20 March 2016, John's Lake (Willinghurst)

After last week’s success at Sumner’s Ponds (from yet another dolly of a peg it has to be said) I was really looking forward to getting back on the bank this weekend. I had originally planned to go to Gold Valley yesterday, but the word on the street (well social media anyway, which is fortunate as I’m currently working over 300 miles away from home during the week) was that Willinghurst is the place to be at the moment – plenty of room and importantly a few more pegs where it is possible to threaten the frame from.

  

All very hi-tech!

  

Having duly booked-in via Facebook (search for “Willinghurst fishery match results”) I arrived at the venue this morning to be greeted by a turn-out that was easily 30 plus – loads of familiar faces too with lots of the Apollo Guildford Match Team (Giovanni Barbato, Pete Franklin, Martin Johnson, Luke Sherriff, Shaun Sylvester), Daiwa Dorking (Tommy Hiller, Paul Holland, Myles levy, Robbie Taylor) and assorted superstars/venue experts (John Radford, Jason Morgan, Perry Stone, Paul Taylor, Jon Cook) all present and correct. (Whilst I enjoy going to Gold Valley it at times feels a bit cliquey, the atmosphere at today’s draw being much more friendly and welcoming.)

  

A nice corner peg again!

  

  

The View from my Peg (YouTube)

  

Despite living fairly close-by I’d only actually fished Willinghurst four times previous to today’s visit (once on the Top Lake and three times on Old Lake) but my confidence was still fairly high as each time I’d drawn a flyer and my average weight across those 4 matches was a few ounces over 99lb. My draw today put me on peg 53 on John’s Lake – not one of the ponds I’d fished before, but once again a flyer as this peg provides access to the shallow bar that runs through the centre of the lake and more importantly was an end peg on the day as pegs 54 and 55 (which is the corner peg) weren’t pegged today. I had Jon Cook for company to my right, though he was 4 or 5 pegs down (I did say you get loads of room at Willinghurst).

  

Having plenty of features to go at (and not being familiar with the venue) I decided to cover a number of options – a tip rod for fishing onto the shallow bar, 2 pole rigs for fishing short for silvers, a rig for fishing to peg 54’s platform and a rig for fishing at the bottom of the near shelf at 11.5m to the left (effectively fishing peg 54’s 5m line).

  

Punched meat for the bomb/feeder

  

I spent the first two hours of the match legering on the shallow bar – first cast with a chocolate orange wafter, second with a 10mm piece of punched meat and third with a small Hybrid feeder and pellet. All three showed signs of liners, but I didn’t get my first pull (from a small carp) until the end of the first hour after rotating back to punched meat. In an effort to make something happen (as I was already falling behind Jason Morgan and Martin Johnson opposite who were catching on the long pole) I then tried pinging a few White Acres 6mm pellets (which are more like a small 8mm) over the top – this led to an immediate pull from a good carp to a chocolate orange wafter, but sadly nothing else, leaving me to finish the first 120 minutes with just two carp in the net.

  

The view to the left

  

In order to at least get a few bites and put something in the net I started hour 3 fishing short for silvers with maggots. I’d been feeding a line to my left for a good hour so I expected immediate bites – as a result I was rather disappointed when ten minutes later I only had a translucent gudgeon to show for my efforts!!! As you can imagine the silvers rigs were soon dispatched up the bank (never to be seen again) and I decided to set-up second tip rod – whilst I normally only use one rod when fishing with the Guru X-Safe system, I went with a second today as I wanted to alternate between casting to the shallow bar and the parallel bank to the left, and as these features were at different distances it was easier to have two identical set-ups but clipped-up to different distances.

A size 14 QM1 with a 12mm hair for bread

   

I’ve never actually fished with bread on the bomb before (you can’t use it at venues such as Gold Valley and Sumners Ponds), but after watching an excellent video on YouTube by Paul Holland and getting my hands on one of those Guru boxes that comes with a set of punches I was ready to go. To be honest I didn’t think it was going to work (4 pieces of 10mm punched bread on a 12mm hair looks rather odd), but after casting to the bank to the left, looking around for my flask then looking back the rod was hooped-over and it was fish on in a matter of seconds!!! Unfortunately this fish was a one-off, so another on pellet from the shallow bar saw me reach the halfway point with a less than satisfactory 4 carp in the bag.

