Different fishing day this weekend (Saturday) but the same venue (Gold Valley) and the same peg as a couple of weeks ago (Middle Lake 91), so not for the first time (and almost certainly not the last) I’ve managed to draw the same peg twice within a matter of weeks!
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| Is all this stuff really needed? |
Looking back at the blog from my previous attempt at peg 91 (on the 18th of June) it can be seen that I spent the first half of the match failing to catch the bigger, older carp that still reside in this lake before switching my attentions to the F1s, stockie carp and skimmers – as a result I managed 40 odd pounds in just over two hours and was left with the feeling that it might be possible to reach the magic 100lb mark by targeting them all day.
Once at the peg the chances of catching any big carp seemed even less than last time – the wind was blasting from right to left (as it had been for a number of days apparently, presumably pushing a lot of fish into end pegs 84/85) and given the cool, cloudy conditions there weren’t any cruisers visible so it was time to put the theory to the test!
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| Middle Lake, peg 91 (again) |
Not completely discounting my chances of catching a big carp or two, whilst still giving myself a couple of options to catch the smaller fish, I set-up the following before the start of the match:
- One of my Daiwa Airity tip rods with a Guru X-Safe 19g inline lead and a 30cm hooklength of 0.17 N-Gauge into a size 12 QM1 with a 10mm hair (for fishing with a wafter over loose-fed 8mm pellets at 25-30m)
- A top kit (fitted with green Nick Gilbert Amber Core elastic) featuring a rig consisting of 0.17 main line, a 4x16 Malman Roob and a 15cm hooklength of 0.13 into a size 18 LWG (for fishing at top kit plus 3)
- Another top kit (green elastic again) featuring the same rig as above but with a slightly smaller 4x14 Roob (for fishing the (fairly deep) right margin with a top kit only)
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| The view to the right |
On the whistle I fed 4 balls of Bait-Tech Special G (a 50:50 mix of gold and green) on the top kit plus 3 line, flicked my bomb/wafter rig to 25m and pinged a few pouches of 8mm pellets over the top. After three or four minutes I sensed that this wasn’t the way to go so I switched to the margin line in order to start building towards my target weight of small fish.
My chosen feed and hookbait for this line were red maggots – the stockie carp and F1 seem to love them, but so unfortunately do the margin-hugging micro-perch! I could tell that there were plenty of the intended species down there but more often than not the tiny perch were getting to the hookbait first – having limited options on my side tray (these tiny fish aren’t normally an issue away from the margins) I ended-up fishing with the tiniest grains of corn I could find in a tin of Jolly Green Giant. (And I mean tiny! There’s no way the newly stocked carp could get a proper sized grain in their mouths!) This had the desired effect and in fact got me a massive bonus in the form of a near double-figure fish after about twenty minutes!!!
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| Tidy side tray for once! |
After nearly an hour it was time to look on the TK+3 line – I had expected it to be solid but initially I couldn’t get a bite, the fish having clearly cleaned-out the groundbait fed at the start of the match. Feeding another couple of balls of Special G did the trick, though the sport wasn’t as hectic as previous sessions, possibly due to the slightly cooler weather conditions or possibly due to the number of matches that have been held on this lake lately.
With a couple of hours gone I didn’t seem to be going anywhere so after feeding 4 more balls of groundbait on the TK+3 line I decided to flick my bomb and wafter to the rope (regretfully I hadn’t been feeding 8mm pellets via a catapult as I should’ve been whilst fishing the pole) – after a couple of minutes the tip pulled ‘round and I was attached to a nice skimmer (I’d hoped it was a carp but that’s life I guess). Switching to an X-Safe inline cage feeder with a 60cm hooklength and two dead red maggots I quickly snared two more before a couple of chucks with nothing but chewed maggots saw a switch to a 30cm tail – this instantly led to a stockie carp then absolutely nothing!!!
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| The view to the left |
Whilst fishing the feeder I’d taken the opportunity to pump a few 4mm expander pellets and prepare some 4mm hard pellets (by adding a little pellet oil to get them to sink quickly) – the combination of these baits seemed to work well on the margin line and meant that every bite was from a stockie carp or an F1, the perch not seeming to fancy pellets.
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| Plenty of bites! |
By continuing to feed the TK+3 line aggressively with groundbait I was also able to get amongst more skimmers, but as before I knew that the intended 100 pounds plus of small fish definitely wasn’t on the cards – my final weight of 57-0-0 consisting of 11-0-0 of bigger carp (that early margin munter and another 2lb sample I felt worthy of placing into my big fish net) and 46-0-0 of skimmers, stockie carp and F1s.
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| Caption competition time! |
Surprisingly this was enough to beat all of the anglers to my left on my bank (despite the wind blowing that way) and when the two anglers to my right couldn’t beat me I thought I was in for some section money – until the mighty Mark Eves slammed 70 odd pounds onto the scales from (end) peg 97 that is!!! (Mark’s weight consisted of just 30 pounds of small fish but 40 plus pounds of big carp, once again showing that to do well on this lake you definitely need a good amount of big fish, albeit backed-up with a reasonable amount of smaller fish.) Well done to Paul ‘Tommy’ Hiller on the win and Nick Howell on taking second place!!!
Until next time ...
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