Partridge lakes , Maver match this qualifier

July 18th , Covey four peg 83

Well today was my last chance to fish a big qualifier this year and to be totally honest i wasn’t feeling it due to illness but having paid for the ticket in January i just had to give it a go , i found out through social media the day before the contest that there was 86 anglers due to take part in the match these would be spread over nine lakes Covet 1-6 , Spey , Marsh and Ribbon this would allow us a lot more room than on the normal open matches where a similar amount of anglers would be just on coveys 1-5 and with this in mind i expected some big weights ( i took three nets just in case )

The weather recently had been a bit indifferent with one day it being warm+sunny the next cloudy+rainy ( well it is summer after all ) we had some heavy rain overnight but on the morning of the match it was forecast to be dry with blue skies although a bit breezy , on arriving at the venue i had a quick catch up with a few of my mates that i hadn’t seen for a while and joined the queue there was a smattering of big name anglers but not too many of the Partridge regulars who had no doubt gone to see how Connor Barlow gets on in the Fishomania final at Arena lakes Cudmore .

When it came for my turn to choose their wasnt that many left in the bag but i still managed to find a flyer with peg 83 covey four sticking to my hand and on an open match i would have been more than happy with it but on the big contests the coveys don’t have a good record although with all the room today you just never know , as i arrived at my home for the next few hours in front of me was flat calm with the strong wind blowing down both sides of Covey four and this could give me a problem because all the recent framing weights had been caught shallow with a ripple obviously being an advantage allowing the fish to settle better .

With this in mind i decided to set up ;

Shallow 1ft-2ft-3ft , 0.2 drennan AS3 float with 012 matrix line with a size 20 matrix rigger hook attached my elastic was orange matrix .

Margin, 0.4 ruddy float with 016 Matrix line and an 014 matrix hook length which had a size 16 matrix bagger hook attached my elastic was red matrix .

Far-bank , 0.3 joof float with 014 Matrix main line and a 012 matrix hook length which had a size 18 matrix rigger hook attached my elastic was red matrix .

Partridge lakes has a strict six pint limit so i took with me ;

3 pints red and white maggots

2 pints of 4mm pellets

1 pint corn

1/2 kilo of ground-bait

I was ready well before the 11am all in it was around this time i started feeling rough again no doubt down to the tablets wearing off and tackling all my tackle to the peg , as i had done all the hard work getting ready i had the easy part of fishing the match so i hopped my illness would settle down a bit as the day progressed and as the hooter sounded i shipped out to the far-bank where i had early found three flat areas when i plumbed up .After tapping in some 4mm feed pellets i lowered my rig in among it but five minutes without an indication wasn’t what i had expected so i brought my rig in and re-fed , this time my float had only just settled when my elastic shot out it didn’t take long before a small carp hit the net and i managed another four of them in a forty minutes spell but strangely no f1s.

All the time i had catapulted in a dozen maggots towards my left as close to the ripple as i was allowed and with the lads on both sides of me catching well shallow i decided to follow suit as my far-bank line wasnt really producing how i would like plus if i was going to catch a good weight of fish i would need to get them lined up in the water although for some strange reason i can’t get that method to work on Partridge lakes , with there not being many fish topping in the area i started on my deepest rig and i would go shallower if i began missing bites or foul hooking fish . I kept firing in a few maggots before laying my rig in through them but even though i had fed this line for nearly an hour i didn’t get any indications which wasn’t the response i had hoped for , i tried feeding heavier and changing for a shallower rig but all this produced was the odd Ide there was lots of bubbles coming up from the deck which was a sure sign that most of the maggots weren’t getting eaten on the way down and i hadn’t set up a channel rig up because i felt that the water was too warm for it too work .

I kept on feeding shallow while i went back to my far-bank swim and by working the three areas i had earlier plumbed up i managed to catch a few big f1s but with just over half the match gone i was contemplating packing up early as i was beginning to feel sick and burning up , i decided to put three cups of ground-bait plus one of corn onto my margin and if it didn’t work i would be off home i left it to settle for twenty minutes so i re tried shallow but yet again this only produced a few Ide somewhere quite big although not what i wanted to be catching .

