Tuesday 29 April 2008

Sunday 27th April Pleasure Session at Brafferton

The more observant ones amongst you will have noticed i didn't blog after my match last week. Following the practice session I was in two minds on how the match itself would fish. With poor weather conditions predicted and a heavy wind I was lucky to draw on the bank so the wind was on my back, so at least I had a comfortable day in comparison to others! However, I managed to hook 3 good carp in the first 45minutes and lost them all! This would have been close to a section win on the day if i'd have landed them, but I didn't. I then followed up losing the three fish by not getting another bite for the rest of the day and blanking along with half of the lake! So after blanking for the second time this year I didn't see the need to tell everyone how not to catch fish again!

Now, onto the weekend just gone, I went to Brafferton which is the far side of Boroughbridge in North Yorkshire. I've only ever been here a couple of times but a long time ago, the first club match was set here and was won with around 60lb, although i didnt personally fish it. I'd been on www.maggotdrowning.com to pick up some tips and the plan for today was set to be predominantly feeder tactics with a short pole line for back up.

We didn't actually arrive until about half twelve due to other commitments, we all plumped for pegs on the right hand side of Ghost lake as you look at it from the cafe and fished about half away up the lake. I had two islands in front of me, the one to my right was a good 25-30m away and the one to my left was nearer being about 20m although I could see right down the side of it.

I set the feeder rod up with a bomb at first in order to clip up to the island on my right, and thought if I were to fish to the other i'd have to cast 'properly'. Once clipped up I mixed up half a bag of Sensas Marine groundbait and added around three quartes of a pints worth of 2&4mm softened pellets. Mainline was 0.20 Drennan Super Specialist, to a 2ft trace of 0.13 Preston Powerline and a size 18 Gamakatsu Black. I used a simple metal open ended feeder which had a quick change swivel attached in case I wanted to change the amount of feed going in.

I filled the feeder, put a couple of red maggots on the hook and launched it towards the island. I started with maggot in order to judge what fish were in the swim, I soon changed to corn after reeling in to find tiny roach after the first three casts with no indication on the tip. I then proceeded to set up the short pole line while the rod was out. I set up a mathckit plus my number four, this was to fish at the base of the near shelf. The depth was about 4ft, i had a Garbolino Hollow Yellow, to an 0.13 Preston Powerline direct to a sie 18 PR36, the float for today was a 0.2g BGT 'shallow float'.

Whilst setting up i'd managed only a couple of small carp between 4 and 8oz. I persevered with the feeder for another hour and managed a couple more carp of a similar stamp. I then thought i'd give the feeder a rest for half an hour which would also give me chance to bag up on small roach and gudgeon on the 4m line. I'd been chucking a couple of maggots in every five minutes and hoped there'd be a few fish about, I wasnt wrong first chuck in and I was into my first gudgeon, at least I was catching I thought. After 7 or 8 gudgeon and small roach I swung the rig out once again, the rig 'didn't want to settle' so I lifted and the float bolted under water and I was soon into a good fish. I'd hooked a good carp that tried his best immitation of free willy arching out of the water three times before he got his head down and bolted. With my elastic carrying a rating of 6-10, the fish bolted for all it was worth and ended up a couple of pegs down before it stopped. I shipped back and removed the number four section and then played the fish for the next 7 or 8 minutes on the pull bung. After a very healthy scrap by both parties the fish was in the net, a common of about 8lb! I then went straight back out to see if his big brother was there, he wasn't, it was back to the gudgeon for the rest of the day.

Seeing as the gudgeon and roach had settled back in i decided the feeder was calling once again, I fed to both the islands and then roatated between them either every five minutes or every fish. I started to catch the odd carp but they were all only around 12oz with the odd better one pushing the pound.

The time was now about 6pm and with the light starting to fade and the loud roars of thunder over the horizon it was decided to pack up before it started raining again. On emptying my net I had around 15lb in there, so not a busy day by any stretch of the imagination, but an enjoyable one to say to least. We almost missed the rain but it absolutely paggered it down as we were walking back to the van, sods law that you keep your stuff dry all day only for it to be soaked on your walk back!

I've got a match at Woodlands this weekend so hopefully I can improve on my last match, i'll update the blog, so check back next week!

Monday 14 April 2008

Practice Session at Oaktree Leisure, Pond 1

With a club match on the 20th April I decided to go with a couple of the guys for a practice seeing as I’ve never even seen the place let alone fished it! I got there at about half eight to find that pegs 1-25 were booked for a match and a lot of the other pegs had been taken. I'd been informed that last weeks open match was won from peg 34 with 50lb and that the majority of the weights had come 34 upwards so all was not lost.

After much deliberation I plumped for fishing on peg 29 with John on 31 and Paul on peg 27. Peg 27 and 29 are both in the corner and fishing to the corner of the island, I can’t begin to imagine how tight it would become if someone was on 28 too! I'd put a few feelers out on the Oaks Banter site and Maggotdrowning and found that it was about 4.5ft down the track and 1-2ft across on the island. With this in mind I’d set up a few rigs at home. I’d made a couple of different rigs up for down the track and also a few more for fishing across.

With the impression of there being a lot of big fish in there I stepped my gear up to 0.18 although on reflection maybe this was too much. Whilst plumbing up I found about 18inch-2foot on the island and only around 3feet down the track so most of my rigs were useless. I ended up fishing a BGT shallow 0.2g on the island rig with 0.18 straight through to a size 18 PR36 and the same rig but with a size 14 PR36 for down the track and the margins. Both of these were teamed up with a middy pink 14-16 hollow elastic.

I started the session by cupping in a few pellets and some mashed up cat food on the margin line and then went out to the island with a 4mm expander and tipping in half a kinder pot of micros over the top. For the first two hours my float would not sit still from liners, I managed to hook two fish, probably foul hooked as I lost them both. Meanwhile John couldn’t get any indication and Paul was having similar trouble to me losing one. I then managed to snare two in quick succession, one of about 3lb the other nearer 4lb on triple maggot. Paul then managed one from the margins on corn. I decided to have a quick look on the margin line, the float slowly sunk within seconds, I struck and nothing. I dropped back in and didn’t get another indication.

The main problem was the depth of the water, when ever you struck or lifted your rig, waves would appear on the surface from the fish swirling. This meant there was fish there but they just didn’t seem to want it. We persevered until three o’ clock but nothing more was happening.

Typically it rained all day and as soon as we packed up the sun came out. Not the practice session I’d imagined but at least I’d fished the venue now and new a tiny bit about what to expect next week. The lads on the match from peg1-25 didn’t seem to be fairing too well either. The guy on 25 had a couple and one guy maybe had half a dozen whilst we were there but no one else seemed to be doing much either. It doesn’t tend to bother me as much if no one catches but when you’re not catching anything and everyone else is that’s when you start doubting your own ability.

Not to worry, I’ll just have to hope that next week proves a little better and hopefully we'll have some nicer weather to boot!