Brafferton F1 Lake - 8th July

I’ve not been able to blog in a month or so due to being so busy. I managed a couple of matches over the jubilee weekend, firstly fishing the Saturday open on Cedar winning my section with a lake personal best of 56lb, followed by a disappointing 27lb from Maple on the Tuesday. My last club match was also disappointing weighing just over 20lb on Horseshoe lake at Poppleton and also sacrificing another pound to the pensioner. It now stands 7-4 in the quid steaks, granted in my favour, but it’s about time I pulled my finger out again. This week we were back at Brafferton, I’d missed our last match here a week or two back due to being on holiday and the results weren’t great but neither was the weather by all accounts. The week running up to the match, the forecast was different nearly every day, thankfully when I arrived at the fishery, there was a gentle breeze running to the bottom of the lake and the sun was shining!!!! Come the draw I managed peg 20, I was quite optimistic as on previous matches, this has proved to be a consistently good area to be in. I eventually found my peg, there seems to only be peg numbers on half a dozen of the 80 pegs! This with the long grass and bogs it proved a tiring journey to my peg! Improvements to little things like this could make the fishery so much better! I finally got sat down on my box, I had Jim Atkinson to my right on 17 and Kev Bell on 23 to my left. I set up three rigs, a margin rig, which covered both sides on my top 4. A rig for fishing in the deeps at 5m and 13m, and finally a shallow rig as there were plenty of fishing cruising around and splashing whilst I was setting up. Finally I had the method rod set up to chuck to the end of the island as I couldn’t reach with the pole. At the all in I fed a golf ball of micros and a dozen or so 4mm’s at 5m and then chucked the method out. I was getting plenty of liners on the rod but most of these were from shallow fish away from the island. I started flicking half a dozen 4mm pellets to 13m at the 10 o’clock position to see if I could spark a response. After over an hour on the tip and only a 3lb mirror to show for my efforts I decided to have a go shallow, I’d fed it for about an hour whilst on the method so hopefully they’d be queuing up! Alas, they weren’t. I altered my depth, changed my feeding, slapped, didn’t slap, slapped more, slapped less. I couldn’t even get a sniff. They were rolling on the surface occasionally when I was feeding but seemed to be backing away from the pole. I shallowed down to about 4 inches, this gave me a lash of about two feet to swing the rig out and hopefully not spook them with the pole however this also wasn’t working. It was time to go on the 5m line. Previous matches this has been my get of jail swim. When all has failed I’ve always caught here. And so it proved again, for the next hour I put small carp, roach and chub into the net, I still only had around 10lb but looking round everyone was struggling and we all seemed to be doing similarly. Everyone else carried on catching the odd fish, with Jim and Kev both catching quite a few now, I was getting left behind, fast! The next three hours I didn’t even have a bite, I was even striking at blatant liners in the hope of foul hooking fish but even this didn’t work. On the positive side, I practiced casting my method for an hour or so, I say practiced, I was still fishing, but I think you have to catch something for it to be classed as fishing. The last hour I went back shallow, I kept it fed all day every now and then just flicking a few pellets out. After maybe ten minutes, my pole shot under the surface and it was fish on, it felt like a decent fish and after a decent fight, I slipped the net under a 4lb mirror. I had a couple of smaller carp soon after, then my pole vanished under water again but from all the slapping, my line had wrapped around the tip of my pole and we soon parted company. Thankfully the line gave way rather than the pole! Then that was it, the match finished and it had been a frustrating day, I’d also been well and truly fishcaked! Kev’s 58lb turned out good enough for the match and Jim’s 44lb was good enough for third. My 19lb was good enough for nothing (surprisingly). Were on Maple at Sessay next week, I’ll be hoping for a good day for a change. Although in fairness, I think this was the first match I’ve fished this year and it’s not rained!!