02 February 2014, Small Lake (Willow Park)

Today’s Godalming AS club match was the third of four matches in a row on non-Godalming waters – recently we’ve been to MBK Coloured Ponds and the Basingstoke Canal, today’s match was on the Small Lake at Willow Park and next week there is a joint outing with Woking DAA to the Big Lake at Furnace Lakes.

Willow Park, Small Lake



Despite being well renowned and fairly local I’ve only fished Willow Park seven times in the last five years – six of those visits have been to the Middle Lake and the only previous time I’ve been on the Small Lake I managed to blank!!! So as you can imagine I was looking for a better result this time around and as the weather forecast was for an almost spring-like day expectations were high …

All the gear ...



YouTube video of the view from my peg

The Small Lake at Willow Park features 34 pegs – however some of these are incredibly close together and as a result today’s match organisers imposed a 20 peg limit. In the end only 16 made it to the draw enabling the pegs placed into the bag of dreams to be spread-out a little further.

A look on the Willow Park web site revealed that the last few matches on the Small Lake had all been won from peg 1 (the peg that I blanked from on my previous visit) so of course that was the one that everybody hoped to draw – in the end my sticky mitt stuck to peg 23, about as far from peg 1 as it was possible to get! However I was in good company as I had Godalming legends either side – Perry Grey on peg 22 to my left and Colin Underwood on 24 to my right (peg 23 wasn’t in).

Pole rig components

On the open matches on this lake tactics are restricted to float only – however this rule does not apply to club bookings where legering is allowed. (Of course the organiser of each club match could choose to impose the float only rule if they saw fit.)

As my peg didn’t offer any obvious features (naturally I’d drawn a peg as far from a corner as it was possible to get) I decided to initially attack my peg with 13m of pole for skimmers and the straight lead for carp at about 25m. The pole rig featured pink Hydro, 0.13 Guru N-Gauge mainline, a 4x16 KC Carpa Chimp and a 15cm hooklength of 0.10 Reflo Power to a size 20 Tubertini 808. (Shotting was a simple bulk of number 8 stotz at 40cm with two number 10 droppers.) The bomb rod was set-up with my usual arrangement of 8lb Daiwa Sensor mainline, a one third of an ounce Guru square bomb and a 30cm hooklength of 0.19 N-Gauge to a size 14 QM1 with a hair-rigged pellet band.

Groundbait mix for the pole

On the whistle (we were fishing from 10 until 3 today) I fed 2 balls of groundbait (Sounbaits F1 dark with added dead fluro pinkies and red/white maggots) on my pole line and flicked an 8mm pellet on the tip rod to about 25cm. This first cast (which lasted 20 minutes) led to two definite twitches, but despite firing-out a few loose offerings via a catapult no proper bites materialised.

The second cast (25 minutes this time) was even less eventful and I didn’t notice even the slightest of line bites. As a result of this lack of action and the fact that it was a nice sunny day (though of course pretty cold as it is still early February) I decided to set-up a waggler to fish through the water over the 25m line – I’d love to be able to say that this was the turning point of my match and I went on to bag-up, but I’m afraid I never had a bit on it! (Oh well, ‘nothing ventured, nothing gained’ as they say!!!)

Direct sun and a good ripple made it difficult to see my float

By 11 o’clock my pole line had been given an hour to settle so it was time to give it a go. After ten fruitless minutes I was about to give-up and revert to the tip when the float dipped and a nice big (2lb) skimmer was soon pulling a decent amount of pink Hydro from the end of my pole – off the mark at last!

Given the way I was facing (directly into a low, bright sun) and the significant ripple created by a strong cross-breeze I was really struggling to see the float so I had a quick cast on the straight lead whilst I set-up a feeder rig on my second tip rod to fish over the pole line. As luck would have it the tip was soon flying ‘round as an ill-fated 8 ounce skimmer managed to foul-hook itself against my 8mm pellet (it wouldn’t have got it in it’s mouth that’s for certain)!

Once the new feeder rig (which consisted of 6lb mainline, a small Drennan cage feeder and a 45cm hooklength made-up of 0.13 to a size 18 Guru LWG) was ready I had a couple of drops over the 13m pole line. No further bites materialised from this line so it seemed churlish to ignore the skimmer I’d snared on the long line so I clipped my feeder rig to 30m and had 5 quick casts to get some bait down. Again this new tactic didn’t explode into life as I’d hoped and by one o’clock I’d only managed to miss two twitches (probably from roach) on double-dead red maggot and to strike in a fantastically ridiculous fashion at what was clearly an obvious line bite!!!

Feeder gear

A quick look on the pole only yielded a small roach so a quick re-feed with 2 more balls of groundbait was in order before returning to the feeder rig, this time with a shortened (30cm) hooklength and a switch to double/triple dead fluro pinkie hookbaits – this did have the desired effect and 2 skimmers in a row were quickly dispatched into my waiting keepnet.

However the action once again tailed-off so I decided to be bold and re-fed the feeder line with 5 large cage feeders’ worth of bait – the response was hardly hectic but eventually two more skimmers fell to triple pinkie hookbaits and just as I was about to start packing-up (with fifteen minutes to go) the tip slammed ‘round and a real bonus of a 4lb F1 (yes, a 4lb F1) made it’s way into my net! Hoping that a shoal of oversized F1s had moved in I quickly recast but the final action of the day was to be a tiny skimmer on the whistle.