  

Bread - I wish I'd tried it sooner now!!!

  

The fourth hour was an interesting one – for the majority of it I couldn’t buy a bite (despite rotating between the bar, the parallel bank, the 5m line and peg 54’s platform), but right in the middle of it I took three good carp in three casts on the bomb and bread from the long bank in front of peg 55!!! The final two hours followed a similar pattern - hour 5 was biteless, then in the middle of hour 6 I had another run, three pulls on bread to the left-hand bank leading to two nice carp in the net and one falling-off halfway back (in fairness this one gave a very funny bite and was probably foul-hooked in a fin or somewhere outside of the mouth at least).

Looking across the lake to Jason and Martin

  

This gave me a total of 9 carp and a gudgeon for 38-1-0. I’m not sure of my final placing but at best I was third on the lake behind Jason Morgan (61-10-0) and Martin Johnson (52-2-0). As they use the continental pay-out at Willinghurst Jason was third overall behind Shaun Sylvester (77-13-0 from Top Lake peg 13) and Giovanni Barbato (66-8-0 from Old Lake peg 1).
  
I’m still deciding what I’d do differently if I could fish my match over again – simply casting to different spots along the parallel bank with bomb and bread for the whole six hours would certainly be an option, though fishing the long pole with meat and fishing to the shallow bar on the tip could also be very good options on their day. If I draw the same peg next weekend I’ll let you know!!!

  

Until next time ...

  

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13 March 2016, Match Lake (Sumners Ponds)

As is often the way I have a little poke around the internet when I’m planning a fishing trip – checking the weather forecast, reviewing recent match results, that kind of thing. Well prior to today’s trip to the Match Lake at Sumners Ponds I received something of a shock – Facebook was full of photos of people wearing chest waders netting the very same Match Lake, looking to capture the resident carp in order to transfer them to a newly opened specimen lake!!!

  

What impact would this have on the fishing?

  

Whether or not the majority of the 27 Godalming AS and Woking DAA anglers were aware of this netting I can’t say – regardless the turn-out was good for the time of year and the breakfast was even better! (Sumners Ponds is primarily a caravan/camp site and has a proper restaurant, hence the food really is the best I’ve ever eaten whilst wearing my fishing Gore-Tex.)

  

Yum yum!

   

  

The View from my Peg (YouTube)

  

My last visit to this venue (which was another Godalming versus Woking affair) saw me draw a narrow peg in front of the furthest island from the car park – this seemed to be an area devoid of carp so I was really looking for a peg on the open water part of the lake, ideally with a chuck to the shallow bar created by the sunken island as this seems to be a real fish magnet. As it happened I drew peg 1 on the day (the venue isn’t permanently pegged) – this was the peg nearest the car park, not on the shallow bar but in the main bowl and an end peg to boot.

  

End Peg Billy!!!

   

Hoping that such a draw would put me on a few carp (those that eluded the netting anyway) I set-up my usual tip rod and a rig for fishing with corn at top kit plus 2slightly to the left (black Hydro, 0.17 N-Gauge main line, a 4x14 Roob shotted with a spread bulk of number 9 stotz and 15cm hooklength of 0.13 to a size 16 LWG (eyed)). To keep things ticking-over I also set-up a rig for fishing for silvers with maggots – this one featured yellow Hydro, 0.13 main line, a 0.2g SconeZone V8 and a 15cm hooklength of 0.10 to a size 18 Tubertini 808.

  

I caught a reel. Yes a reel. Not an eel!

  

At the start of recent matches I’ve spent the first five minutes looking for an early carp on the short pole with corn – being a bit of a carpy corner I thought I’d do the same today and got rather excited when the float dipped immediately. Unfortunately it was only a small roach but at least I was off the mark and had avoided a second blank in a row! This was a good sign for later (when I planned to fish for silvers during middle of the match) but as it was still very early in the day I swapped straight on to the tip rod, casting Ringers chocolate orange wafter on a straight lead rig just short of the halfway point between myself and the angler opposite (who interestingly had only set-up the pole).

  

Unseasonal?

   

This soon resulted in a pull – unfortunately from a slightly unseasonal 2lb tench instead of the 20lb carp I was secretly hoping for! A few more casts to the same spot produced a few liners but no proper pulls so I slowly but surely started to casting further and further to the left, creeping towards the long margin of the bank in front of the car park every 10-12 minutes. Once I got tight to the bank the liners increased again and eventually another pull saw a 6lb carp in the net – unfortunately this was a one-off and apart from a reel (that I hooked cleanly through the bail arm) that was the end of the action for the first two hours.

