Carpvale, Maple and Woodlands Pairs

Over the past few weeks I’ve been a little busy so that’s why I’ve not updated. I've got three matches to fill in but unfortunately I can only skim through the details of each match otherwise I’d never catch up!

Over the past couple of weeks I’ve fished two club matches and a pairs open:

August 17th – Carpvale – Cyprio + Matchpool
August 24th – Sessay – Maple
August 25th – Woodlands Pairs Match

Right, so Carp Vale, I managed to draw on Cyprio again on peg 9, I’ve always fancied this bay and it was ideally where I wanted to be, perfect! Or not! I like these pegs because you’ve got so much water to go at, it’s a good 40 yard plus chuck to the island where I had a tempting little lily bed. I had a bush on both sides in the margins and then a vast expanse of water out in front.

I started off with fishing the method to the island for the first hour after I’d potted some feed down on the margins and a 13m line. I realised when fishing on the tip how terrible my casting is, I seriously need to fish the rod more often, a lot of the venues I fish it isn’t called for so when you get somewhere like Carp Vale I definitely felt out of practice.

The first hour passed and no knocks or indications so I went down the left margin. First put in I hooked a nice little mirror of about a pound and a half. Next put in, before I had time to strike my float was 3ft below the surface tangle around the root system of the bush! With the bush being so close it was hard to pull for a break, in the end I decided the safest way was to keep the tip under the surface of the water and pull the bung out and keep pulling until it gave way! Now with 0.18 straight through it took some pulling I can tell you!

I then went out to the 13m line with a blob of paste, once again first put in the float slid away, this time though there was no real fight just a dead weight, I slowly shipped back dragging the dead weight to eventually see a colossal Bream grace my net, it only just fit in my landing net and must have been all of six and half pound! Easily my biggest Bream to date. Any way back out on the paste line and no more bites.

By this time I was getting a little bored so I decided to go back out on the tip and feed a shallow line over my paste line, I constantly dripped in 6mm pellets for an hour, then I started to see the odd swirl so out went the shallow rig. I was wind milling the rig and still firing pellets out and managed to finally hook a carp after about 15minutes, it was a good fish however when I hooked it every other fish in the swim got spooked and swirled on the top before buggaring off for the rest of the match! I got the fish in though, a big common about 9lb so a healthy boost to my other 2 fish but it definitely wasn’t enough and it meant another poor match for me, I must be due a good day soon enough!

Anyway my 3 fish weighed 16lb on the dot; Steve Hodson had one fish that weighed 17.5lb so even one of his fish was better than my tally!

I didn’t stick about for the final weigh in and results although I think Honest John may have been up there as he 70 odd pound.

The match up at Sessay was another dire affair, I weighed in 9lb 12oz, a lot of people DNW’d and it was won by Mick Atkinson on his favourite peg with 51lb. I’d been up for a couple of practices a couple of weeks before and done atrociously so sought the advice of one of the regulars and fished method feeder for the match with the correct set up and correct bait and still couldn’t muster up a weight! Not to worry.

After the poor result at Sessay Gordon and I were fishing the pairs match up at Woodlands so hopefully we’d both catch a few fish!

After a coin toss we decided Gordon was on the good lakes (Skylark and Partridge) where as I had the least favourable draw or Curlew, Wagtail or Kestrel.

Gordon ended up on Skylark 20 and I was to be on Curlew 8, Nige told me that my peg had the potential to be a match winner today so no pressure then! In fairness I never expected to win nor even frame as I’m a newbie up at Woodlands and a lot of the other guys know the place inside out.

Anyway I ended up with 52lb 6oz and Gordon weighed 24lb, so we weren’t even close, the match was individually won off the peg to my right with 140lb, oops, what was I playing at then?

It was won by Darrell Taylor and Adam Richards who had 87lb and 107lb respectively (I think???).

Anyway pleasure fishing for a week and then back to Huby where I picked up my first and only brown envelope of the year however its still fishing poorly so I’m not hoping for a weigh day!