WEEKEND MATCH REPORT

WRITTEN BY PETE

This week-end both days were to be spent at Witherington Farm (affectionately known as ‘Withy’ by the regulars), near Salisbury.

Saturday

Saturday was for the annual teams of four winter series, Sunday was the first match in the Maver backed  Cormorants Match Group series.
My allocated section for the teams of four is Cottage lake which is predominantly good sized carp averaging 6-8lb, plus skimmers up to 2 1/2lb.

After our customary late draw, peg 9 was to be base for the six hours of the match. A peg with recent form (it had won the mid-week match with a ton plus) and certainly better than I’d had for most of the series, I was optimistic of finally being able to compete in the section, having spent most of the series watching from afar! It would have been easy to get despondent but experience has taught me that winter fishing is patchy at best, especially when carp and skimmers are the main quarry.

The team was currently lying joint fifth out of the ten teams in the
league, with the top four teams being paid out, so realistically with
only three matches remaining, we were aiming for the last frame place.

Arriving at my peg, the weather gods were definitely not smiling down on me as a freezing North/North Easterly wind blew left to right, occasionally veering to face on, and being overcast too meant I regretted not putting more suitable clothing on.

My approach would be a 20g Preston Innovations ICS Method Feeder to the
island, a short pole meat line at about 6m, and a 12m long pole line down to the empty platform to my left, for late. The angler on the peg Wednesday had also caught on the waggler, so I set it up but felt the wind today would affect presentation too much, so would give it a go when conditions allowed.

At the starting whistle, the method feeder went out to the island loaded with Sonubaits 2mm F1 Stikki Pellets mixed with a touch of Sonubaits Thatchers Original groundbait and my favourite new additive, Sonubaits
Banoffee Bait Booster (probably because I love the smell myself, never mind the fish!). I deliberately didn’t feed any other lines, as I wanted to see who was doing what before deciding, and I felt that negative feeding would be the order of the day anyway given the weather conditions.

After about two minutes, while scanning the lake, I saw the rod arch round out of the corner of my eye and the first fish of the day was on. After a spirited fight an 8lb mirror nestled in the landing net, a great start! Looking around the lake I could see the usual early ‘mug’ fish being caught, especially on peg 6 which had been the most consistent peg all winter and was benefiting today from some shelter from the wind, being virtually flat. Peg 10 to my right also had a couple of early fish on the short pole line so things were starting to take shape.

A further 30 minutes on the method feeder proved fruitless apart from the odd tiny knock, so it was time to try the waggler. Apart from a few small skimmers and roach, and a lost foul hooked carp, as expected the waggler was proving difficult to present correctly and as peg 10 continued getting regular indications, it was time to try the short pole line.

I shipped out with a small Preston Innovations Soft CAD pot, positioned
close to the tip, containing a few of pieces of 6mm meat topped up with
Sonubaits Hemp and tapped them in, following it down with a single piece of meat on the hook. After five minutes another carp was on.

I quickly decided that as it was not only comfortable fishing, bearing in mind the conditions, with the good average size of fish, it was worth
concentrating on this line and being patient, rather than continually
swapping lines. Apart from the odd cast back to the island with the method feeder, and a half hour down to the margin peg which produced a couple of fish but no more than the short line in front, I concentrated on the meat line just feeding lightly for each bite.

By the end of the match I’d managed 10 carp, plus the silvers caught on
the waggler for 71lb. As expected, peg 6 who had caught pretty much from
start to finish weighed in 145lb to easily win the section and the match
overall, peg 10 to my right weighed 80lb for second and there was a 79lb
behind the island on peg 2. Reviewing the match after, bearing in mind
the average size of the fish, another couple (or even one) fish landed
and I could of been second so I was fairly happy with how it had gone.

Three of the four in our team had finished top half of our sections so we’d had a reasonable result on the day, and with the top two in my section framing in the top four overall weights, I managed to win the second in section money by double default! A nice little bonus!!

Sunday

Sunday was the start of a ten match Maver sponsored series, with some decent prize money for the top five in the series overall. With the best
eight results counting, everybody was keen to get off to a good start.