  

Early spring sunshine

  

I’d been throwing maggots onto my short line throughout the first couple of hours and as a bite from a carp wasn’t looking too likely the start of the third hour saw me reaching for my lighter pole rig – this saw a good run of some decent (2-4 ounce) roach, allowing me to alternate between fishing for carp whilst still putting something in the net. (The roach fishing would be good then fade, so fishing the tip for ten minutes allowed to me to rest the roach line (and vice versa).) After a while the roach came-up in the water so I set-up a shallow rig – every now and I’d swap back to the deck rig and eventually the inevitable happened, though the carp in question ran me ragged on the yellow Hydro I was using and eventually transferred the hook onto Mick Redman’s keepnet!!!

  

Funnily enough when I was replacing the hooklength on that pole rig the tip slammed around out of the blue and I was attached to another good fish – after a bit of a tussle and some shuffling a nice 15 pounder was looking up at me from my landing net.

  

The usual suspects on the side tray

  

Going into the final two hours (we were fishing for 6 hours today) I was in a real quandary and couldn’t decide whether I should keep alternating between catching silvers and looking for carp or to focus solely on carp – however I could see Pete Worsfold and some of the other anglers on the sunken bar catching the odd carp so I decided to gamble and go for carp only.

In order to try and induce a bite I started pinging 10mm Ringers pellets straight in front and started fishing a small 24g Guru Hybrid feeder tight the bank to my left. Sport was hardly hectic, but a 6lb carp on the straight lead over the lose feed, a 20 pound beast on the Hybrid feeder and a last gasp 4lb barbel on the same tactic was a reasonable return and more than if I’d have fished for roach too. (Unfortunately I lost another carp than came tearing towards me on the straight in front line, and more significantly my lucky fishing watch fell-off my side tray, straight into the drink never to be seen again!)

  

Was there enough in these nets?

  

As is often the way when you are End Peg Billy I had the pleasure of being on the scales today and had to weigh-in the whole of my bank (14 pegs) – this was a bit of a chore but was also quite interesting. The guy on the far end peg caught 7 small carp, but for the next 8 or so pegs (those in front of the islands) it was nothing but roach, Andy Rogers being the best with a lovely 22-15-0 bag. As expected the pegs into the main bowl all had carp, Pete Worsfold’s 54-14-0 being top with just my bag to weigh.

  

My gut feeling was that I had fifty pounds and I was going to finish just out of it so I weighed my silvers net first – when this bag went 11-0-0 I knew I was in with a chance and I was proved correct when my 4 carp pulled the dial around to 45-15-0, giving me a total of 56-15-0 and victory by just over two pounds, the five pounds of roach I caught in the middle of the match making all the difference!!!

  
Until next time ...
  

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28 February 2016, Gold Lake (Gold Valley)

Following last week’s success (where I banked my first ton of 2016 and nearly won the match from the jackpot peg) I was understandably confident going into today’s match at Gold Valley – though as Paul Weller once sang: “paint-splattered walls and the cry of a tomcat, lights going out and a kick in the balls, I say that's entertainment …”
  

All the gear ..

  
With hindsight I massively underestimated the impact of what I’m going to write next: on the way to last week’s match there was a south-westerly wind blowing and the temperature gauge on the car was reading 13 degrees Celsius at 8 o’clock in the morning; on the way to today’s match there was a bitterly cold northerly wind blowing and the display was showing a miserly 3 degrees!!!
  

Looking left from peg 13 on Gold Lake

  

  

The View from my Peg (YouTube)

  
Today’s match was on Gold Lake and there were a few more out on the bank that last week – somewhere between 23 and 25 I’d guess, but as we had the whole of a near 60 peg lake to ourselves there was still plenty of room for everybody. My draw saw me on peg 13, one that I would consider to be a lovely summer peg as it offers nothing but open water and is hence a great one when you can pile in loads of bait and fish the pellet waggler or the straight lead over the top. (Not that I’m living off past glories or anything, but the last time I drew the peg (August 2013) I weighed-in over 140lb caught doing just that. OK, I am living off past glories, I admit it!!!)
  