Results part 1

Results part 1

In the end my 7 skimmers, 2 roach and 1 F1 pulled the dial down to 10-4-0, enough for a section win and not too far behind the frame. Overall top three:

1. Alex Boxall, peg 1, 21-10-0
2. Chris Kampa, peg 12, 19-10-0
3. Paul Etherington, peg 16, 12-3-0

Section winners:

• Andy Rogers, peg 10, 12-1-0
• Brian Stevens, peg 18, 11-13-0
• Phil Morris, peg 23, 10-4-0

Well done to Alex for the win from fancied peg 1 and to Chris Kampa for snaring two big carp on ultra-light waggler gear – the first of which seemed to take about half an hour to land!!!

Who turned out the lights?

Conclusions: I guess today was typical of a winter match with the clear water and bright sunshine seeing few fish feeding, the winning weights being made-up of small numbers of big fish. This can of course be very frustrating as good angling is often not rewarded with a bite – however a good draw can see less experienced anglers grab the limelight so in many ways the weather is a great leveller, and when it comes down to it winter fishing is still miles better than lying on your sofa watching TV!!!

Until next time ...

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26 January 2014, Heath Vale (Basingstoke Canal)

Like many of today’s modern match anglers 99% of my fishing time is spent on commercial lakes and ponds – even though I was brought-up fishing the upper Thames around Lechlade, Kelmscott and Radcot, rivers and suchlike nowadays hold little fascination for me. However one exception to my natural water aversion (if you can call such an obviously manmade structure ‘natural’) is the Basingstoke canal – the last time I’d fished the venue was way back in August 2011 when my Godalming Midweekers team somehow defied all odds and gained promotion from the division 2 national to the top flight, so despite a shocking weather forecast I was really looking forward to today’s club match on the Heath Vale stretch.

Will Raison’s Canal Roach on Breadpunch DVD – classic!

As per usual a plan of attack started to form during the week preceding today’s match and that plan had three main options:

• Punched bread over liquidised bread for roach
• Half a lobworm over chopped worms and dead maggots for perch
• Pinkie over groundbait for roach/skimmers

Having not fished liquidised bread for a number of years I decided to do some homework, digging out some old fishing magazines and watching the excellent V2V DVD featuring Will Raison fishing with bread on the Kennet & Avon canal. As ever there is some conflicting advice to be had, with many magazine articles insisting that your liquidised bread should be as fine as possible and as a result elaborate processes involving freezing, defrosting, refreezing and super fine flour sieves are needed – however I have to say I agree with Will Raison’s view, namely that in order to attract the better stamp fish often needed to win canal matches it is better to have your liquidised bread fairly coarse, so as a result I prepared my feed by simply liquidising a whole sliced loaf (crusts included) and passing the resulting crumb through a pinkie riddle.

The Basey at Heath Vale

YouTube video of the view from my peg

After a cracking breakfast at Willow Park it was soon time to decamp to the venue – a stretch of the Basingstoke Canal known as the Heath Vale section. There were 11 of us fishing today and (as the pegging saw 5 pegs below the bridge and 6 above) my calculator tells me I had a 36% chance of drawing one of the four end pegs on offer – though of course you won’t be at all surprised to hear that I drew a peg slap bang in the middle of the upstream section, pretty much as far from an end peg as I could’ve been! However as the pegs were nicely spaced I wasn’t too unhappy with my draw, especially as I had a fantastic looking bush trailing into the water on the far bank!!!

Roach rig components

Prior to the start of the match I set-up two rigs for fishing with bread at top kit plus 3 straight in front – with the canal being about 12m wide in my peg this put this initial swim just my side of halfway. The rigs were similar as they were both made-up of Sensas Series 6 pencil floats on 0.11 main line to 0.08 bottoms – however the heavier rig consisted of a 0.6g float, a size 18 Gamakatsu Green hook and double number 4 elastic whereas the lighter rig had a 0.4g float, a size 20 hook and double number 3 elastic. Both featured a number 10 stotz at 20cm from the hook and a bulk of number 8s at 40cm – each float was set so that the hook was 5cm off bottom. (The plan was to use the same rigs at the same depths on different swims by adding a pole section and fishing the same depth as the original swims a little further to the left or right.)

I also had a 4x12 Chianti rig on standby if I felt the need to fish with a spread-out shotting pattern, plus the components for putting together a perch rig for under the far bank bush were also close to hand.

Unfortunately this was a very accurate forecast!

On the whistle I fed a nice big ball of liquidised bread and set about my business with the heavier rig and a 5mm punch – I always like to start heavy as in my experience the bonus skimmers often appear at the start of a session and as time goes by the fish get smaller and smaller, leading to a switch to a lighter rig/smaller punch later in the match.

The first hour went fairly well with 22 roach hitting the net – however the stamp was rather small and no bonus fish appeared. (I can remember fishing a match on the Basey a few years back when the chap next to me put over one hundred fish on the scales for less than a pound – my fish weren’t quite that small, but then again they weren’t far off!!!)

