the TK+3 line soon petered-out, the only saving grace being a big carp out of the blue on this short line and a bit of a run of fish towards the end of the match from the line tight to the bank to the left – I probably should’ve caught more from this line but I got a little hacked-off having to re-tie rigs for this line 3 times after being taken through the overhanging branches on a number of occasions!!!
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| Not quite enough! |
In the end my fish went 61-8-0, 38lb of big carp and 23-8-0 of stockie carp and F1s. This left me one from last in my five peg section though it shows how tight things were as I was less than 25 pounds behind eventual winner Olly Tilley!!!
Until next time ...
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