3rd July , peg 1 Covey 1
After my disappointing last trip to Partridge lakes in the Maver Match This i decided to try to right a few wrongs , so i went to contest the open match but on the slightly easier Thursday although their was still 48 fishing which only goes to show how popular the venue is . The weather today was forecast to be blustery with scattered showers just your typical July weather then , when i arrived at the complex i found out that the draw was at 930 so i grabbed some breakfast and went for a walk around the lakes to re aquaint myself with them because it must be nearly two months since i had been on covey 1-4 .
As it got closer to draw time i joined the queue and when it finally came for my turn out i pulled peg 1 which was on covey 1 some were that i hadn’t fished for nearly two years , i had come with a game plan in mind which was to start off against the far bank while building up my shallow line and then spend the last hour in the margin for some carp but all that went out of the window when i arrived to it because it was probably the only one on the venue which had no island to fish towards , although it did have a nice reed lined margin to the left and a bridge to my right so that is where i intended to target plus fishing shallow but with the peg being in a bottle neck i wasnt sure that it would be successful although the wind is blowing into it which is of course a bonus .
I had come with an all out pellet attack but with no real target bait for the margin so i decided to mix up some paste ;
3 pints of 4 mm pellets
1 pint f1 paste
tub 4 mm expanders
tub hard 4+6 mm pellets
My rigs today where;
The 1ft + 2ft deep for fishing up in the water i used a Matrix series 3 float with 0.12 garbo line direct to a size 18 f1 hook which had a micro bait band attached , my elastic was orange Matrix because this was soft enough to allow the fish to swim out of the peg while fishing shallow .
After plumbing up against the left hand margin i found a relatively flat spot where it was 4ft deep and here i choose to fish paste , i used a 0.4 jadz scone float with 0.14 garbo line direct to a size 14 turbertini 808 hook and size 12 duro hollo elastic which i have just started using , so far so good .
My other rig was for against the bridge where i found the top of the slope which was 2.5ft deep , i planned to use expanders and feed hard 4mm pellets . i had a 4×12 speedy float with a spread bulk above the short six-inch hook length of 0.12 garbo my hook was size 18 gamma pellet hook and the same size 12 duro hollo elastic .
When the all in sounded i went onto my paste line and cupped in a pot of 4mm pellets , it took a couple of drops to get my float settled correctly which is normal when paste fishing and it all goes towards feeding the peg . It wasn’t long before my float was dancing about all over the place and baring in mind it had been a while since i last did any paste fishing it took me a couple of goes before i hit any bites ,but the first i did connect with was a 4lb mirror and then a couple of big f1s .
My paste swim started going a bit iffy with very little in the way of indications which showed there was few fish present in this area , so after an hour of preparing my shallow line and with fish in the area i decided to give it a go , first on my 2ft rig with no success and then 1ft rig but still nothing it seemed that the fish on the coveys didn’t like pellet up in the water. I decided not to waste anymore time fishing shallow and to give my expander line a go , i had fed a pot of 4mm pellets every thirty minutes since the start of the match so hopefully a few fish would have settled their and first put in my float dipped and f1 number one came to the net . I then had a run off fish before i lost a carp which took me under the bridge and this seemed to unsettle the swim because the bites suddenly became hard to hit .
Maybe i had over fed the swim as i was feeding a large kinder pot after every fish because i wanted to keep them on the deck but my float wasn’t settling properly maybe hitting fish on the way down and when it did i couldn’t connect with the indications , so i decided to give that line a rest and went back on to my paste line this produced a few nice carp and some big f1s but i was missing a lot of bites here too so maybe a bit more practice is needed using it or maybe it just isn’t right for f1 fishing .
By chopping and changing between these two lines i kept the fish coming till the end including a carp right on the whistle , but yet again i had not managed to keep a steady run of fish especially the smaller stamp f1s which the better anglers on here do and its strange that i can catch the older wiser f1s but not the little ones which you would think should be easier to put in the net .Maybe its the area or depth that i am targeting in my peg or my feeding but its something i need to think about because that is costing me in these sort of matches .
Covey 1 was won by fishing maggot shallow from a peg on the split with 120lb , second on the lake was 100lb on peg 4 by just fishing on the top kit in the margins and third was near the bridge with 90lb all caught on paste on his top 4 in the channel . So lots of different methods to go at but one thing they had in common was they all stayed on one method all match and could keep the fish coming regularly , my 37 fish went 68lb which averages out at nearly 2lb a fish which just goes to show what i said earlier that i struggled to get the smaller stamp fish and an extra 30lb of them would give me nearly a ton in weight pushing me towards challenging for a section win.
So yet again a match on Partridge lakes gives me more questions than answers which keeps you going back but i think that i might stick to Sycamore fisheries for a while until i can get my head around why i can not keep a run of fish going , starting with the open at the weekend .
matthews580 