My choice of bread for punching

Things started to slow at around 11 o’clock so I decided to re-fed with a smaller ball of liquidised bread – this brought the fish back into the peg and by switching to the 0.4g rig with a 4mm punch I got to noon with 47 fish in the net. (I normally use a clicker to ensure I don’t exceed keepnet limits on carp matches, but they are also extremely useful for monitoring your catch rate on canal competitions.)

Around 12 o’clock the catch rate dropped-off again so I decided to open a new line at TK+4 to my left – however this never really got going and by 1245 I was only up to 55 fish and going nowhere fast!!!

Now that’s what I call a feature!

Word on the bank was that some decent stamp roach and the odd bonus skimmer/perch were being caught with 6 anglers admitting to 3 pounds plus. At this point it dawned on me that even though I was catching at a fairly good rate, the fish I was catching were so small that it was unlikely I could get to three pounds by the end of the match even if I could maintain the same catch rate (which itself was rather unlikely). At this point I abandoned bread fishing for roach and decided to fish exclusively for big perch – this was off course a massive gamble and could lead to a blow-out, but what’s the point fishing conservatively in an individual match just to save face when it means you have zero chance of winning?

So I jumped off my box and set-up a new rig based on 0.15 Guru N-Gauge straight through to a size 12 MWG with a 0.2g SconeZone V6 and white Hydro – this rig was for catching big (potentially three pound plus) perch with half a big lobworm for bait so there was no room for light lines and super-soft elastics. (I would’ve fished with black Hydro, but because the towpath was rather narrow I had to break-down my 10 and 11.5 sections separately then ship the rest of the pole over a hedge in order to ship back from the far bank bush so white Hydro seemed a better compromise.)

Plumbing-up under the far bank bush I found a nice three feet of depth so I was more than happy to fish tight to it – to start with I didn’t feed anything but dobbed about with just the hookbait to see if any resident perch were at home. Unfortunately this didn’t lead to any bites so five minutes later I was in with half a cup of chopped lobworms/dendras and dead maggots. As it happened by 2 o’clock I’d nothing to show for my constant lifting and dropping other than 2 very iffy bites (which could’ve been down to a passing leaf or crayfish).

Gear for the perch rig

Going into the final hour I decided to give my bread lines another go, but all that got me were 6 tiny roach for less than 2 ounces so it was back on the worm for perch!!! Just as I was about to give-up the float finally slid under and after a pause (to count 1, 2, 3 in my head) a firm strike was met with some solid resistance – at 12 ounces it wasn’t a big perch but it was certainly bigger than the roach I’d been catching!

As there were still 20 minutes to go I was hoping that a shoal had moved in and that the one I’d snared was the runt of the litter – unfortunately this wasn’t to be and the float didn’t go under again until 5 seconds before the final whistle when a 2 ounce specimen (which was probably shorter than the lobworm hookbait) decided to impale itself on my size 12 hook!

The view to the right

Match secretary Roger Howe was soon ‘round with the scales and despite my best efforts I could only muster 2-2-0. However some of the others had done much better – the overall top three reading:

1. Chris Kampa, 7-8-0
2. Andy Rogers, 6-11-0
3. Lee Simmons, 4-6-0

(Looking back my 61 roach probably weighed 1-4-0, with a 12 ounce and a 2 ounce perch making-up the rest of my 2-2-0.)

Were these actually my downfall today?

 

Conclusions: During the second half of the match I was concerned that I’d spent too much time fishing for perch and should’ve stuck with the roach. However with hindsight I should’ve spent the first half an hour of the match fishing for roach, figured-out that the stamp I was catching wasn’t good enough to do any damage then spent the following four and a half hours fishing for perch. As advised by Lee Simmons after the match I should’ve also put a perch line in down the middle of the canal – I already knew that this is a good line on the Basey, however that far bank bush was just so appealing I couldn’t help myself!!!

Until next time ...

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19 January 2014, Pond 4 (MBK Coloured Ponds)

Today’s match was a Godalming AS versus Twyford & District Fishing Club event held across MBK Coloured Ponds 2, 3 and 4 – regular readers (and those from the south east of England) will know that this is a pretty decent commercial fishery located near Rake, Hampshire. Despite being easily accessible from the A3 the venue itself is very secluded and provides the leafy, ‘getting away from it all’ backdrop we don’t always get with today’s modern fisheries. Unfortunately, being set in a valley it can often be colder than average and is prone to freezing in the winter. Luckily, despite it being the middle of January, there was no overnight frost last night and in fact today’s weather forecast was for bright sunshine, mild temperatures and absolutely no wind – perfect!

Sitting by the side of the road in the dark waiting for a lift! #oldskool

As my good friend Dave would be travelling to the venue from his home in Guildford via a route that naturally passes pretty close to my place he kindly offered to pick me up on the way today. As a result I soon found myself sitting on my seatbox by the side of the road in the pitch darkness – being early on a Sunday morning I was pretty much left to my own devices, but a wily fox and an old boy on a bike both gave me rather bemused looks as they trotted/rode by!