My first try on my margin swim gave me an indication straight away which lifted my spirits and it didn’t take long before my first proper bite this resulted in a carp of around 4lb , the next hour passed in a flash with a big f1 or carp hitting the net every five minutes when the swim started to die on me i just feed with another cup of ground-bait plus corn and i might have drawn in too many fish because i began foul hooking a couple of them which resulted in broken hook lengths or trashed rigs . It took me awhile to get my new rig to work properly ( how often does that happen exactly same float but does not sit the same ) and settle my swim down ,but by going a lot tighter to the bank i began catching again although they was now f1s rather than carp but as the all out sounded i just had time to net a nice mirror , i was kicking myself for not trying my margin sooner because i had a few fish lined up and they definitely wanted to be there with the wind blowing into it but rightly or wrongly i felt that i needed to catch shallow to get a big weight .

I had 36  fish on my clicker and reckoned that would get me around 70lb but i would have a long time to find out as i was the last to weigh in on Covey four , Jon Arthur to my right had caught well all day putting 180lb on the scales which is a top weight from that peg and there was plenty weights around the ton mark before they arrived at my peg and 102lb was winning my section , my first net went 48lb which was more than i had thought and I’m usually good at splitting my fish so i figured i might have a chance for the ton but my second net only went 41lb and i ended up just under 90lb and second in section again . As per usual for on here i fished half a good match and couldn’t get them shallow but i should have known the lack of ripple would have worked against me , if i had concentrated on my margin or even set up a swim in front of empty peg 84 i could have caught a lot more but i doubt that by doing it i would have won because Spey had a 215lb weight then another 200lb from Covey three and in fact their was twenty weights over the ton out of the 84 anglers here today plus i had my best weight from Partridge lakes and my second big 80lb of the year .

After the match it took me awhile to pack up my gear as i was physically drained so i will be having a rest for the next few weeks until i can get to the bottom of what’s wrong with me starting with some blood tests at the doctors , but i hope that my next outing will be at Weston pools the first Sunday in August .

Weston pools fishery

July 12th , peg six Belvedere lake

A new venue for me to visit today which was Weston pools in Oswestry I just hoped that it would live up to all the hype surrounding it which mainly revolved around the specimen barbel , I decided to head off on the sixty mile journey at around 9am so that I could hopefully avoid the rush hour traffic and after a bit of a detour through the town centre I arrived at the venue around 10am which was good going . I bought my day ticket and some fishery pellets from the cabin before having a walk around looking at all the waters every one of them was well established and picturesque , I was really struggling on which lake to choose and finally settled on Belvidere peg six which wasn’t far from where Les Thompson filmed a dvd for Matrix , it offered me some open water in between the beds of Lilly pads along with reed lined margins just like every other peg on the lake .

As I mentioned earlier that it was a new place for me to fish so I decided to target it just like I would a normal venue around here and although I don’t usually fish lakes I was quite looking forward to the challenge ;

Top kit , I choose to fish the first hour on this line after plumbing up I found a depth of 4ft and decided to use a new float which The Big Dippers dad makes it was a Jeff’s float Joof similar in design to the Malman Roob but a bit slimmer in body , it was 4×14 in size with a bulk just above the six-inch hook length because I wanted to get the bait straight to the bottom which should in theory encourage more bites and as I was unsure of the size of the fish in here I decided to set up quite strong using 014 Matrix main line with a size 18 Matrix rigger hook which had a micro bait band attached .

All the time I had been setting up I had thrown a few pellets onto my top kit line so I was expecting some sort of response but you just never know what will happen on a new venue and I was full of anticipation waiting for my float to slide under which it soon did with the culprit being a nice sized crucian quickly followed by a tench it had been awhile since I caught fish like this because they don’t seem to be in most commercials and I was quite happy catching these although I had noticed that I was getting liners soon after feeding as the constant stream of pellets failing through the water had brought them up of the deck making them harder to catch . I decided to rectify the problem by feeding with a small cupping kit full of pellets this had the desired effect and I was back catching again then it suddenly went quiet I wondered if I had over done it with the feed but it wasn’t long before I found out why when my elastic shot out at a rate of knots after a spirited fight I finally landed the culprit a carp of nearly 8lb , all the disturbance seemed to have dragged in the F1s as I went on a nice run of fish all around the pound mark and the bites where proper indications not the little dinks you get round here either a 6mm or 8mm pellet was the best hook bait .

