Hewlitt pit

14th September

hewlit pit

After managing to book a couple of days off work i decided to go for a few hours fishing on my local water trying to reignite my passion for the sport before my winter league starts in a few weeks but to be honest my heart still isn’t in it especially at this time of year leading up to my birthday which will be the first without my dad but anyway i forced myself to go and i could always come home after a few hours with the fishery being right on my doorstep . I planned on just using pellets today so hopefully it would be a nice easy day catching a few f1s but because i had not been here i couldn’t be certain how it would fish , it used to be a very good water for fishing shallow because it was quite deep but with the recent drop in temperature plus plenty rain going in i hoped this would keep the fish on the deck and i would not suffer with liners too much .

On arrival at the venue i was surprised to see three anglers already there and they was all fishing the far bank so i settled on my favorite peg six although this meant i had the wind blowing in my face and with the forecast rain it looked like i meant be getting wet but at least it wasnt cold , i plumbed up a rig at five meters out at a slight angle towards my left so i could play the fish in front of me without disturbing the shoal and i found it to be nearly six-foot deep so i used a positive 4×16 malman roob which is my favorite float when soft pellet fishing because it sits really well in the water with a slightly thicker tip so you can shot it to a pimple which helps to magnify the little dinks from the finicky f1s .

I began my session just after ten and began feeding a large kinder pot full of micros every couple of minutes to try to draw some fish into the peg , i would just tap the pellets in letting them fall slowly through the water to hopefully catch the attention of the f1s and i kept my rig really still once it had settled directly over where i had put the bait in setting a little trap . It took about 15 minutes before i had my first fish which was an f1 about 1.5lb and it was the slightest indication on the float which i could have quite easily mistaken for a line bite , it didn’t take long before i had the fish lined up and i even switched to a small kinder pot because i was getting that many indications but even though i had been carefully with the feed the bottom was soon fizzing like mad , i tried changing to feeding hard 4mm pellets but that just slowed the amount of indications that i was getting and when i started foul hooking the odd fish plus getting liners i decided to put in a new swim in shallower water .

My new swim was in five foot deep and only a couple of feet from my original one so i was pretty confident that i could move the shoal of fish , it took only ten minutes before i was back catching again and by clumping the micros in with a few hard 4mm pellets mixed in my catch rate was soon up to speed again . After a couple of hours of catching my expander pellets had started to break up because i had made the rookie mistake of leaving them soaking in the water for too long and i had not brought any more with me so i had to try using a banded pellet , 6mm pellets was to big making me miss too many indications and the 4mm ones meant i was waiting a lot longer for a bite than i did before , taking a shot off my rig which lifted my float bristle a touch and waiting for a proper pull under helped me hit more indications but it definitely wasnt as good as using expanders but it’s nice to try to make things work on these pleasure sessions .

When the bailiff came round to collect the money he told me that the fishing had dropped of a touch recently with most of the locals choosing to target the bigger carp in the edge on mussels and also that the matches had been stopped due to a lack of people turning up because one lad had won them all , this was a real shame because when i was just starting on the match scene this was one of my favorite venues because you was guaranteed a dozen competent anglers every week and it was an important stepping stone for me before a ventured onto the bigger contests but i suppose some people just like spoiling it for others .

my solitary skimmer in my catch full of f1s

Anyway back to the fishing and i was still getting an indication everytime i put my rig in but even though i had been very careful with the feed it was back fizzing up again , so it was time for another new swim but this time i really struggled to find a good area because there was a big snag where i ideally wanted to put it plus with the shelf being rather stoney it didn’t plumb up that well and i ended up putting another section on to try to find a flattish area . It took me about thirty minutes of constant feeding before i was getting any indications which was only to be expected with it being so far away from my original swim and i was now getting drastically low on expander pellets plus i was getting a bit bored of catching f1s because every one of them was nearly identical in size . So i decided to see if i could catch any of the big carp in here and i set up a margin rig with heavier elastic in because i had been told they are up to twenty pounds in size , i plumbed up on my top kit plus one near an overhanging reed bed were it was relatively flat and i could easily throw hard 4mm pellets around my float to attract some fish into the swim , i cupped in by remaining micros and expander mush before going over the top of it with my rig which had a hard 6mm pellet on the bait band and it didn’t take too long before i was getting indications but not from the fish i wanted because i was back catching the f1s , it was strange because i could the boil from big carp every time i hooked an f1 but they didn’t want a hard pellet today and after around four hours fishing i had managed nearly 50 f1s plus a solitary skimmer so you could say it was a good days fishing but to be honest i didn’t really feel it , maybe it was the time of year and i had other things on my mind or maybe i need the challenge of match fishing im not to sure but i hope to find out in the next few weeks after my opening winter league match on Bradshaw’s lake three .