Today's bait selection

  
However at this time of year, and especially with the cold wind blowing, I feel that in order to do well you need to draw a feature peg at Gold Valley – i.e. one in a corner, one with a chuck to an island or one with something like a sunken bar (as per my peg last week). Despite knowing this I was still confident I could catch and set-up three rigs to cover a few options – a pole rig for fishing corn at the bottom of the near shelf at an angle to the left, a 13m line for skimmers with expanders over micros and a running line set-up for fishing the straight lead or feeder.
  
To cut a very long and cold story short I blanked. Never had the merest suggestion of a bite – in fact I reckon if I’d have sat there for a week fishing the way I was fishing I still don’t think I would’ve caught anything!!!
  

No pulls today!!!

  
Why do I say this? Well to be brutally honest I got things totally wrong – in effect I was still fishing last week’s flyer with last week’s weather when I should’ve been fishing today’s peg under today’s conditions! I should’ve had one chuck the rope at the start of the match (just in case today’s carp epicentre was strangely in front of peg 13) then if after 30 minutes I’d have had no signs of a carp I should’ve switched to a groundbait feeder with a long tail and a couple of dead fluro pinkies on the hook for skimmers, then at the half-way point I should’ve dropped-in over my 13m (which I had feed at the beginning with joker) for more skimmers and roach. Simples!!!
  
Until next time ...
  

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21 February 2016, Middle Lake (Gold Valley)

Back to Gold Valley again today – there are some that don’t like the place but personally I quite enjoy it. Obviously it isn’t a bite-a-chuck venue and a run of bad draws can easily dent your confidence – in effect you are fishing for carp that would once upon a time have been considered specimen catches, and as a result the tactics required are becoming more like those adopted by ‘proper’ carp anglers with every passing year.
  

One of those would've done nicely!

  
Despite being mid-February was today’s weather was pretty mild at around 13 degrees Celsius, mainly thanks to some pretty thick cloud cover and a strong wind blowing in from the southwest. There were 13 of us fishing today and as we had the whole of Middle Lake to ourselves we’d have plenty of room so I went for a change of tack and went into the drawbag last – this worked a treat as flyer 97 would be home for the day, a fact made even better when John Raison asked Bagger to draw the jackpot peg (worth £150) and 97 came out again!!!
  

Peg 97 on Middle Lake

  

  

The View from my Peg (YouTube)

  
Those of you familiar with Gold Valley will know that Middle Lake used to have a cluster of islands in between peg 97’s platform and the central rope – however these islands were removed last year and the area has become something of a fancied area, presumably as what remains of the islands have created a shallow area with some underwater plateaus. However the area is notoriously snaggy – venue experts Malcolm Bond and Jon Cook between them implied that some of the corrugated sheeting that used to protect the banks of the islands had been left in situ and that 20lb shock-leaders were needed to prevent regular cut-offs!!!
  

The Guru Hybrid Feeder

  
Not having any 20lb line with me I decided to stick with my regular 3’ of 10lb fluorocarbon leader attached to the 8lb Daiwa Sensor reel line that has become standard fair for most of my match carp fishing over recent years. Despite the relatively short chuck to the rope (30m tops) I did however decide to use long X-Safe stems fitted into heavy Guru Hybrid feeders and inline leads (36g and 31g respectively) given the increasingly strong wind that was blowing from left to right – accuracy is the key after all. I also set-up a rig for fishing the pole at top 2 plus 2 (I daren’t fish any longer because of the wind) with corn – this rig was made-up on 0.17 line and featured a 4x14 Roob and an 0.13 hooklength into a size 16 LWG.
  

Blinded by the light!

  
I kicked-off my match by feeding a few grains of corn and some 6mm pellets onto my short pole line and spent 5 minutes looking for an early edge dweller with a single piece of corn on the hook. Unfortunately no signs materialised so I was soon reaching for my tip rod and switched to the straight lead cast 2m short of the central rope with a Ringers chocolate orange wafter mounted on a size 12 QM1 and 30cm of 0.19 N-Gauge (I also included two number 8 stotz spread evenly along the hooklength to help keep things pinned-down). This resulted in a few obvious liners then a proper pull after 12 minutes and I was off the mark with a nice 6lb common. No signs of fish on the second cast meant a swap to a small 36g Hybrid feeder loaded with micros for the third – this didn’t induce a pull so it was soon back to the straight lead and wafter again. Frustratingly this also led to line bites only, leaving me with just the one carp in the bag at the end of the first hour.
  