All the time that I had fished short I was loose feeding my shallow line with a dozen maggots I needed to do this by using a catty because although the wind wasn’t particularly strong it was swirling around one minute being in my face the other off my back also the constant drizzle meant I had to wear my water proof jacket which restricted my arm movements , I had two rigs set up to use both of which where an 02 Drennen AS 3 float with 012 Matrix main line direct to a size twenty Matrix Rigger hook which had a pellet band attached which I used to fish a dead maggot I felt that by using this hook bait it would offer me a more natural fall plus with more hook point showing it should provide a better hook hold and one rig was set at 3ft the other 2ft so I could work through the water layers to find out where the fish would be most comfortable . I began on the deeper of the two rigs because even after the constant feeding of maggots I still hadn’t seen any fish swirling but on my first drop the rig had only just settled to the full three-foot depth when my float dipped under , a sharp lift resulted in a couple of meters of my orange Matrix elastic being ripped from my pole while the fish had departed the swim I took the opportunity too feed again and I fed also when I had the fish on my top kit it took a bit of getting used too it but the more often that I fed the better my swim became the fish were soon moving further up the water levels so a change to my shallower rig was required this had me on one a chuck all of which were good-sized f1s with the odd ide mixed in between and after an hour the bites started to become less frequent this coincided with the weather improving and the sun coming out which I though should have made the fishing better so I decided to put another section of pole on to see if they had backed further out in the lake which thankfully was the case and I was soon bagging again following two hours of fishing shallow I had caught about fifty f1s for around 80lb it showed no signs of slowing but I wanted to try the margins to see if I could catch any of the big barbel Weston pools was renowned for .

My margin swims were both relatively deep at nearly three-foot so I used another of Jeff’s floats an 04 Ruddy with 016 Matrix main line which had a Matrix hook length and a size 16 Matrix rigger hook that had a bait band attached , I choose to feed my left hand swim quite heavily with pellets using a cupping kit the other side I would be using a kinder pot being a bit negative so I could have a good comparison between them both . I started on my left hand swim which I had prepared for the past hour with a cup full of pellets every twenty minutes so with an 8mm pellet on the bait band I lowered my rig in among the side of the reeds and I began getting liners almost instantly , when I lifted into a proper indication my elastic was ripped out and my pole bent double when I finally managed to get it under some sort of control it made a consorted effort to get under the platform and after what felt like an age up popped a barbel of around the 5lb mark which only just fitted in my net they certainly fight well in here . After catching a mixture of carp+f1s+barbel from my left hand margin I re fed with a cup of pellets and then swopped to my right hand swim it was a bit slower on this side but the bites I did get were from a bigger stamp of fish including one carp approaching 10lb , by swapping sides I managed to keep the fish coming for the final ninety minutes I did manage a few more big gudgeon that only just fitted into the landing net but none of the double figure ones that Belvidere lake is famed for .

All in all I really enjoyed the fishing at Weston pools it is a really nice looking venue that is rammed with fish in perfect condition which is no doubt down to the aerators being left on all of the time and I cant wait to get back again hopefully for a try on a couple of the opens in the coming weeks but before that I am going to have another try on the Sycamore evening match before my final big contest for a while the Maver Match This at Partridge lakes on the Saturday .

fishing plans

After getting my notifications the other day on which fisho tickets that i was successful in getting at Moorlands and Partridge lakes  it looks like i will be spending my summer on the later with a fisho qualifier and two maver match this on their this year , but before that I’m really looking forward to my first visit to Tunnel Barn Farm on the three-day festival and it will be nice fishing somewhere that i have read an awful lot about as nearly every F1 article in the fishing magazines has taken place on there .

I have also decided to enter a team in the Angling times supercup for the first time this year after my exploits with Farnworth tackle in 2014 and our home venue is at Sycamore fisheries where we have all done well so lets hope we get a home draw and make it past the first couple of rounds , i also intend on contesting a few different open matches with venues like Herronbrook , Old hough and Lindholme being on my radar so after leaving my Balmoral AC it looks like i will be keeping myself rather busy .