Thanks for reading Matthews580.

Short video of a three hour session at Hewlit pit

Hewlit pit

After missing last weekend due to the freezing conditions i decided to grab a few hours fishing on my local water Hewlit pit which is only a ten minute drive from my house but is somewhere which i don’t visit that often , in fact i only managed to grace its banks once last year even though the fishing can be extremely good as it has a very high stocking plus i heard that they had added even more to it this time some chub+ide . I arrived at around one o’clock and i was surprised to see another two hardy souls sitting on the best pegs so i settled down on unlucky for some number thirteen which as far as i can remember was a good area the only trouble would be is the sun glare on the camera this is something that i will need to be aware off if i want to make good recordings , as i was in silverfish mode after my recent winter league exploits that is what i set out to target on today’s session and as i was in an experimental mode i decided to have another go at balling in ground-bait because my only other attempt at doing it was at Horns dam which didn’t go too well and i would be interested to see how i fared using it today even though the conditions for doing so wasn’t the best after all the ice had melted into the water and made it a bit clear .

I decided to fish two lines today one at six meter the other at thirteen meters and as there was only four-inch difference i was able to use just the one rig which was an 0.4 scone float , my main line was 014 garbo which had a six-inch length of 009 garbo that had a size twenty matrix silverfish and my elastic was solid six preston slip .

I was only fishing for a couple of hours i didn’t need too much bait and i took with me ;

One pint of red and white maggots .

Four pints of mixed frenzied hemp and brown crumb ground-bait .

I started my session by cupping in five orange sized balls on my short line and another three on my long line , not surprisingly it took a good twenty minutes before i started getting indications but not from the silvers i expected to be catching but hand sized f1s and i was thinking that i might have made a mistake so i began cattying in a dozen maggots on my thirteen meter swim to see what response this got me . After a while the roach got in on the act and i had a run of about a dozen fish around the four-ounce mark it was nice fishing just a shame they wasn’t a bit bigger when bites began to tail off i fed another ball of ground-bait and then went to try my long line , i had a lot of trouble trying to get my bait to the deck because the newly stocked finger length chublets were nailing the maggots as it fell through the water they were obviously being attracted by the loose feed i had fired in , i thought it would be best to stop feeding that way preferring to big pot the bait instead this at least allowed me to get my hook bait to the bottom even if i was still catching the small chublets . After a couple of feeds i began to attract a bigger stamp of silver even a few pound sized f1s got in on the act and i was enjoying myself catching a fish every few minutes , with it only being a pleasure session i wanted to catch at a more comfortable six meters because the steep banking can be a bit of a pain when fishing long , first drop on this line and i had a chub nearly two pounds then another and another it was all going swimmingly until a bank walker wearing a fluro jacket put paid to that line unsettling them in the clear water .

I decided to spend the final thirty minutes back on my long line and started catching hand sized f1s which were fun but it suddenly dropped in temperature and started to get a bit dark so i thought i better start packing up , just as i got home the heavens opened so it looked like i had made the right decision and on the fishing front i had a good three hours catching a dozen f1s a similar amount of big silvers and countless little chublets so a fun packed three hours which blew away the cobwebs . Looking forward to the next to the last round of the winter league at Old Hough on Sunday so lets hope for a good draw and i can catch a few fish , i will be putting up a short video of today’s session in the next few days so keep an eye out for that .