Peg 6 on Pond 4 – Ron’s favourite no doubt

YouTube video of the view from my peg

Being a joint venture today’s match saw an excellent turn-out of 26 competitors – having access to all four of the match lakes it was decided not to use Pond 1 but instead peg 8 or 9 anglers on each of Ponds 2, 3 and 4. This would mean a total of 12 favoured corner and 14 potentially less prolific open water pegs in the bag of dreams – though of coarse the near 50:50 odds of drawing the sort of peg I wanted didn’t stop mean drawing peg 6 on Pond 4 (slap bang in the middle of the bank and as far from a corner as it was possible to get)!!!

Having said that it was a nice enough looking peg and I had a spare platform to my right/two the left – I also had the bonus of being able to ship my pole back to 13m without having to break-down (a luxury not afforded to all pegs along the road bank on this venue).

The best laid plans …

Looking back at some old blogs I realised I’d drawn the peg to the right (number 5) back in May and finished second on the lake with 50lb plus of carp caught on the bomb over heavily loose-fed 8mm pellets. Of coarse those are very much summer tactics and would almost certainly lead to a DNW in the middle of January – as a result I settled on a more prudent two pronged attack based on the straight lead/pellet cone and the pole at 13m with groundbait for some Arnold Rimmers (a little joke for you fans of Red Dwarf and juvenile bream out there).

I also seriously considered setting-up a waggler to search my peg for carp with a nice bright grain of corn – however this is not an approach I’ve ever tried before so I decided to stick to what I know (i.e. fish the tip instead) and build a weight of skimmers on the pole (at least until those in the corners made such tactics null and void by bagging-up on carps).

Bait and tools for the pellet cone

On the whistle I fed my pole line with 2 balls of groundbait (taken from a mix made-up of half a kilo of Sonubaits F1 Dark, a big handful of soaked micro pellets, half a pint of dead fluro pinkies and quarter of a point of dead red maggots) and cast my straight lead set-up towards the middle of the lake. (The rig consisted of a white 8mm Ringers pop-up boilie impaled onto a Guru bait spike that itself was hair-rigged onto 12 inches of 0.22 Guru N-Gauge and a size 14 QM1. Two number 8 stotz pinched onto the line an inch above the hook kept the boilie tantalisingly close to the deck and things were completed with 8lb Daiwa Sensor main line.)

Unfortunately a carefully timed 15 minutes came and went without even the slightest indication of a fish so I reeled in, replaced the boilie with a bright orange Ringers Allsort (a bottom bait) and added a small pellet cone of soaked 2mm pellets bound with some Sonubaits Stiki Pellet powder. Sadly another 15 minutes ticked by without any action, so with half an hour gone it was time for plan B! (On the plus side the only person to have caught a carp on my lake by this point was Brian Stevens one of the middle pegs on the far bank – as far as I could tell none of the fancied corner pegs had yielded early bonus fish.)

As close as I ever get to a corner at MBK!

Even though I intended to target skimmers and other small fish on the pole I had to pay heed to the fact that the lake is full of carp – as a result my pole rig featured a compromise between finesse and reliability: the main line was 0.13 Guru N-Gauge to a hooklength of 0.11 Reflo Power and size 20 Tubertini 808 (which would no doubt be marketed as a size 18 if it was produced by Drennan or Kamasan). The float was a 4x14 KC Carpa Chimp (the best ‘go anywhere, do anything’ pattern ever created) shotted with a bulk at 40cm and 2 number 9 stotz pushed together at 20cm – the rig was set an inch or two overdepth. Things were finished-off with pink Hydrolastic (if I had more top kits I’d fit some with the new, softer yellow Hydro – but more of that later).

The next three hours actually went rather well – as far as I could tell nobody was catching carp and I was managing to maintain a reasonable run of small skimmers on single or double dead red maggot hookbaits. With the help of a small (1lb) carp I’d probably managed the best part of 9 or 10 pounds before the peg really seemed to die at about one thirty …

Looking left to John Wilkins on peg 8

During the proceeding 3 hours I’d re-fed a couple of times with a small ball of my groundbait mix and always seen an immediate response. However with 90 minutes to go I decided to open a new line with a slightly different plan of attack – as a result I plumbed-up two new rigs for fishing at 13m still but at a 45 degree angle to my left (putting the new swim at about 8-9m directly in front of the vacant peg 7). The first rig (pink Hydro, 0.13 main line, 0.2g SconeZone v8, 0.11 hooklength, size 20 Tubertini 808) was for targeting small fish with expander pellets, the second (blue Hydro, 4x12 KC Carpa Force, 0.15 main line, 0.13 hooklength, size 18 Kamasan B911) was aimed at catching carp on corn.

This new line was fed initially with a sprinkling of micro pellets and 3 grains of corn whilst the original pole line was topped-up with 3 full size balls of groundbait – ‘he who dares Rodney, he who dares …’!!! In order to give these lines time to settle/recover I turned to my tip rod and had a quick cast on the straight lead (no feed) with the 8mm white pop-up boilie rig – a fifteen minute cast saw a tantalising liner, but despite crouching over the rod in intense anticipation it never did slam ‘round with that mystical 20lber on the other end!

A look on the new line with the lighter rig and a 4mm expander failed to produce a bite in the following 5 minutes, so it was back onto the original line to see if any skimmers had returned – luckily a few had and I was able to keep things ticking over to the end of the match with some more small fish. (It is worth noting that the stamp of these fished had diminished dramatically and despite thinking to myself at least 3 times that I should swap to a lighter elastic I continue with the pink Hydro and ended-up bumping as many fish as I landed. I also tried both rigs on the new line a few times but no bites materialised.)