This weekend I’m off to the Cunneries on Saturday to contest the open match which is taking place on the old canal were I haven’t been for nearly two years  then on the Sunday im off to Heskin hall for a bit of silver bashing and a catch up with my mate The Big Dipper , so lets hope for a good couple of days with plenty bites .

My year in angling 2014

Every year i like having a look through my match results to see what i have done well but more importantly the things that i have done wrong or need to improve on , i know a lot of anglers don’t keep a diary of their results so do not have an exact record on which to look at but it is something that i do every year and find that it improves my fishing a great deal but each to his own.

First i had a look at my Balmoral AC results ;

April 20th Partridge spey canal , third overall with 26lb and a section win

May 4th Blundells pine canal , third overall with 22lb and a section win

June 1st Sycamore rowans canal , match win with 48lb and a section win

June 15th Widdows fishery , sixth with just 13lb

July Hall lane merlins , second overall with 45lb and a section win

August 3rd Orrcherton , 4th overall with 40lb

August 10th Partridge ribbon , 5th overall with 34lb and a section win

August 24th Lathom pond one , second overall with 94lb and a section win

A reasonable set of results in my last year with the club and 6 out of 8 pick ups , but two missed matches cost me any chance of winning the club so i had to make do with second place missing out by a solitary point . Lost fish and bad decisions cost me in the end but thats fishing for you .

I then had a look at my weekend open results from the smaller matches that i had fished with between 15-30 anglers , i personally don’t call matches with less than 15 anglers a proper match and just a light-hearted knock up .

March 29th Highfield practice for the super cup and my first ever visit to the venue resulted in fourth overall and section win with 16lb

April 3rd Highfield fourth overall and section win with 19lb

April 5th Highfield second in section with just 11lb and team through to next round of the super cup

June 7th Chapel pool new match record for me with 114lb

June 8th Sycamore rowans canal , fourth overall with 23lb and only 2lb from getting second

July 5th Sycamore rowans canal , second on the lake with 56lb

August 31st Sycamore rowans canal , just 17lb and only 30lb needed to frame

September 14th Sycamore rowans canal , , first with 60lb

September 28th Sycamore silver birch , first with 22lb

October 5th Sycamore rowans canal , first with 45lb

October 13th Sycamore rowans canal ,first with 98lb

October 28th Sycamore rowans canal only 14lb

November 2nd Sycamore rowans canal only 13lb

These results make very interesting reading as including my club matches that i have fished , twenty matches in total with between 15-30 anglers attending ;

first 5

second 3

third 2

fourth 4

Just at Sycamore fisheries i fished nine matches 

first 5

second 1

third 0

fourth 1

So does this make me a better angler when contesting these size of matches ? let’s have a look at my Partridge lakes results were there is always over 40 fishing so i can compare them .

Jan 12th won section with 17lb and 22lb won the lake from peg 73 covey 3

Jan 19th dnw from peg 89 covey 4

Feb 2nd won section with just 3lb from peg 63 covey 3

March 2nd second in section with 22lb just one f1 away , peg 62 covey 3

March 9th second in section with 45lb , peg 137 covey 6

March 23rd 22lb for nowhere , peg 27 covey 2

April 13th dnw

May 11th 53lb second in section , peg 57 covey 3

Sept 13th section win with 64lb , peg 23 covey 2

Oct 4th second in section and lake with 64lb , peg 65 covey 3

Oct 11th section win with 44lb , peg 59 covey 3

Nov 1st only had 34lb , peg 81 covey 4

Nov 9th second in section with 38lb , peg 98 covey 4

Nov 11th only 18lb , peg 111 covey 5

Nov 23rd section win , lake second and 7th out of 90 anglers with 42lb , peg 105 covey 5

Out of 15 matches at Partridge lakes i had ,

Five section wins

Five section seconds

Which i don’t think is a to bad open record on these highly competitive matches , my overall open record this year is ten pick ups out of 24 matches and if you add my club record to it then it is 16 out of 32 when i am fishing at the weekend when the better class of anglers turn up . But on my evening and mid-week matches are totally different and i put this down to the fact that you need to get a bigger weight to be in contention i need to improve on this for next year ;

