The Oaks - Maple - July 15th

This week we were up at the Oaks to fish on Maple. I last fished Maple on the Jubilee weekend on the Tuesday open and managed 27lb off peg 10 for nowhere. There was 17 of us on today and with 35 pegs, this meant we’d have a decent amount of room. Come the draw there were three pegs left, 1, 10 and 27. I delved in and drew peg 10, I wasn’t too impressed as I’d not enjoyed it on my previous trip and would have much preferred peg 1, though I’d prefer 10 to 27 so all wasn’t lost. Acko drew flyer peg 1 which meant late arrival Steve Cromie was stuck with peg 27. On arriving at my peg, my section was completed with Rab on 7, Gordy on 5, Martin Dodsworth on 3 and Acko on 1. With not enjoying my last time on peg 10 I’d hopefully right a few wrongs today. Last time I didn’t concentrate my time on a particular swim and swapped between the edge and the island all day and therefore I didn’t really get into a rhythm. Today I’d fish to the island for at least the first half of the match and feed the edge to fish the last couple of hours down there. Rig wise I had two set up for fishing across, these were both some new homemade pencils in 0.1g and 0.2g, these were to fish in 3ft of water at 13m and 12 inches of water at 14.5m. Both of these were on 0.16 mainline, 0.12 hooklengths, size 18 hooks and doubled 6 elastic. I had a shallow rig to fish off the end of the build out on the edge of the island, and finally I had a rig for down the edge, this was quite a crude rig, with heavy line and heavy laggy but I wanted to give myself more of a chance than last time I fished this peg. I also had the method set up to chuck down the edge in case I needed to repair any rigs! For bait I had a tin of 4mm meat and some cat meat for down the edge. Micros and expanders for across and 4mm hard pellets for shallow. At the all in I went out to 13m with a 4mm expander and tipped in a fruit shoot of micros. I didn’t even think about feeding the edge and was trying to forget it until the second half of the match. I sat watching my motionless float, lifting and dropping every so often, re-feeding, waiting longer between feeding but after the first 90 minutes all I had was a small ghosty and half a dozen roach. Whilst fishing this line I was pinging half a dozen pellets onto my shallow line and I’d seen the odd swirl so decided it was perhaps time to have a go. I fed a pouch full of pellets and slapped my rig in over the top. I carried on this process and after 10 minutes or so was finally rewarded with an F1. I had 4 in succession before I waited another ten minutes without a sign. I changed my depth to about two foot but still wasn’t getting any signs. I decided to carry on feeding here throughout the match and hope that I’d be able to another handful of fish in the net as the day progressed. I fed a quarter of a pot of micros onto the mud line at 14.5m just before I started fishing shallow and although there wasn’t the tell tale signs of fish’s backs poking out of the water there had been the odd “ring” rippling off the bank. I dropped my rig in carefully, as tight to the island as I could and tipped a cap of micro’s in. I didn’t have to wait long until I put a further 3 F1’s in the net one after another until the bites stopped altogether. I decided to drop off the island and fish in about two foot of water as I thought they may now be seeking a bit more shelter from being spooked in the shallow water but it was more apparent that they’d just gone!. With two and a half hours to go, I had my first look down the edge. First of all I fed another quarter pot on the mud line and carried on pinging a few pellets onto my shallow line. I baited up with half a chunk of cat meat, I pulled the hook through with a baiting needle to get a decent hook hold (I was using cat meat as when using meat last time it was just getting whittled down by the roach and gudgeon, hopefully the cat meat would be a bit more robust). I dropped my hook bait in and tipped a dozen pieces of meat over the top. Just like the last time I fished this peg, the action was fairly rapid, after a few minutes my float dipped and I was ready to rip the head off whatever it may be to stop it getting into the reeds. After a very quick fight on my heavy gear I had another small F1 in the net. I had a couple more of a similar size and wondered why there wasn’t many sizeable fish down here. Then no sooner did I think this and I was almost being dragged in by a margin monster! It took me straight into the reeds and I eventually came back with a rig minus a hooklength (though my new floats were still in top nick!). For the rest of the match I carried on picking off the odd fish but it was slow. I rotated between my shallow line, the mud line and the margin and I think I finished the match with 18 or 19 fish. Clearly not enough to trouble frame and another frustrating day on peg 10! I think I hooked 4 decent fish down the edge, that all buried me, the only fish I did get out were small stockies. If I fish this peg again I might just ignore the margin, its more hassle than it’s worth! Acko took the lead off peg 1 with 63lb, Martin managed 18lb, Gordon.....................8lb, Rab had done well off peg 7 with 58lb and then it was my turn, 25lb 8oz, so I’d won the quid, but was a bit miffed I’d not beaten my 27lb that I had on the peg the previous time around. As it turned out, Acko and Rab came 1st and 2nd respectively so I double defaulted the section prize, happy days after all! We’re at Langwith next week, another new venue for me, but I’m looking forward to hopefully catching a few!