Worth the weight (sic)?

Given that today’s was match was split across 3 different lakes it was decided to structure the pay-out accordingly with prizes for the top two on each lake (but no overall 1, 2, 3). Here are the results …

Pond 2:

1. A Clayson (Twyford), 29-5-0
2. M Grace (T), 20-13-0

Pond 3:

1. P Etherington (Godalming), 24-9-0
2. L Prater (T), 13-1-0

Pond 4:

1. L Giles (T) & P Morris (G), both 10-7-0

As you can see I managed to tie with Lee Giles for top spot on Pond 4 – agonisingly close to an out-and-out lake win though it is well worth noting that there were other weights of 9-5-0, 10-3-0 and 10-5-0 so it could’ve been a lot worse!!!

The final reckoning

Conclusions: as always in these situations it is very easy to focus I what could’ve been done to put that extra fish in the net. For instance, with hindsight fishing the tip for a total 45 minutes was a waste of time and not doing so would’ve certainly put another 8 ounces to a pound in the net – however on another day the tip could’ve wrapped ‘round three times putting a potential 20lb in the net! However I do regret not scaling down my elastic in the final hour – this was just plain laziness and cost me a lake win!!!

Until next time ...

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12 January 2014, Busbridge (Godalming AS)

Like a great deal of the country the south east of England has been subjected to non-stop heavy rains and strong winds since my last match – this bad weather causing a lot of flooding along my local river Wey (though the only inconvenience I personally suffered was an 18 hour power cut on Christmas Eve when falling trees downed all of the power lines into Haslemere). However over the last few days the weather seems to have changed dramatically with mild, wet conditions replaced with a drop in temperatures and sharp frosts – ‘out of the frying pan, into the fire’ from a fishing perspective!!!

The usual pre-draw anticipation!!!

Today’s match was a Godalming AS club competition at Busbridge. I’ve written about this venue in previous blogs, but for the benefit of any newcomers to All the Gear, No Idea this venue is typical of a lake formed by building a dam and flooding a valley – it is quite long and thin (about 75 yards from bank to bank at its widest) and gets shallower as you move from the deep end near the dam wall (probably 12-15 feet) to the far end (which is only a couple of feet deep). The target species are bream/skimmers (if they feed) and dumpy roach (more reliable), though the venue does also contain a very limited number of specimen (25lb plus) carp. (Big pike are also present and especially active in the winter – though of course they don’t count in coarse fishing competitions.)

Looking right from peg 7 towards the dam wall

YouTube video of the view from my peg

The last few matches I’ve fished at Busbridge have all been won from the shallower end of the lake, so like the rest of the 21 strong field I was looking for such a draw – so as you can imagine I wasn’t best pleased when peg 7 (one away from the end peg nearest the dam wall) appeared from the bag of dreams!!! This meant I’d be next to local legend Ian Covey (though I couldn’t actually see him due to the dense foliage between us) and something got me thinking about those anglers often referred to as ‘drawbags’ – all I can say is that if you get to your peg and you have Guildford AC stalwart Giovanni Barbato or anyone from Daiwa Dorking (especially Tommy Hiller or Pemb Wrighting) for a neighbour then you are either on a flier or at worse next door to one!!!

Like many swims on this venue, peg 7 is something of a bird cage with trees overhead and a very narrow, steep bank behind that makes fishing the pole impossible (unless you are willing to break-down section-by-section). As noted above it is also one of the deeper pegs on the venue and hasn’t won a match in the post-war era (this last point is unverified, but I wouldn’t be surprised).

New silver fish feeder hooklengths

As the pole was ruled-out for logistical reasons my pre-match plan was based around chucking a small feeder towards the middle of the lake with a waggler set-up for fishing as far as I could loose-feed maggots via a catapult with a reasonable level of accuracy. Unlike my previous match at Busbridge (where I went ‘all or nothing’ for proper bream) I also decided to adopt a ‘catch anything that swims’ mindset and to try and build a decent weight bit by bit – especially prudent as I’d blanked in my last match and not actually caught anything since early November!!!

Baitwise I had some Sonubaits F1 Dark groundbait (that had been in the freezer since the Christmas match and included some bonus dead pinkies), maggots (both dead and wriggling), (live) fluro pinkies and worms. (I also had my usual supply of pellets, boilies and Goo with me but they didn’t come into play on the day.)

Gear for the feeder

On the whistle I cast my feeder short of the imaginary dividing line between myself and the anglers pegged on the opposite bank and was pleasantly surprise to see the tip rattle immediately – a small roach was soon winging its way into my keepnet and although it probably only weighed an ounce I was relieved to avoid the dreaded blank!!! (Following a lost fish in my last match (from my only bite of the day) I’d invested in some Guru LWG eyed hooks and tied-up some 16s, 18s and 20s on 45cm of 0.13 N-Gauge – I started on an 18 today and coupled it with a 15g Drennan cage feeder and 4lb Daiwa Sensor main line. Hookbaits were typically live or dead red maggots.)