Sycamore 0/5                                                           Partridge 0/4

May 14th rowan 28lb                                                April 15th 43lb peg 56 covey 3

June 4th rowan 36lb                                                  April 17th 76lb peg 87 covey 4

June 13th silverbirch 47lb                                         July 3rd 68lb peg 1 covey 1

July 2nd silver birch 40lb                                           Sept 6th 36lb peg 4 covey 1

July 9th silverbirch 31lb

On my three big 90 plus matches i strangely did ok and a lot better than my previous year ;

Fisho partridge lakes , peg 133 covey 6 i had 57lb for second on the lake and a top ten finish out of 180 attending

Maver partridge lakes , peg 105 covey 5 i had only 35lb and really struggled 130 contested the match

Partridge lakes open match , peg 105 covey 5 i had 42lb for a section win , second on the lake and 7th out of 90 anglers

My best months to fish this year was ;

Sept where i had 4 matches with 2 wins at sycamore and a section at partridge

Oct where i had 5 matches with 2 wins at sycamore and 2 sections at partridge

Overall it has been a really good year with lots of highlights these are just a few of them ;

1, my first attempt at the Angling times super cup with Farnworth tackle managing to get through the first round at Highfield fishery before being knocked out at chapel house by Allied and Leicester who managed to reach the northern final but i did manage my biggest ever match win with 114lb .

2, Best ever result in the fisho qualifier at partridge lakes getting second on my lake and finishing in the top ten out of 180 anglers contesting the match .

3, Winning four consecutive matches at sycamore fishery which not many people have achieved , culminating in my best ever weight on their with 98 lb .

4, Finishing my club career with balmoral AC and finishing a close second even after missing a couple of matches , ending with my biggest club weight with 94lb at lathom fishery .

So that was my 2014 fishing season and i hope my 2015 season can eclipse it because i have big plans with big matches in the pipeline , so keep coming back to see how i get on and have a Happy new year .

 

 

Maver match this Partridge lakes

June 28th , Covey 5 peg 105

Covey 5

Well where do i start about todays match but i am sure the fishing gods was against me because on the way to the venue i couldn’t find a cash point that was working and i just managed to scrape together enough money for the pools , then on the way their i had just got to the golf course near Partridge lakes when for some reason my car span off the road went straight through a temporary fence just missing two trees and ended up within yards from the edge of the pond . Luckily my car seemed fine and i was expecting a puncture but the tyres looked ok and i was at a puzzlement on just what had caused my near crash maybe i had aqua planned across the road in the wet weather but i managed to get back on to the road and arrived at the complex a bit later than i had planned , i was understandably a bit shook up but surely nothing else could go wrong ! ! !

After booking on for the match i joined the draw for the queue and you always get more big names present than on the fisho qualifier  because it costs a bit more and you are guaranteed a ticket if you get it early enough , i felt rather out-of-place competing against these sort of anglers but nothing ventured nothing gained . When it was my turn to pick i pulled out peg 105 on covey 5 not where i wanted to be as this lake is full of smaller fish around the 8 oz mark and you would need to catch a hell of a lot of them to get a decent weight ,my peg wasnt that far away from where i had parked so i decided to leave the car where it was and walk over with my tackle and when i got their it looked rather promising with an aerator-point of an island-long margin to my left and an empty peg to my right which had a few mud banks for me to target .

I had decided on just three areas to fish today so as not to confuse myself and these where ;

Margin

Far bank slope

Mud line far bank

Two rigs would cover all these ;

2ft deep , 0.3 matrix series 3 float with a spread bulk of number 9 stotz and my main line was 0.12 garbo with a 0.10 garbo hook length , hook was a size 20 gamma pellet .

1ft deep ,0.3 matrix series 3 float with a spread bulk of number 9 stotz and my main line was 0.12 garbo with a 0.10 garbo hook length , hook was a size 20 gamma pellet .