Hewlitt pit

Thurs 9th April , peg 14

With the recent weather taking a turn for the better at long last as we had some sunshine + blue skies so i felt that i should make the most of it and get some shallow fishing done , i had originally planned on going to Gorses farm in Aspull but my mate fished it the day before and hadn’t done great ( i will reblog it later ) so i decided to go to water that i probably visit only once a year even though it is only five minutes from my house although it has a healthy head of F1s + big carp and responds really well to shallow work .

I managed to get to the fishery at around 2pm and after having had a brief chat with a regular on their in the car park who said it was black with fish on top but he struggled to catch fishing on the deck ! ! ! after my short walk to the water i saw four people fishing two on each side so i settled on peg 14 which was a good area to be in with an empty space either side of me , i decided to set up just two rigs ;

Jigga set 3ft deep with 012 garbo main line with a 010 hook length which had a size 18 f1 hook and a micro bait band

slapper set 1ft deep  with 012 garbo main line with a 010 hook length which had a size 18 f1 hook and a micro bait band

My bait was just two pints of soaked 4mm pellets and a small tub of oiled 4+6mm hard pellets .

I was set up in record time and managed to start fishing at 3pm as their was only me going shallow i didn’t need to go that far out so only went out to six meters , i fired in two pouches of 12 pellets then shipped out i expected it to be slow at first until i could get them competing but surprisingly it went straight away with an F1 about a pound making its way to the net and it pretty much stayed that way for the first hour i got into a nice routine of ;

Feed then ship out

Hook a fish get it on the top kit then feed again

It was all so simple really and i managed thirty F1s plus the odd chub in sixty minutes but in the second hour i even improved on this with forty coming to the net although i did suffer some quiet spells as a few people had a walk around the pond un settling the fish , with me catching so well i decided to have my first attempt at fishing the jigga rig and it took me awhile to get used to using it but i did manage a few although it didn’t feel right not watching the float going under although at least i have tried it before making my mind up about it .

With thirty minutes remaining i decided to try upping the feed just to see what would happen and to be honest it slowed my catch rate down with a few bubbles coming up off the deck so obviously there was plenty pellets getting to the bottom dragging the fish down , after three hours i called time on my session with 85 fish for about 120lb mostly F1s plus the odd chub making its way to the bank and i also had a few silvers which i didn’t count so all in all not a bad few hours shallow fishing and it made a change getting among the fish for the first time this year ( on a side note one of my Balmoral AC members broke the match record on their catching 81lb shallow )

 

 

Hewlett pit

peg 13 , 26th May

After what had seemed like an age i finally decided to head back on to the bank to see if i could shake this low mood that i have suffered with lately . I chose to have a go on Hewlett pit somewhere i hadn’t been for about a year , hoping that the change of scenery might help get my spark back . The weather today was forecast to be a lot better than the continuous rain we had put up with all week so when the alarm rang at 7 am i was greeted to some blue skies and hopefully it would stay like that all day .

When i got to the pond i was surprised to find only a couple of other anglers fishing who were situated on the low numbered pegs , so i went round to peg 13 which was on the opposite bank . I had planned on only fishing shallow today but usually on here the fish covered the surface when a bit of sun hits the water with the f1s doing laps of the lake and big black balls of fish but on the walk to my peg i could only see the odd big carp cruising by .

I still decided to stick to my original plan and to set up three shallow rigs to see if i could get them up in the water plus i could change to the deck if i needed to ;

Rigs 

4×12 preston chianti on 0.12 garbo line direct to a size 20 gamma pellet hook , my shotting pattern was a bulk positioned under my float with a few droppers depending on the depth and i had three identical rigs set at 1ft, 2ft and 3 ft .

Bait

1 pint red maggots

1 pint 4 mm pellets

Tub 6mm pellets

At 8 am i was ready to get started so began on my 3ft rig to start with a maggot was on the hook and i fired out two pouches of bait at 9 meters , as expected when you fish shallow it can take a while for the fish to get on the bait and if it was a match i would have fished elsewhere in the peg while priming my shallow swim for at least an hour to get the fish feeding confidently but because it was only a pleasure day i choose to go straight on it , by continuous feeding and allowing my rig to fall through it i was soon getting the odd fish .

