Sun 25th Jan - Woodlands Open

Well with last weekend being terrible regarding weather conditions I must say I didn’t really fancy it. So when this weekend came around I was eager to get back on the bank even though the weather once again looked a little suspect. Although this week I finally had my new jacket after waiting for a few weeks to swap it so hopefully I’d stay nice and dry.

I arrived up at Woodlands a bit later than normal, probably 8:45 and so quickly paid on and bought my bait. There were about 40 booked on by 9 o clock and so four lakes were put in. Curlew was a 6 peg section, Kestrel was another 6 peg section and Skylark and Partridge had a section per bank.

I managed to draw Kestrel 28, in fairness I didn’t know if this was a good or bad draw but I was soon told it was a crap draw! Apparently the lake was won the day before with 10lb+ of silvers. So I was essentially fighting for my section and with this in mind I thought I’d try the first half hour on bomb and corn and see how it went then fish for silvers for the middle four hours and depending on how it was going I’d swap to the bomb again for the last half hour.

I got round to my peg and the 6 of us on the 38 peg lake obviously had plenty of room. I had Mark Longhurst from the shop to my left on 25, someone else on 31 and three others opposite including Rab.

The lake was flat calm and there was only a slight wisp of wind that would occasionally drift through.

I already had the bomb set up so cracked on with setting up the pole. I set up two identical rigs to fish at 11m, the only reason I set two up was in case I hooked a big un and got broke, it would just speed things up a bit. I was using a 4x14 carbon stem, very fine tip bristle Milo float on 0.12 Ultima Power Match to a hooklength of 0.10 Powerline and a Middy 63:13 size 20. Elastic was size 8 Maver Latex.

At the call of time I shipped out to my 11m line which was at 1 o’ clock and tipped in a dozen maggots and a couple of pieces of corn. I then baited up with corn and cast the bomb out. I was only giving it five minutes before recasting in the hope I could cast onto a carps head! The first hour went by without even a liner and this was typical for everyone. Mark to my left went on the pole line a few minutes before me and was getting silvers, one a chuck and had also had a carp of about 4lb. I thought it was definitely time to drop in on the pole line, first drop in and I was rewarded with a small roach, this carried on for the remaining four hours, and I managed to put maybe 60 fish in the keepnet over this time, so by no means frantic but I was still happy continually putting fish in the net, be it a skimmer, roach, gudgeon or even a rudd!

With about 45 minutes to go Rab had a carp on the bomb, then the bloke opposite me had one, with not wanting all my hard work silver bashing to be undone I baited up the bomb rod again and cast out to the middle. I had a couple of pulls before the tip flew round and I was soon rewarded with a carp, although be it only about 2lb it was still a boost. I recast and had continuous liners until the final hooter sounded and the match was brought to a close.

It was to be close and come the weigh in Rab was leading with a low 11lb, Mark put 11lb 8oz on the scales and then it was my turn, I’d managed 9lb 13oz of which at least 7.5lb was made up of silvers so I just needed a slightly bigger carp! The bloke to my right managed 7lb 10oz of silvers and had also been kept relatively busy but missed out on the weight boosting single carp.

Back to the car park and Gordon had managed to win his section and the match overall was won with 71lb off Skylark I think where as the back up weights were all around 25/26lb and all came from Curlew.

All in all I’d had a nice day, the weather almost spoilt things in the middle of the match but it didn’t last and I’d managed to come somewhere near on a venue I don’t have too much experience in although I did learn a few lessons throughout the match.

1. I should have possibly tried to fish closer in, i.e. six metres instead of 11 would have perhaps seen me put a few more in the net.
2. Maybe even risk fishing the full five hours for this duration, if I had say 8lb in four hours, that’s 10lb in five hours, teamed with fishing short could well push for a winning weight.

We’ll just have to wait and see though!

Jan 11th - Sessay - Alders

I did manage to squeeze one match in before the end of 2008; I fished the open at Woodlands and had 4 carp for 15lb 6oz, which was only good enough for second in section and 3rd on my lake.

The first club match of the year was on Alders up at the Oaks, I tend to fish either terrible or really well on here, no real in between. Gordon and I arrived nice and early at just after eight and had a good hearty breakfast, they don’t half fill you up but at least you don’t feel hungry for the rest of the day!

There were 14 booked on today, as Stu took the remaining money Robbie and I pegged out the match as fair as we thought possible, though I expected there to be a few complaints. We can’t all fish the same peg though can we?!

I was almost last to draw and all that was left in the bag was 13, 15 and 33, ideally I fancied one of the two earlier pegs so I was relatively pleased when I drew peg 15, leaving Gordon on 33 and Stu on 13.

I got round to my peg and ‘got dressed’, I had some new thermal under trousers on today that I’d bought from Matalan for a quid, and as it turns out, their brilliant, what a bargain!

I got the box levelled and all the pole out, I found that to be on the slope I needed to fish 15m to just get onto it. I’d tied up two rigs the night before as when I looked in my box I didn’t really have anything adequate. I shipped out with one of them, a wire stem 4x14 with a nice thin bristle and the rig was miles too short, I tried the other rig but this was also too short. Buggar, I ended up using a pretty crude rig that I had left over from months ago, it was a 0.7g body down roach float which incorporated an olivette and a few droppers.

I also set up a rig for half depth (3ft) as a gesture but didn’t think I’d need it.

With the match starting in five minutes I realised I’d forgotten to get my bait so quickly ran to the shop for half a pint of red maggots. This was all I would use today although I did have some corn to use on the bomb if the ice thawed out on the island.

At the sound of the hooter I went out straight in front to 15m and cupped in half a dozen maggots and dropped the rig in on top. I had no indications for the first 10-15 minutes where as Stu had managed 2 small carp by big cupping liquidised bread in after every fish. The ducks then landed in my swim and pushed a mass of ice right where I was fishing so I decided to move to 15m at 1 o’ clock and set up a new line on the mark of half an hour. I tipped in another half a dozen maggots and waited. Stu managed another 2 small carp before his bites dried up. I think he’d now fed 4 cups of liquidised bread and as I watched him cup in the 5th my float disappeared but I missed the bite. I then foul hooked 2 fish and lost them both. I then managed to foul hook a Barbel of about 3lb in its pectoral fin but graciously tipped it into the keepnet.

I kept foul hooking fish throughout the day and tried up to a foot over depth and foot off bottom and everywhere in between but could only foul hook fish! Over the course of the match I lost 12 foul hookers, it doesn’t help sitting near Acko in times like these, although I probably provided his best bites of the day by snapping back at him!

By the end of the match I had 2 proper carp, 2 Barbel, 4 F1’s and an Ide but was still disgruntled at the thought of what weight I could have had. I felt pretty confident in the knowledge that I’d won the match mainly due to so many people walking round during the match as they weren’t catching so I was getting a pretty regular update that no one was really catching.

At the weigh in I was glad to be packing away as I was so frustrated at the amount of fish I’d lost and more so why I couldn’t locate them properly. I think through the match I only hooked two in the mouth, all the rest were in their fins, their backs, chins, foreheads, anywhere but the mouth! I managed to weigh in 20lb 8oz which seemingly was good enough to win the match, Gordon came 2nd with 9lb 15oz so I’d won pretty comfortably and it would also make for a pleasant trip home as we’d both picked up.

So in one sense a good start to the year in terms of reward but its still annoying me as I’m writing this that I should have weighed in at least double what I did!