With the rain continuing to pour down my bait brolly would be required to keep everything on my side tray dry ;

Bait

1 pint micro coated with ground-bait

1 pint sloppy ground-bait

3 pint mixed maggots

small tub of 4 mm expanders

When the all in sounded i went onto my 2ft far shelf line first because i wanted to leave the mud bank for later when the weather had hopefully improved and warmed up a little , i tapped in a full kinder pot of micro+sloppy ground-bait and lowered my 4mm expander amongst it . It didn’t take long before i was into fish and by regular feeding plus lift-dropping i had thirty small f1s in the first ninety minutes which was a fish every three minutes not a bad catch rate but could i keep it up , the answer unfortunately was no because  the fish backed off so i tried fishing against the mud bank and this is an area of my fishing that i am struggling with at present because i miss too many bites and when using soft pellet i was constantly re-shipping in wasting too much time in matches .

After three hours my catch rate had really slowed i only had forty fish in the net and was really struggling too put a run of fish together tight across , it was beginning to do my head in and it was about this time that i noticed my top kit was starting to stick into my number four section due to the wet conditions which was something i hadn’t met before with my other poles and it wasn’t long before it was stuck solid with a fish on the end of my rig and upon trying to free it i managed to break it clean in two , i lost the fish as well which just about summed up my day but they do say bad luck comes in threes .

I did have a spare number four in my holdall so i could carry on fishing but by this time my head had gone totally , i did catch a few bigger stamp fish by potting in maggots on to my left hand margin but i was just wasting time to the all out and i re-tried fishing long again but i couldn’t get them to settle so with forty minutes to go i decided to call it a day and began packing up . When the scales came round my 52 fish went 35lb getting comprehensively beaten on both sides but that’s what happens when a club angler goes to contest these big matches and i think i need to improve a lot before i give them another try next year , i have noticed that i am not catching the same amount of smaller fish that the others anglers do on here and this is obviously one of the many reasons that i am struggling to compete at present .

I had thought about giving the evening open another try at Sycamore fisheries which i have done reasonably well on before fishing the Thursday open at Partridge lakes but I’m not sure yet , i think that i might benefit from some far bank fishing practice before i go back to fish on the coveys as you really need to master that style of fishing or fishing shallow to do any good on their .

 

Maver match this

Well after seeing on facebook that their was still some tickets left for this weekends Maver match this at Partridge lakes , i took the plunge and got myself one . Its a bit steep at 50 quid a ticket but i haven’t been fishing for a couple of weeks so thats kind of paid for itself and am looking forward to it , lets hope i can do better than last years attempt at it where i struggled on Holbar .

Partridge lakes

peg 14 Holbar lake , March 19th

Holbar lake

After having managed to book the day off from work to do some family errands which fortunately for me i got done in record time and their fore i decided to have a few hours fishing in the afternoon .So off i headed to Partridge lakes i had planned on trying my hand at the f1s on covey 5 or 6 but the balief had informed me that they was resting these waters for the time being and only using them for the open matches , he also told me that peg 15+16 was fishing well on Holbar so i decided to try their and maybe get among the plentiful head of big carp and f1s .

I had only fished Holbar twice since they had changed it from two lakes too one and done some re modelling on it by putting some new islands in it , both times i fished it i chose peg 36 once in the Maver match this qualifier last year and this peg was towards the wider area of the lake , so today i was in a new part of the lake to try which was over the bridge and facing the road to covey 6 .When i arrived at the complex the weather was warmish with blue skies but the wind looked like it could be problematic later in the day and with this in mind i decided not to fish the form pegs and settled on peg 14 which offered me more protection from the wind .

peg 14 Holbar

I had decided on three areas to target ;

Pellet feeder . towards the far bank which was a good 30 meter chuck , i used a 10 foot Maver reactorlite tip rod with 6 lb Maver genisis main line and a 30 gram pellet feeder which had a short 4 inch hook length with a size 18 guru Mwg hook and micro bait band .

11 meter pole line , Where after plumbing up i found 6 ft and because of the depth plus wind i decided to use a 0.6 scone float with 0.14 garbo main line and 0.12 garbo hook length with a size 18 guru Lwg hook attached was a micro bait band , my shotting pattern was a bulk and two droppers .

Paste 4 meter line . Where it was 4 ft deep and i used a 0.4 scone paste float , my main line was garbo 0.14 straight through to a size 14 Turbetini 808 .