The benefit of using maggots was that i was picking up a variety of fish with chub-ide-rudd-f1s and carp all coming my way and you just didn’t know what you would be catching next , it made a change from all the f1 fishing i had done for the last six months or more . After a while the fish where coming thick and fast they was all a nice stamp too around the 10oz mark but by changing the rigs to keep in touch with them i was catching about 15lb an hour including the occasional 4lb common carp .

After a while the fish were boiling on the surface after i had catapulted some feed in and even by going just six-inch deep i began suffering missed bites-foul hooked fish , i worked out that by double pouching before i shipped out it got me an instant fish and i think this worked because after the fish went frantic on the surface they followed the remaining bait lower in the water where my hook bait was found so they became easier to catch .

With ninety minutes to go i decided to try pellets to see what that produced and i was also running out of maggots so i set up a new rig ;

0.3 matrix series 3 float shotting pattern was a bulk above the hook length , with a 0.12 garbo main line attached to it was a six-inch 0.10 garbo hook length with a size 18 f1 hook and a micro bait band .

I began feeding pellets at nine meters but unlike before i wasn’t getting any of the swirls on the surface but i began catching only f1s+carp, i was double pouching before i shipped out just like i did when fishing maggots but because i was using banded pellet i could slap-tap with the rig if i missed a bite and i tried not to feed with my float in the water due to foul hooked fish , by doing this i had a dozen f1s in as many put ins before they backed off a bit and i would then feed four pouches with no pole over their head to get them back .

After four hours it was time to pack up and head home even though the fish was still feeding well , i ended up with 80 fish between 8oz+4lb which made for a good days fishing , the venue was getting packed too and it was only spoiled by the guy on the next peg drinking eight cans of stella and talking loudly to himself about how any body can catch shallow on here ! ! !

So as you can probably tell its fishing really well on Hewlett pit at present and the Tuesday evening matches are getting very popular with regular 50-60lb weights needing to win which is not bad from a small 16 peg water .

 

HEWLITT FISHERY

May 28th

After calling up last week to see how the evening matches had been fishing  and i was glad to see that they was getting a good attendance and that it was fishing well , i decided to give them a go today as i hadn’t fished the venue for nearly ten months and i was going off my past experiences regarding how to go about tackling it today .

Arrived at the fishery early as i had been informed to do by the balief so as to make sure that their was space available because it had been very busy recently , i didn’t have to wait long before all the usual faces turned up and it made a change to fish a match were it was a lot more light hearted than those i had been fishing recently , i would recommend it to all those anglers that are starting out down the match route and although the quality of angler is far from being numptys because there is a good standard with no real venue expert and in my opinion it can be won from most pegs , although up in the water is the most prolific method lots of other tactics work well too.

It came round to the 430 draw time and we had 14 fishing nearly a full house which was good and more of a challenge , my home for the afternoon was peg 2 it was not really what i wanted although i had one of the few empty pegs to my left and at least i had the better weather conditions on my side because the wind had got up quite bad blowing along the high numbered pegs and it had been raining all day too looked set in for the night as well so going to be a wet fishing session ahead but at least it wasn’t cold.

On settling in at my peg i decided on three areas to target;

1 margin 0,4 middy margin float , 0.14 line to a size 14 hook , 3ft deep

2 6m deck 0.4 scone float , 0.12 main line to 0.10 hook length attached to a size 20 f1 hook , 6ft deep

3 12m shallow deep 0.2 scone float , 0.12 line to a size 18 hook attached to a bait band , 3ft deep

My bait for the day was mainly pellet ;

Hook bait , expanders white and natural , 6mm hard pellet , meat

Feed bait , 4mm hard pellets and soaked micros with a touch of sticky mag , hemp

When the all in sounded at five i feed my margin swim first near the empty peg with a cup full of hemp and meat , i would top this up every thirty minutes with a view to fishing it in the last hour when the  big carp come close in . Started on my 6m swim with expander on the hook and kinder potted a ball of micros being care full not to over feed because bubbling can be a problem on this venue at times .