This pattern continued for about 20 minutes when I decided that if I was going to build a weight of small roach then I’d be better off catching them closer in on the waggler as opposed to at range on the feeder – unfortunately for me (but very much to the amusement of Lee Simmons and Paul Etherington who were pegged opposite) my fish cast on the float saw me hooked-up in the overhanging tree above, so I was soon back on the tip and saw out the first hour with about 15 small roach for roughly a pound.

I should also mention that after about 45 minutes the tip pulled ‘round to the butt and for about 3 minutes I was convinced the bream had moved in and I was attached to a five pound specimen – that is until a 5lb bream turned into a 10lb pike with a one ounce roach in its mouth!!!

Waggler gear

At the start of the second hour I decided to give my (re-rigged) waggler another go and by casting over my right (as opposed to the usual left) shoulder I was able to avoid the troublesome tree and actually get my rig into the water! This improved both my catch rate and the stamp of fish I was catching – by varying the amount of maggots I was loose feeding and the depth I was fishing at I was able to maintain a regular stream of dumpy roach and rudd.

Interestingly I never plumbed the waggler line – instead I started at about 4 feet deep and simply kept adding a further 6 inches until I got a bite. Even though the peg must’ve been 12 feet deep the most productive zone seemed to be between 6 and 8 feet. (My waggler of choice was a loaded 3g Drennan crystal insert jobbie on 3.2lb Drennan Floatfish main line to a pre-tied hook-to-nylon consisting of a size 20 Silverfish Maggot hook and 25cm of 2lb line. This hooklength was attached via a tiny swivel tied into a figure of eight loop – the only other weights down the line were two number 9 stotz spaced at 30cm intervals from the swivel.)

The view to the left

The small fish kept on coming and combined with a couple of bonus 8 ounce skimmers I entered the final 90 minutes with an estimated 6 or 7 pounds in the net – word on the bank was that no proper bream had been caught, and whilst I knew I was behind Paul Etherington (who’d been catching small fish at an alarming rate in the waggler and short pole all day) I thought I was probably up there for second place with Wayne Hughes who had managed an unseasonal 6lb tench on the feeder!!!

As a result I continued on the waggler for small fish – though I very nearly swapped back to leger tactics when Lee Simmons opposite latched into a proper bream on the tip. Fortunately just as I was pondering a switch I managed a decent (one pound) skimmer on the waggler – this was to happen a further four times before the end (though I did loose one to another big pike that came out of the blue 10 feet from my extended landing net).

The all important results

Following the final whistle substitute match organiser Dave Woolgar was soon ‘round with the scales and I was pleasantly surprised when my catch pulled the dial down to 10-12-0 and was even more surprised to learn that I was top of the leader board so far. As expected I was soon relegated to second place when Paul Etherington’s excellent 16lb won the match, but I was more than happy to start 2014 with a frame placing given I thought I’d drawn a duff peg at the start.

Overall top 4:

1. Paul Etherington, 16-1-0
2. Phil Morris, 10-12-0
3. Frank Bevan, 7-12-0
4. Wayne Hughes, 7-6-0

Section winners:

• Lee Simmons, 5-7-0
• Dave Lake, 6-0-0

(In the end the pegs at the top end of the lake failed to produce and generally the bream/bigger skimmers didn’t feed in significant numbers.)

Vital winter gear!!! #flaskman

Conclusions: I think the most pleasing thing about today’s match was that I learned my lesson from my previous outing to Busbridge (where I’d blown-out as a result of focussing on big fish only) and was able to build a weight of small fish by plugging away and building a weight from numbers of small fish with the odd bonus mixed in. It was also interesting catching skimmers a long way off the bottom – like many people I normally either fish hard on the bottom or shallow (no deeper than two feet below the surface) but I’m now wondering if I’m missing out on a lot of fish that are swimming about in mid-water …

Until next time …

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22 December 2013, Richardson's Lake (Marsh Farm)

After a fair few years of blanking and generally coming nowhere I’ve somehow managed to win the last two Godalming AS Christmas matches – the first in 2011 using a stick float (yes, you read that correctly) to winkle-out three chub from the famous Sand Bar swim on the river Wey in Salgasson and then again in 2012 following another plumb draw in front of the tackle shop on Richardson’s at Marsh Farm. So after an astonishing 6 weekends without any fishing action would it be an unlikely three in a row?

All the gear …

Today’s match saw a creditable 27 anglers grace the banks of Richardson’s Lake at Marsh Farm – not as many as recent Godalming AS Christmas bashes but nonetheless a good turn-out considering the recent heavy rains and a last minute switch from a flooded river Wey (most members preference, especially given Marsh Farm’s patchy form outside of late spring/summer/early autumn).

Looking left from peg 29

YouTube video of the view from my peg

Like the majority I was expecting a hard match and was looking for a single digit draw – pegs 1 to 9 seem to be the best bet for a bite in winter as any brave souls that do venture to this lake seem to settle on the pegs nearest to the car park/tackle shop and create a virtuous circle between the anglers and the limited numbers of feeding fish.

The one area I really didn’t want to find myself in was the far side of the complex – so as you can imagine I wasn’t too amused when number 29 appeared from the bag of dreams! This peg is in the middle of the bank that is parallel to the adjoining Johnson’s Lake and about as far from the feeding fish as you can get – frankly it needs renaming Cyanide Straight!!!