Today's bait selection

  
One of the things I’d noticed before the start of the match was how shallow parts of the peg were – casting to the rope gave a bit of a drop but once I’d reeled back a few turns it was so shallow that I could see the fluorocarbon leader even though the lead was on the bottom and there was a 45 degree angle between the water’s surface and the rod tip! Presuming that the liners I’d been receiving were from carp milling about on top of a shallow bar between myself and where I had been fishing to the rope I decided to take 6 or 7 turns of the reel out of the clip to see if my theory was correct – well it certainly was as in the next two hours I banked eight decent carp, 6 on the straight lead/wafter and 2 very quick fish on a Hybrid feeder covered in Almond Goo!!!
  

Anyone lost a bivvy?!?

  
Unfortunately the fourth and fifth hours weren’t quite as prolific, but by switching between the shorter line and the rope and by swapping between the straight lead and the hybrid feeder I did manage 4 more to leave me with a total of 13. Interestingly, despite my worst fears, I didn’t lose a fish all day and landed 13 out of 13 –at the at the start of the match I decided that I’d play all of my fishing standing-up with the rod held over my head. No doubt this looked terrible and won’t appear in any textbook, but it was effective and kept my line away from any underwater obstacles.
  

2016's first pick-up

  
At this point I have to admit that I’d thought that I’d won the match from the jackpot peg and that I was quids in as I was sure I’d caught more than all the anglers that I could see – as it turned-out my 105-0-0 had beaten the 11 anglers that I could see, but unfortunately I couldn’t see Anthony Thomas who’d smashed the match with a terrific 20 carp for 140-4-0 from corner peg 85!!!
  
So how could I have caught 4 or 5 more to win the match? Persist with the 5m line? Fish in the margins? Set-up a loose-fed line to the left? Tried loose-feeding over my shorter line? Tried the hybrid feeder with a PVA bag? That’s a question I hope to answer next time I’m on the bank!!!
  
Until next time ...
  

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30 January 2016, Middle Lake (Gold Valley)

Despite an intense bout of ‘man flu’ during the week I somehow managed to pass a late fitness test and it was soon time to load-up the car with a mountain of unnecessary fishing gear and head-off to Gold Valley for another go at winter fishing bingo ...
  

Next to Will Raison, who was 13 pegs away!

  

  

The View from my Peg (YouTube)

  
There were only eight of us fishing today and the way the venue (Middle Lake) was pegged meant that half of the pegs in the bag would be corner pegs and half wouldn’t – basically 50:50 odds of drawing a flyer! However I made the fatal mistake of joining the queue immediately behind England international Will Raison and immediately in front of ‘lucky’ Luke Sherriff, so with hindsight it’s no surprise that the sequence of pegs drawn was: 61 (corner peg, flyer), 75 (open water, Bob Hope and no hope), 85 (corner peg, flyer)!!!
  
In all fairness my draw (75) put me just to the left of where Giovanni Barbato had won from last week with a cracking bag of skimmers, and as there were only 4 anglers on each bank I had 13 spare pegs to my left as I was actually next to Will Raison (who was on 61).
  
Hopefully after having learned a thing or two from last week’s match (where I went for a one rod approach and had nowhere to go later in the match) I decided to cover three lines today: straight lead/PVA feeder to the central rope for carp, 13m of pole straight in front for skimmers and a line at 13m to my left (but effectively at 5m had I been sat on peg 74) for carp.
  

Liners, but no pulls in the first hour

  
I started my match by feeding 20 or so grains of corn and a ball of micros on my 5m line, quickly followed by two full pots of soaked micros (with a few expanders) at 13m in front (I only planned to feed this line once so I fed a decent amount of gear).
  
I then went straight onto the 5m line with single corn looking for an early carp – I did have two or three indications, though at the time I wasn’t sure if these were caused by the weight of the corn dragging the float under or small fish having a peck. After five minutes (which upon reflection may have been a little hasty) I switched to the straight lead with a Ringers chocolate orange wafter cast towards central rope – this did result in a few liners, but unfortunately no proper pulls, so I ended the first hour fishless (not ideal as in previous matches most of my weight had come in the first 60 minutes).
  