I wasn’t confident that up in the water would work today because it had gone colder and a lot of rain had gone in all day When will this weather finally settle down. i noticed that a few people had started off  fishing shallow so i would be keeping a close eye on them before i make my move .

It wasn’t long before i had my first bite but fishing on the deck isn’t going to well and i was missing more than i was hitting , in the first hour i only had six f1s for about 3lb Not a good start and i had a sneaky suspicion that the fish was in mid water because im sure that most of the bites were liners as they are slow pulls rather than sharp digs at the float tip and when my next bite produced a small skimmer i decided enough was enough .

Out went the shallow deep rig with banded pellet on the hook and it took just five minutes of feeding before i was into the first of many f1s Looked like a good move . by feeding half a dozen 4mm pellets every minute i was getting a fish a chuck all f1s around the 8oz mark , after an hour the bites began getting iffy but by working my peg i soon had them back again , the best tactic seemed to be tapping the water it doesn’t look right and it never gets used much if ever on here but the result was my elastic zooming out indicating fish on .

Looking around their didn’t seem to be many people catching and my main challengers was the lad facing me on peg 14 who had a carp and the odd f1 up in the water , the guy to my right on the next peg who was catching the odd fish on worm and the guy on the corner peg who had some nice margin fish and also hooked a lump near the end which took him an age to get in on light tackle , this coincided with me having a bit of a purple patch and i managed 6 f1s by the time he got it in so not to much damage was inflicted on my catch.

Just got my head down and concentrated on hitting the bites from the finicky f1s and maintain my lead over the other anglers , but for some reason i started having a bad spell of missing bites , losing fish on the way in and the ones i managed to get in was hooked around the outside of the mouth . On looking carefully at the hook i noticed the bait band had slipped further up the shaft making the hair longer and instead of changing it i continued to use it Why do i keep doing these stupid things 

In the last thirty minutes of the match i only managed to put three fish in the net and one of  which was a nice chub which spewed up pellets on un hooking it which was a sure sign of the f1s doing a disappearing act , i didn’t want to try the margin because i was reluctant to come away from feeding fish as i was still getting indications shallow presumably they were chub .

The all out sounded at 930 and i was estimating my 47 f1s had gone 25lb so was confident of being in the money and as it turned out i had won the match just like the last time i had fished the place .

1st peg 2 27lb 7oz

2nd peg 16 19lb 14oz

3rd peg 1 16lb 4oz

Overall the weather had spoiled what could have been a good match and it was my first win since the end of the winter league , unfortunately i wont be able to make the next match on their because i am at a fisho qualifier at Woodland view on the Weds so an early start will be in order , but i don’t plan to leave it as long before my next visit to Hewlitt fishery .

Hewlitt fishery

21st May

This was the second Tuesday night match on Hewitt fishery and i would have liked to attended it , but work at the moment was pretty hectic , my mate had gone down to fish it though so around 8 o’clock i went down to see how he was getting on for the last hour. Normally it would have been frowned upon walking the bank while the match was in progress , but these matches are quite light hearted .

I knew that the car park would be full because it isn’t that big and you usually get a dozen anglers contesting them , so i parked on the road which was only a five minute walk away . When i got to the venue i was really quiet going through the gate trying not to disturb the anglers nearby because at the end of the match you can usually catch the odd big carp a round the side .

The first thing i noticed was that nobody was fishing the dreaded Bungee method which came as a surprise because this had always been the winning method on here and any body drawing an open water peg had a big advantage when using it . When i got round to Ste the balife i had a chat with him to find out how it had been fishing , he told me the matches are a lot fairer because they had banned it and the weights hadn’t gone down that much yet , but it is mainly a summer method so the jury is still out on if they will keep it banned i hope they do . If you haven’t heard about this method i will be doing a tactical review about it in the near future so keep your eyes peeled .

I could see my mate in the far corner on peg 8 not the best one to fish but i could see he was catching as were most people , but it meant i had to walk past a few anglers to get to him though , fortunately i knew most of these and nearly all of them wanted to know what i had been up to which was nice because i used to fish it a lot with it being on my door step , but i hadn’t been their as much over the past 18 months with other fishing related commitments.

