It was the final round of the 2018 Rushmoor league today – after spending the previous 4 weeks alternating between the big fish lakes (Gold and Syndicate) I was keen to land on one of the F1 lakes (Middle or Bat) and hopefully get a few bites. Well as luck was have it, not only did I end-up on Bat Lake but I also had the good fortune to draw peg 146, one of the most sought after pegs in the country and one that has produced a number of framing places in this year’s keenly contested league.
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| Flyer alert!!! |
Bat Lake is probably the smallest on the Gold Valley complex and for many years has gone largely ignored (from a match fishing perspective at least) – however, at the turn of 2018 it received something of a facelift and a major re-stocking with lots of fin perfect F1s. Since then it has been a regular inclusion in the big money Rushmoor league and has thrown-up lots of big weights, not least the incredible 162-11-0 recorded by Callum Dicks two weeks ago!!! (Since then though the weights (and the weather) have deteriorated, but only last Sunday it produced two of the top three places and three 50lb plus weights.)
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| The number they all wanted |
Bat Lake gets its name from the large bat sanctuary located on the main central island and there are also two smaller islands that can be found in the widest part of the lake towards the causeway with Middle Lake. Peg 146 is quite an interesting swim – the lake narrows to no more than 13m to the left and to the right the main island disappears at an angle of 45 degrees leaving lots of open water to go at on that side.
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| Looking left |
On plumbing-up, the deepest water straight in front seemed to be approximately 3’ at 6-7m before shallowing-up to literally nothing as you approach the margin of the island (this could be a good spot to target in the summer but a non-starter in my mind on a freezing cold day in February). Out into the open water to the right it was about 1” shallower but incredibly flat – I literally couldn’t find any depth variation whatsoever in a wide arc at both 13 and 14.5m.
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| Mainly pellets today |
Prior to the start of the match I decided to target the deepest water straight in front at top kit plus 3 and a line at 13m to the right into the open water (though with it being so flat out into the open water I knew I would be able to use the same rig for several different swims here). Given the depth variation I set-up 2 rigs but both featured the same components: pink Hydrolastic, 0.13 main line, 4x14 Roob, strung bulk of number 9 stotz, 15cm of 0.10 Guru Pulse fluorocarbon and a size 18 Guru F1 Pellet hook.
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| A photo that doesn't show how windy it really was!!! |
On the whistle I tapped in a few micros over the short line and looked for a bite on a 4mm expander pellet – after repeating this process 3 times at five-minute intervals without a sign it was time to brave the wind and give my first 13m line a whirl sooner than I’d hoped. By the time the match was an hour old and I still hadn’t had a bite my brain had gone into over-drive thinking-up excuses for how I’d managed to draw the hottest peg in the country and blanked!!! (The best I could come-up with was a combination of having a hang-over following an early start watching England vs Wales in the rugby yesterday and the cold wind pushing the fish to the other side of the lake where it was much more sheltered.)
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| They must be big bats |
Fortunately, at about five past twelve the float finally dipped and I was into a fish at last – and then I wasn’t as it pinged-off!!! ‘Oh dear’ I said to myself, though on dropping the rig back down the same hole the float buried immediately and a nice F1 did eventually find its way into the net. This was the start of a nice run of fish, the key to success seemingly being finding the best ratio of soaked micros and hard 4mm pellets to feed each drop – the micros help to drag fish into the peg but the 4mm pellets are needed to pin the fish to the deck and to get the F1s to feed in a way that minimises foul-hooking (that first fish that pinged-off was almost certainly foul-hooked as a result of having too many micro pellets in the peg).
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| Gary Thomas on the far bank |
By the end of the second hour I had about 15 in the net. Bites were coming regularly but the wind was a real pain – on a number of occasions a fish was pulling the pole one way and the wind was blowing it the other, causing the pole to form a rather alarming ‘S’ shape that was probably on the verge of turning my faithful Airity into a worthless collection of carbon splinters.
The final 3 hours were pretty steady too – the catch rate dropped slightly but by opening a new line further to the right at 13m and by somehow holding the pole at 14.5m for the final 30 minutes I eventually finished on 55 (that final half an hour was a really struggle but led to a crucial late burst of good stamp F1s).
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| Gratuitous catch shot |
The scales arrived soon after the final whistle was blown and three weighs later I had 63-10-0 against my name, a return I was happy with given the slow start and the strong wind that didn’t let-up all day. Nigel Smith was next to weigh from 147 and looked to have a very similar catch – sometimes fishing can be a cruel mistress but this time luck was on my side as Nigel’s weight was 62-6-0, so there was no more than a decent F1 between us. News soon started to filter through that the other lakes had fished hard and I’m over the moon to be able to say that I was top individual on the day and I’d somehow managed to win a 70 peg match stuffed with top, top quality anglers!!! (Nigel was second and Shaun Silvester took third from Gold Lake with 43-4-0).
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| Gratuitous winnings photo |
More importantly I’d been able to secure my third section win from five outings and my Guildford Bait-Tech team had once again beaten Daiwa Dorking – Tubertini took the honours on the day with a terrific score of 53 from a maximum of 70 on a very tough day. Unfortunately we weren’t able to put the distance we needed to put between ourselves and Dorking to overcome our disastrous seventh placed finish last week so congratulations go to a very strong Daiwa Dorking team that secured the 6 leg series with just 13 penalty points, though personally I’m very proud to have been part of an up-and-coming Guildford Bait-Tech team that finished in second place a single point behind on 14.
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| Final league table |
I’ll sign-off by thanking all of my team-mates that took part in this series (Dave, Ian, John, Dan, Luke, G, John, Martin, Kris, Lee, Mark, Gareth and Pete) and to John Raison for two reasons – firstly for organising a great league and secondly for stocking all of those F1s into Bat Lake!!!
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