Today’s cage and pellet feeders

Most of the pegs on this lake look pretty similar and as a result I had a 22-25m chuck to the margin of a central island as the only obvious feature – however since my last visit the foliage on the island had had it’s annual haircut and the branches that normally hang-over the water have been cut down. So whilst I did set-up pellet and cage feeder rods it seemed that my best bet for a bite would be the deeper water on the pole at the usual top kit plus 4 sections.

The view to the right …

Come 10 o’clock I fed a measured small Cad pot of softened micro pellets on my pole line, loaded my pellet feeder with the same bait (but with the addition of a squirt of Perfect Peach Goo) and cast 3 yards short of the far bank. (Tackle here was my usual 20g Preston Innovations small pellet feeder on 8lb Daiwa Sensor main line to a 10cm hooklength of 0.19 Guru N-Gauge and a size 16 QM1 with a 6mm pellet inside a hair-rigged pellet band.) This tactic often produces a decent fish first cast – but those fish are normally tench so it was no real surprise that 20 minutes soon passed with no indications whatsoever!

10 minutes on the pole with both 4mm expanders and single maggot hookbaits were equally fruitless and I was already starting to worry that I was going to end 2013 with a dreaded blank – however I stuck to my task and spent the remainder of the first hour diligently switching between the pellet feeder and pole.

6mm hard pellets and 4mm expanders for hookbaits plus some micros for feed

After a biteless first hour it was time for a change so it was over to the traditional feeder rig (which consisted of a 10g micro Drennan cage feeder with an additional 5g stick-on weight on 6lb main line to an 18 inch Preston Innovations hook-to-nylon consisting of 2.5lb breaking strain line and a size 20 hook).

On the second cast I became rather over-excited when the 1 ounce megatop twitched and revealed a liner (at least I assume it was a liner as the single maggot hookbait wasn’t damaged in any way) but unfortunately nothing concrete materialised over a further 4 or 5 casts – the pole again led nowhere so after nearly two hours it was time for a walk to see how the drawbags on the lower numbered pegs were doing!!!

I won’t be using these again!!!

After 2 hours it seemed that only five anglers had caught anything and as predicted they were sitting on pegs 3, 4, 6, 7 and 9!!! Interestingly it seemed that my mate Dave Woolgar was doing well on peg 7 fishing a cage feeder with some Sonubaits F1 Dark groundbait and double fluro pinkie on the hook – I happened to have some of that groundbait in my bag so I ‘borrowed’ a few pinkies and quickly returned to my peg with a certain amount of renewed hope.

However after 4 or 5 casts with no indications on the new bait I’d basically given-up and decided to scale-down the hooklength on my pole rig – as you can imagine I was shocked to look back at my tip to see it doubled-up as a decent fish sped off with my hook in it’s mouth!!! I picked-up the rod gingerly and couldn’t help but silently whisper ‘please don’t fall-off, please don’t fall-off’ over and over – so when after 10 seconds the unthinkable happened and the fish did fall-off I was absolutely mortified and seriously considered throwing my gear in the lake and f**king-off to play golf!!!

All eyes on the magic numbers!

The final 2 hours passed without incident and despite rotating between the pole and my two different feeder set-ups no further bites materialised and I had 120 uninterrupted minutes to wallow in self-pity after blowing my golden opportunity. (Feedback from local legend Colin Underwood in the post-match debrief was that I’d executed some ‘bad angling’ – if only I could find to the words to counter this argument, but of course he was absolutely correct!!!)

Match winner Chris Kampa being weighed-in

In the end only 10 of the 27 competitors managed to catch, with Chris Kampa returning a brilliant bag of skimmers to take the title. Overall top 5:

1. Chris Kampa, peg 4, 11-14-0
2. Trevor Haskell, peg 6, 8-7-0
3. Richard McGuinn, peg 50, 6-15-0
4. Brian Stephens, peg 49, 5-3-0
5. John Wilkins, peg 9, 4-9-0

As expected the low numbered pegs in front of the car park all caught, as did the two end pegs on the opposite side of the island (49 and 50).

Back to the pub for the raffle!

Conclusions: for me two important points really hit home today. The first is about the unavoidably peggy nature of winter fishing. I’ve not been fishing for a number of weeks for a variety of reasons but the main one is that at this time of year the outcome of most of the matches on my local venues is determined by the drawbag. This fact, coupled with bad weather, has seen me spending my Sundays under the duvet with a lottery ticket!!! The second point is about missed opportunities. I feel I’ve had a fairly successful 2013 and by hook or by crook I’ve managed to win a total of 9 matches – however the days that spring to mind when I look back on the year are the ones where I’ve blown-out (day 2 of the Olde English Cider festival at White Acres, the final round of the Guildford AC summer league at Bury Hill) and the ones where lost fish have cost me a ‘walk of glory’ (today and the match at MBK Baron’s Ponds back in October)!!!

Until next time …

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03 November 2013, Busbridge (Godalming AS)

As my previous three weekends had consisted of two soakings and a non-fishing Sunday I was pleased to be back on the bank for this Godalming AS match at club water Busbridge – especially as the weather forecast had switched from heavy rain to a lovely sunny Autumn day!