When i finally got round to see my mate their wasn’t long left in the match and i could see he had a stressful last hour with missed bites fishing up in the water , just as the all out sounded i found out why he had been missing the bites it was because he had been using 8mm banded pellets rather than the 4mm pellets i would have used as the fish you would be targeting are f1s and chub . He wasn’t sure how he had got on but said he lost a 4lb carp right at the beginning of the match and i knew that would cost him .

While he was packing up i followed the scales round and getting a heads up on how every body had fished the match , their seemed to be 2 lines that worked well which was up in the water and down the side both at the same 2ft depth , those that fished on the deck at 6m seemed to get smaller fish and be plagued by the fish bubbling and no positive bites , i was surprised to hear that mussel and corn had been working well up in the water and if i hadn’t seen people catching on it myself im sure they would have been having a laugh .

1st peg 13 , 16lb 10oz

2nd peg 6 , 15lb 8oz

3rd peg 8 , 15lb 4oz

Nearly every one had caught over 10lb and you needed over 15lb to get into the top 3 ,my mate managed 3rd and the lost carp at the start and missed bites at the end cost him the win . It was a well run match with a set of nice guys and i will be keen to give the matches on their a go again , but hopefully i can squeeze a practice on it before the next Tuesday night match and i will let you know how i get on.

 

HEWLIT FISHERY

HEWLIT FISHERY 18TH AUG 2012

fished a match today on a local water were i hadn’t fished for a year just to gain a bit of confidence after a run off bad results .

called up during the week to see how the place had been fishing and see what time the draw was , nowt much had changed and it still was up in the water fishing but the target was f1s rather than the usual chub and majority were using the bungee method .

draw was at 8 and fished 830 till 1 , as usual i had a good draw peg 14 and was more than happy with an empty peg to my left and kenny to the right who didnt like fishing up in the water , so i would have a lot of water to aim at and get them competing .

i fished two lines
6m on the deck which worked well last time feeding micros with a touch of efg 131 and jpz on the hook
11m line up in the water , on the bungee 1ft deep and a float rig for slapping about 2ft deep

at the all in i put 2 big pots on my 6m line and went out on my 11m line with my float rig and started flicking a few 4mm pellets every 30 secs nowt much was happening for the first 30 mins and no one else was catching either , a lot of rain had come down over nite which had cooled the upper layers of water so after noticing a few bubbles coming up on my 6m line i decided to have a go there .

first drop with a red jpz and my first bite and first fish a 6oz skimmer this continued for 20 mins then re fed a small ball and tried a green jpz which resulted in a 3lb bream and a small crucian , i then started getting bothered with tiny skimmers so i but another two big pots in and went back on my 11m line which i had been feeding all the time with 4mm pellets first drop a 1lb f1 and after working out the best way to fed was 3 slaps and wait 30 secs if no bite or in my case miss a bite , repeat twice before re feeding this usually resulted in a run off bites and fish all crucians and f1s upto 2lb .

kenny to my left had a big carp and so did malc on the other corner peg a few people on the other bank were catching up in the water but nothing spectacular and i thought i would have a chance of framing , after 3 hours i tried my 6m line again but the small skimmers were still there so i gave that line up and went back out to the 11m line the bites had become a bit iffy and was begining to miss a lot and the ones i did hook were coming of on the way in ,

i tried a bigger pellet and even put a shorter band an with a bigger hook but still missed them .

i ended up going out to 13m to pick a few fish up mainly chub about 8oz in the last 40 mins which took the pellet as soon as i slapped it in the water , at the all out at 1 i was un sure if i had enough to win but would be in the money from what i had seen , i knew kenny had two carp didn’t know how big and the other people on the far bank were catching but not as many as i had ,

kenny weighed first with 13lb and i had 18lb not bad from 34 fish so i figured i had won !!!

final results
1st me 18lb
2nd kenny 13lb
3rd jimmy 12lb

so a nice confidence booster before my next club match , although still unsure why i missed so many bites so i think another trip is in order and might even fish the next match on there next sat , not sure why the weights were so low because they had been winning with over 40lb