Winter essentials

  
At the start of the second hour I changed over to a 36g Hybrid feeder with a PVA bag full of 4mm hard pellets smeared with tutti frutti Goo attached – some promising liners started to appear after 15 minutes, but just as I started praying for a proper pull they disappeared!!!
  
As a result I decided to have an earlier than hoped for look on the 13m pole line with a 4mm expander. (The rig used here consisted of yellow Hydro, 0.13 mainline, a 0.2g SconeZone V8, 5 number 10 stotz spread evenly between 20 and 40cm from hook, and a 15cm hooklength of 0.10 to a size 18 Tubertini 808.) To my amazement I had a nice skimmer first drop, followed by another bite on the next put in. Unfortunately this second fish fell-off just after being hooked – this really seemed to upset this line so I decided to switch back to the straight lead again allow some skimmers to regroup. As luck would have it I had a screaming pull after a just few minutes (on a chocolate orange wafter), the result being a nice 5lb carp in net.
 

    

No bites on the micro pellet feeder

  
Just prior to the start of the third hour a terribly strong left to right wind started to blow down the length of the lake, turning the previously calm Middle Lake into something resembling an Atlantic swell. So whilst I really wanted to get back on the 13m pole line I literally could not hold pole at that length – when I could hold it I had little control over the float meaning I was unable to generate any bites from the shoal of skimmers I was sure was feeding over my soaked micro pellets.
  
Out of frustration I tried fishing over this line with a 24g Guru micro pellet feeder (short X-Safe stem fitted with white Hydro, 10cm hooklength of 0.17 to a size 16 QM1 with a 6mm pellet hard pellet on a hair-rigged pellet band) but couldn’t be sure I was being accurate enough with my casting and had no signs as a result. With no other option I returned to fishing the straight lead to the rope (though I had to swap to a once ounce lead in order to have any chance of getting the rig to land even remotely close to where I was aiming for) but such tactics where fruitless.
  

The Malman Roob

  
When the wind allowed I’d continued to trickle a little bit of bait onto my 5m line and at about 13:30 it eased enough for me to have another go at this line with a single grain of corn (the rig used here consisted of black Hydro, 0.17 mainline, a 4x14 Malman Roob shotted with a spread bulk of number 9 stotz and a 15cm hooklength of 0.13 to a size 16 LWG (eyed) attached with a Palomar knot).
  
The float immediately dipped and I cursed my luck as I lifted into nothingness – luckily a few minutes later the float dipped again and this time I felt the reassuring weight of a decent carp attached to the other end of my rig. After a good scrap another 5 or 6 pounder was soon in the net and I was left to reflect that I’d made the right choice in going for black Hydro (as opposed to the lighter white Hydro that is often recommended at this time of year). No further bites followed from this 5m line but a switch to the 13m line in front produced another nice skimmer, though once again the wind was up and down and holding the pole was a real struggle.
  

Looking towards 'lucky' Luke Sherriff on one of the corner pegs

  
Heading into the fifth hour I decided to fish the 13m pole line when I could, have a dabble on the 5m line now and again, and basically fish the straight lead to the rope when I couldn’t hold the pole! In the end no further bites came from the 5m line or the straight lead, though I did hook a carp on the 13m skimmer line (which was probably on the other side of the rope when the hook eventually pulled-out), so the only fish to hit the net in the final 60 minutes was another nice skimmer from the same line.
  

Trainspotting

  
In the end my two carp and three chunky skimmers went 16-4-0, not a huge weight but to put things in context Will Raison ‘only’ landed six carp for 30lb from what can be one of the best corner pegs on the complex – a tally that I feel was well within my grasp had the wind allowed me to hold the pole properly enough to sneak another carp from my 5m line and 4 or 5 more decent skimmers from the long line. (I’m still not sure if feeding micro pellets is as effective as feeding joker for skimmers, though I’m blaming the wind at the moment.)
  
Having said that, my main aim today was to give myself options outside of the straight lead or feeder – so in that sense today was a success (as most of my weight came from the pole lines), getting bites and landing a carp from my 5m line on corn especially interesting given the time of year.
  
Until next time ...
  