I drew peg 9 again but this time on Sellwood lake which had been very ‘peggy’ the day before, with 26lb coming off my peg, so it looked like a
possible difficult day ahead. Unfortunately it was also on the same bank as the previous days peg so conditions were pretty much the same with the wind again a problem. I thought to myself how lucky the guys on other side of the lake were, with flat water in front of them!

Sellwood is a very shallow lake with a maximum depth of about 2 1/2ft of water so my methods would be tip to the island, waggler as far as I could feed maggot in the wind, plus hopefully short and long pole, dependant on the weather.

With an island in front of me, I decided on the usual 20g Preston Innovations ICS Method Feeder and Sonubaits 2mm F1 Stikki Pellets combination, although slightly concerned to find only inches of water while clipping up when going tight. I think this had been caused by the bank collapsing so decided to start fishing in slightly deeper water about 1m off the island, maybe going closer later when it had warmed up.

A 3.0g loaded Drennan Crystal Insert waggler would make casting relatively easy, and one pole rig with a Drennan 0.3g AS3 float would suffice for both lines I intended to fish, with only a couple of inches difference between them.

The starting whistle blew and like the previous day, I was in no hurry to feed so went straight out on the method feeder to assess if there were any fish about. Three quarters of an hour later and not a touch!

The pole was next but I could see this was probably going to be more trouble than it was worth because with the open water, ripple and my poor eyesight combined, seeing the float would be a problem. I started short at about 8m, which wasn’t too bad, but after half an hour I’d only had a few small roach and ‘blade’ skimmers so was going nowhere fast!! A quick look long at 14m, and as I suspected, seeing the float was a nightmare, so rather than struggle I decided a cast with the waggler would be easier.

Generally the lake was fishing very hard apart from the known ‘flyer’ peg 14 which had easily won the lake the day before, and several matches throughout the winter, with the fish seemingly ‘balled up’ on it.

Sellwood is a lake that has had work done on it fairly recently, with all the fish being removed during the work, then re-stocked with small ‘pasty’ sized stock fish averaging 2lb. Therefore, if you fall behind it is very difficult to catch up with the lack of big fish available, so it is important not to fall too far behind (if you can help it of course!). Two hours into the six hour match and I probably only had a 1lb of ‘bits’ so something had to change!!

Being well down in the section and with not a lot to lose, I decided to take a bit of a gamble. As I couldn’t feed lightly or accurately when the wind was blowing,  I put a couple of medium sizes pouches of maggot out as far as I could when the wind dropped slightly . The problem with this though was that forcing them caused loose feed to cover quite a large area, but I felt that at least the waggler would allow me to cast around the swim to explore it.

Casting over the loose fed maggot, I soon starting getting bites,
firstly from more small silvers before eventually the rod bent round as
the first carp of the day was hooked. At last!! Persevering with the
waggler and reasonably heavy feeding during the lulls in the wind,
produced a few more carp and silvers over the next couple of hours. It
had also got decidedly warmer with the sun finally breaking through the
grey skies.

Eventually, the waggler line slowed right up as I expected it would, so now with only about an hour and a half to the finishing whistle, it was a choice between back on the tip or hope the margins would produce. I really didn’t fancy the margin line much as experience has taught me that fish really don’t like being on the end of a N/NE wind, so the tip it would be! For the same reason, I felt at least there was a bit of sheltered water on this line from the island, and hopefully the sun had added a few degrees temperature to the shallow water too.

I cast out with three maggots on the hook hoping for anything, in desperation! Fortunately after 5 minutes the tip bent round and another small carp was hooked and landed. That was it! I would now concentrate on this line until the end. Several more carp followed before the whistle and I was reasonably happy to have put some sort of weight together.

Now it was down to where I had finished in the section. Peg 14 had easily won the lake, having caught steadily all match. Pegs 5 and 15 had also caught well, so I was thinking mid-section was probably as much as I could hope for.

The scales confirmed this with Peg 15 weighing in 81lb, peg 5, 50lb and peg 16, 49lb. My dozen carp and silvers went 35lb, just beaten into fifth in section by a 37lb weight, so with 6lb and 18lb either side of me, and the venue experts having had a bad day too, I was reasonably happy.

After all, there’s still plenty of matches to go and I would surely have
better days (hopefully anyway!!).

Tight lines, Pete.