My bait for the day was ;

2 pints of hard 4 mm tiger nut flavor pellets

1 pint soaked micros with tiger nut flavoring

Tiger nut paste

small tub 6 mm hard pellets for the hook

small tub multi coloured pop up boilies

small tub semi bouyant tiger nut bandums

At 12 o’clock i was ready to get going and started on the pellet feeder which was clipped up a meter away from the far bank because i wasn’t sure that with all the cold over night rain they would be in the margins and i chose a suitable far bank marker , i decided to re-cast every five minutes to build up the swim . After thirty minutes i still haven’t had a sign of a bite but i continued with the regular casting ,it took another ten minutes before i started getting liners and finally a drop back bite resulted in a small barbel not the species i was after but it was a start .

Small barbel on tip rod

My next cast resulted in me attached to a large f1 but i hadn’t even seen the bite!!! Things wasn’t going that well with the pellet feeder , so i decided to change to a method feeder which was a lighter 15 gram and would their fore make less of a splash when hitting the water . This seemed to work a lot better with five f1s and two barbel coming to the net but it was noticeable to me that the bites where becoming less frequent , maybe i was putting too much pellets in and a change to a smaller method feeder would have been better ?

average stamp f1

So i decided to rest it and go on to my 11 meter pole line where i had initially cupped in three medium pots full off 4 mm pellets at the start and then topped it up every thirty minutes with a single cup full . I began getting the odd sign and f1 but they didn’t seem to want to settle on this line , i had topped up with half a medium pot after every fourth fish and thinking about it now maybe i had over done it at the start but i was expecting to catch a bigger than average stamp of fish , also with it being a big lake i felt that they would need a large amount to enable them to find it .

Golden f1

I worked out that if i topped up after every fourth fish it would take thirty minutes for them to settle so in this quiet spell i would have a few chucks on the method feeder , keeping this far bank area re-fed and picking up the odd fish in the process . I decided to give my paste line a go but it just didn’t work with the wind constantly pulling the float out of the paste and it just didn’t feel right with the fish seemingly being in the deeper water so i scrapped this idea and concentrated on making the most of the two lines that was producing fish .

Mirror carp

The wind was getting stronger as the session progressed and i had to make the most of the spells when i could fish the pole , on one of these spells i managed to catch my biggest fish of the day a nice 6 lb mirror carp but un-fortunately it was on its own . I did have a run of big skimmers when i went back on the tip rod but it was strange that when i had run out of my tiger nut flavoured micros and used my mates green swim stim ones i didn’t catch another f1 on this line only skimmers .

2lb skimmer

For the last thirty minutes i concentrated on my pole line and had a run of small 8oz barbel , but because i had run out of 4mm pellets i couldn’t feed them off so i decided to call it a day . I ended up with twenty f1s around the 2lb mark-six barbel – four nice sized skimmers and the solitary carp of around six pound , so not a bad days fishing but it was a shame that the wind was so strong because it prevented me from fishing the pole longer which i am sure would have helped the fish settle better but at least it gave me chance to have a few hours on the tip rod which i don’t do enough off and i was happy with my accuracy in casting today but need more practise on feathering the feeder when it hits the water .

Off to Partridge lakes on Sunday to contest the open match , so lets hope for some better weather and i have heard a rumour that they could be linking up with Preston innovations .

 

Partridge lakes

Maver Match This Qualifier 20th July 2013

my peg on holbar

Today was my last chance to qualify for a major fishing competition and to be honest i am a bit out of my depth fishing against this caliber of angler but you have to fish against the best to improve and next year i will hopefully be more up for the challenge .

On arriving at Partridge lakes their didn’t seem to be many knocking about but they had closed the same amount of lakes as for the fisho qualifier so they must be expecting a decent turn out today , i booked on for the match and paid the twenty pounds pools because the match was to be fished 11 till 4 it would give us plenty time to set up and hopefully also have a good last hour in the margin . It was soon my time for the draw so i joined the queue around half way back and when it got to my turn out i pulled Holbar peg 35 probably the last lake i wanted to be on as its all big carp in that lake which isn’t my favorite as i don’t have the patience to sit and wait , also i haven’t been doing much carp fishing in a long time .