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23 January 2016, Middle Lake (Gold Valley)

Today’s open match on the Middle Lake at Gold Valley saw 13 anglers spread around both banks of the lake (which must hold a good forty pegs), so if nothing else we all had plenty of room! The weather on the day was pretty decent (mild for the time of year, mainly foggy will some welcome sunny spells), though the lake would’ve been frozen solid during the week and the water was very, very clear – something I’m kind of used to from fishing at Marsh Farm but something that is unusual for a carp filled commercial such as Gold Valley, even in the depths of winter.

  

Rather foggy at times today

  

  

The View from my Peg (YouTube)

  

My draw saw me on peg 89 for the day – not a noted peg (which would be the corners and the pegs where the island used to be), but one with potential given the spare pegs either side. Prior to the all-in I once again settled on a single rod, carp only approach with no plan B (more of which later), the tactic that served me pretty well on my previous visit to Gold Valley just after Christmas.

To this end I set-up my usual 10’ tip rod (the chuck to the central rope was no more than 30m, much less than the distance I had to cast on Gold Lake previously) with 6lb Daiwa Sensor and 90cm of 10lb Drennan fluorocarbon (to hopefully disguise the part of the rig immediately above the lead or feeder). The main plan of attack was to fish this with a Guru 19g inline lead (fitted with a short X-Safe stem and black Hydro) to 30cm of 0.19 Guru N-Gauge to a size 12 QM1 with a hair-rigged pellet band – the main hookbait was going to be some of the 10mm Ringers chocolate orange wafters that worked so well last time out.

   

The sun did come out now and again

  

The first hour of the match started really well - after casting straight in front, 5m short of the central rope (so I could go a bit closer later if I needed to), I had a big liner first cast (that I was absolutely convinced was a properly hooked fish until I picked-up into nothingness), then a real bite just over a minute into the second cast. This saw a nice 10lb carp in the net, a Ringers chocholate orange wafter doing the damage once again, and I was off to a flying start! The third cast saw more liners, followed by a proper pull after six minutes and a 6lb carp in the net - ding dong!!! No indications on the next cast (all casts so far had been on the straight lead, no feed) so I switched to a 24g small Hybrid feeder with a PVA bag of 6 & 4mm pellets and a dash of tutti frutti Goo - this was the effective combination from my last match at Gold Valley but with the water being so clear I soon decided that this wasn't the way to go today as the feeder must've been standing-out like a sore thumb. I then tried casting further to the left with the straight lead rig, but there were no signs of any fish there either.

  

Tried the pellet cone today

  

As things moved into the second hour I continued casting (infrequently) to the left without indications, then first cast after switching back straight in front to the original spot the rod doubled-over after 3 minutes and following a spirited battle another 6lb carp was in the net by about 11:30. Unfortunately the following 90 minutes then whizzed by without absolutely no signs of any fish action, despite trying the pellet cone with a 6mm hard pellet hookbait and trying various spots left, right and straight in front.

  

I eventually got the pole out of the bag

  

All the while I was sitting twiddling my thumbs waiting for a pull on the tip I could see bagging machine Giovanni Barbato opposite landing skimmer after skimmer from his long pole line - the longer things went on the more I regretted not covering the same option from the off myself until I eventually got the pole out of the bag with 90 minutes to go. I knew it was probably too late but I fed some micros and dead maggots at 13m after setting-up a rig suitable for skimmers (yellow Hydro, 0.13 mainline, 4x14 Chimp, 0.10 hooklength into a Tubertini 808 size 18). Unfortunately, despite rotating between the straight lead and the long pole, I couldn’t generate a bite on either so the final three and a half hours of my match was fishless!!!

  

G with his winning bag of skimmers

  

In the end my three carp went 22-12-0, just out of the money as I was pipped for the section by Chris Bessant on peg 87 to my left (who landed four carp for 26-12-0). I was also fourth overall, miles behind G's winning 53lb, but in theory only one carp (or a few good skimmers) behind the 35lb that took second place. (For a write-up of Giovanni's match see the Apollo Guildford Match Team Facebook page here.)

  
Until next time ...
  

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03 January 2016, Richardson's Lake (Marsh Farm)

Read on for one of my best ever blogs!
  

The calm before the storm!

  

  

The View from my Peg (YouTube)

  
Only joking - today's match was called-off at the halfway point with everybody blanking and getting absolutely soaked by torrential rain!!! Roll-on summer!!!
  
Until next time ...
  

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