Pre-draw excitement

YouTube video of the view from my peg

My dip to into the bag of dreams rewarded me with peg 16 – this is towards the shallower end of the lake and was exactly where I wanted to be as it was directly opposite the peg I’d won from back in March with forty plus pounds of decent bream. (For the write-up of that match and more background on the venue click here: 03 March 2013, Busbridge (Godalming AS).)

PVA and two different sized traditional feeders

Two of the things that many anglers often overlook are central to the way I tend to approach each match that I fish – fish to your strengths and fish to win (without worrying about blowing-out). As a result for today’s match I’d left my waggler rods and pole at home and the basic plan was to go all out for big fish (bream in this case) on the straight lead with PVA bags after using an extra large feeder as a mini spod to get some bait down.

This would be a risky approach. However fishing for small fish on the waggler or pole would be playing into the hands of the top anglers that regularly fish Godalming AS club matches using such tactics – put simply, they are much, much better at it than me!!!

Looking right towards the boathouse

On the whistle I kicked-off with six Drennan XL feeders worth of Sonubaits F1 sweet fishmeal groundbait, soaked micro pellets and dead red maggots before switching to the straight lead (a two thirds of an ounce Guru model) and attaching a 30cm hooklength of 0.19 Guru N-Gauge and a size 14 QM1. Unfortunately after 90 minutes I was biteless, despite trying various brightly coloured boilies and PVA bags of 2mm pellets smeared with different flavours of Goo!

A can of Coke and my lunchbox take pride of place

At 1130 (today’s fishing times were 1000 until 1500) I decided to deposit three further extra large feeders worth of bait into the swim – this finally provoked a response as 10 minutes later the first bite of the day led to a 2lb skimmer on a white 8mm pop-up boilie. (The boilie was kept fairly close to the deck as there were 2 number 8 stotz an inch from the hook.)

Not for the first time I’m now going to write ‘unfortunately this was something of a false dawn’, so at 1215 I went for broke and fed 7 more ‘spods’ of groundbait, pellets and dead red maggots – this eventually saw the second skimmer of the day in the net as after the hookbait (a white boilie again) had been in the water for precisely 27 minutes and 43 seconds the tip the tip arched ‘round once more.

An illustration of just how clear the water was

With 90 minutes to go I finally decided that investing three and a half hours for just two (albeit decent sized) skimmers wasn’t going to win me a bean so it was time for a change. Looking at my side tray I settled on the tub of dendrabenas that had been in the fridge for the best part of three weeks and two recent articles from Match Fishing magazine sprang to mind – the first was something that Tom Scholey had written about the use of finely minced worms at White Acres; the second was a piece where Cathal Hughes had described catching small hybrids/skimmers on the drop on the feeder in the recent World Pairs championship in Ireland.

I put some juicy worms to one side (to be used on the hook) and set about turning the rest to a fine mush with a pair of scissors – personally I only normally use worms for fishing down the edge for carp and I generally use two whole dendrabenas on the hook as a large target bait. As a result I wasn’t prepared for the smell as the brutality of my actions was quickly rewarded with a right old stink!!! Anyway the aim of the game was to draw in some smaller skimmers and roach with the finely chopped worms and to try and catch them on the drop by regular casting with an open-end feeder, so tackle-wise I swapped to a 45cm 0.15 hooklength with a size 18 QM1 attached ‘hook in the loop’ style and slipped on a 15g Drennan cage feeder.

This approach worked to a certain extent – by casting regularly and not sinking my line I was able to detect small taps on the tip pretty much straight after the feeder landed. I missed lots of bites and had two skimmers annoying fall off at the net, but at least I managed to increase my total by adding two small (8 ounce) skimmers, a roach and frisky perch before the ‘all out’ was eventually called.

Team Bagger stalwart Dave Woolgar’s walk of glory

Given the peggy nature of Busbridge and the fact that the bream (and hence the big weights) are normally at one end of the lake or the other, today’s match was essentially split into two with an equal pay-out between those 10 anglers fishing the upper part of the lake and the 11 fishing towards the much deeper dam wall. In the end there was a very close finish between the top two in the match as a whole (with only 3 ounces separating them), though as it happened they were fishing in different sections.

Top section:

1. Dave Woolgar, 20-5-0
2. John Wilkins, 18-7-0
3. Dave Carter, 13-11-0

Bottom section:

1. Andy Rogers, 20-8-0
2. Jim Findlay, 9-15-0
3. Perry Gray, 7-10-0

(My 6 fish weighed a rather disappointing 5-3-0 meaning I would’ve had to triple my weight to sneak past Dave Carter for the final prize in the top section.)

Your nuts m’lord (one for the Two Ronnies fans out there)

Conclusions: ultimately the question that has to be answered here is ‘was I correct to go all out for the win and fish exclusively for the better bream’? Based on today’s result (a blow-out) it would be easy to conclude that I made the wrong choice and had this been a team event or a significant individual league match then I’d be in 100% agreement. However as it was a pretty standard club match where the walk of glory and the associated bragging rights are the only thing that mattered then I’d say my tactics were spot-on – after all in terms of brown envelopes there isn’t a great deal of difference between one out of the money and stone cold last!!!

Until next time …

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