After getting to my peg their wasn’t much in the way of margin vegetation as they had re modeled the lake six months ago turning it from two separate lakes into the one specimen lake , their was an island 25m away which would have been a good area to target if i had only brought my tip rod but un fortunately it was still at home in the shed .

I decided to target three areas today and these were ;

13m deep , after plumbing up i found it to be 4ft deep so used a 0.4 scone float with a bulk and dropper shotting pattern, with carp around the 5lb mark being the target today i was using 0.16 garbo line with 0.14 garbo hook length attached to a size 16 hook with a micro bait band and 13 hollo elastic set pingy .

13m shallow , although it was still very sunny and warm the wind was quite strong so i didnt want to go further out because feeding with a catty would be awkward , i used a 0.2 matrix float with 0.14 garbo line direct to a size 16 hook with a bait band and 13 hollo elastic .

Margin swim , on plumbing up it was very shallow tight to the side so i decided to find a depth of 1ft which i found 1ft away from the bank it was also handily positioned beside the only reeds present on my right hand bank , i used a Middy 0.2 float with 0.14 garbo line direct to a size 16 hook with black hydro elastic .

With the open matches on here having a six pint limit and because i was set up mainly for fishing on covey or the other canals targeting f1s i was in a bit of a quandary on which bait to take to my peg and i settled on ;

4mm hard tiger fish pellets , 2 pints

6mm hard tiger fish pellets , 2 pints

4mm cubed meat 1 pint

small tub of worms

As the all in sounded i went straight out with a medium cupping kit and deposited a full pot of 4mm tiger fish pellets , then went out with my deep rig and a 6mm hard pellet on the hook . It didn’t take long before i began getting indications and by pinging a few 4mm pellets over the top i got my first fish which was a carp around the 4lb mark and it put up a very spirited fight , because i was still in f1 fishing mode it probably took me a little to long getting it in but it was a good start to the day .

Un fortunately the wind started to get up and was very gusty which made holding the pole awkward , which in turn made getting good presentation very difficult and i had to go a few inch over depth to keep my rig still enough to get a bite . I was still picking up the odd fish which turned out to be barbel and skimmers around the 10oz mark , the gusty wind also meant i could no longer group the pellets near the float which i solved by using to a kinder pot .

After ninety minutes i was going no were fast and the conditions was in fact getting worse so i made the decision to start a new line closer in at a more comfortable 6m to my right the depth was only six inch shallower so i was able to use the same rig as at 13m . I kicked off this new line with a cupping kit full of 6mm hard tiger fish pellets this time as i wanted to target just the carp and i thought that feeding the 4mm pellets might have brought the skimmers and barbel into my 13m peg , it wasn’t long before i had my first carp from this new swim and by loose feeding pellets by hand i kept picking up the odd carp and big f1 , i noticed that i was deep hooking a few so my presentation wasn’t great and it took me a while to rectify this .

Just when i began putting a few fish together i would hook some thing a lot bigger which i just couldn’t stop and the end result would be a broken hook length , its some thing i haven’t had a problem with in the past and have caught some big doubles using this line . This would result in making the fish disappear and i couldn’t get my feeding pattern right to keep them in my swim long enough to put a decent weight together , the match just seemed to run away from me and before i knew it we was fast approaching the last ninety minutes so i began feeding the margin with meat , kept keeping an eye on it for any signs of fish and after twenty minutes i noticed a swirl so a quick rig change and i went over the top with a piece of meat on the hook but all this resulted in was liners .

As the all out sounded i was disappointing with how my match had drifted away from me and lack of preparation for fishing this lake , the weather conditions had played an important part in my low weight of 39lb which consisted of just eight carp and a few silvers . The six lost big carp i had wouldnt have cost me the section because England international Lee Kerry was a few pegs down from me and he won the lake with 94lb .

So that’s the big matches out of the way for another year but i will be back for another go next year were hopefully i will be more prepared to take any chances that come my way , although i didn’t draw any flyers i just think i didn’t make the most of my pegs . Back on the club match scene next week , f1 fishing on Hall lanes new water Bessies just hope i can keep my good club form going for the remaining four matches .

Thanks for reading my blogs Gary.