I’ve just returned from a trip to the dentists, where a clean bill of health for another six months was tempered slightly by the ominous warning that there was quite a lot of wear on my front teeth, making some veneers necessary in the not too distant future. “You must have done an awful lot of grinding your teeth over the years,” said the dentist. “Spending too much time watching Sheff United mate,” was my obvious reply!
In actual fact, them blades aren’t a reason for my teeth grinding at the moment, far from it actually. It’s the fishing that’s getting my back up! When you sit back and look at my results for the week they make decent reading even if I do say so myself, but any matchman who’s honest with himself will have experienced days or even runs like the one I’ve just had, so hopefully this weeks ramblings might perk some of you up & make you realise those ‘why does it always happen to me?’ days actually happen to all of us.
Alternatively, you could go for the ‘that Wraggy’s totally useless’ approach! I’ll leave it up to you to decide!
As planned, Wednesday saw me at Woodlands farm, Barlborough, for the weekly open. This venue has a nasty habit of throwing up a load of fish from one area on one day, then the same pegs being devoid of fish the next, so when I drew peg 32 on the island, which was at the right end going on Sundays results, my excitement was tempered slightly, especially as the wind had changed round completely to the opposite direction, and fish were showing over the other side of the lake.
I plumbed two spots at 10 o’clock and 2 o’clock down the track, intending to fish for the plentiful skimmers in the venue, and several spots along the far bank, these being earmarked for carp & F1’s, and fed as I went along via a kinder pot. 25 minutes in and I was really fancying my chances of breaking my voodoo up there, as both my track lines had produced a couple of skimmers, with a 21/2lb carp from one side and a 2lb F1 from the other – quite a start!
Unfortunately, I then reverted to type at Barlborough, not another bite for almost three hours! Six different lines along the far bank only produced a couple of liners, so a change was called for. Around Christmas the best bait for fishing across had been caster, and while I felt a pellet approach would be best in the slightly warmer conditions, I decided to try potting half a dozen casters in on one of my lines to see what happened. First drop in resulted in a nice slow bite that, had I been fishing pellet I would have probably deemed a liner, but I lifted into it, and two feet of elastic slid from the tip of the pole as an F1 dived down the shelf into the track!
Sorted it? Perhaps not, as next drop in resulted in a Rudd, followed ten minutes later by a hand-sized skimmer. I gave caster another go on a couple of my other lines, but only the odd silver was showing, and by now my mate Ian on the other end of the island was starting to get among them, both across and down the margins. Desperation time, and not wanting to be seen as a quitter, I reached into my carryall and grabbed a bag of GOT Baits Atomic Cloud.
Kill or cure, I had to see if I could sift a few fish from what seemed to be a barren peg. I’ve fished Woodlands since it opened, and know just how many fish there are in the place, so it’s difficult to believe there are none in front of you, especially as they seemed to be moving around more now, with the rise in water temperatures. I potted the cloud in dry for maximum effect, and shipped straight out with a 4mm expander on the hook. Barely three minutes after cupping the pungent feed into the swim, the float dipped then shot under, and another F1 was on the way to the net.
To cut a long story short, the same trick repeated another half-dozen times resulted in five more F1’s and a foul-hooked bream of 2lb, which kindly decided to ping off just out of netting range, and lay there for a second on the surface, almost sticking two fingers up at me then sinking away into the depths! With minutes remaining of the match I decided it was just one of those days, but packed up happy in the knowledge that potting the Atomic in had seemed to make a real and visible difference.
The scales told the tale; Ian blitzed the match from peg 36 with 35lb 8oz of carp and F1’s on both caster and meat, with another noted peg, number 8, regaining some of it’s earlier form and producing 21lb 9oz for Phil Lakin. The two were separated however by Chris Garlic on peg 20 who just pipped Phil for 2nd with 21.10, carp again making up a large proportion of his net, but with a fair percentage of skimmers added.
My 13lb 9oz saw me finish somewhere around half way, and I drove home thinking maybe if I’d been a little braver earlier in the match & fed the Atomic earlier, I might just have been in touching distance of the frame This set the tone for the week though, as Saturday saw me back at what used to be my favourite venue, KJS fisheries, on the canal. The first length has been closed for maintenance work & restocking, so the match was staged on the second length. Half way along there is a large bay where the canal widens from 12 to 25 metres, pegs which on their day can be absolute flyers or total pants, nothing in between.
Out came peg 34, just left of centre in the bay. My mate Tony Gillott, the co-owner of Oaks Lane Angling in Rotherham, had been on it the week before, and he’d struggled, so my optimism levels were none too high. I decided on a waggler and caster/pellet/meat approach, fishing tight across, rotating the hookbaits over loose fed caster to find what, if anything, the carp wanted. A few early Ide on caster got me off to a slow start, then I foul-hooked a 3lb carp in the fin, landing it successfully, and christening my new Shakespeare pellet waggler rod in the process!
It was actually the first carp I’d had on it, but I was hoping for more, and with a bit of luck I might even get one in the lip! No such luck though, as the following three fish were all fouled, and only one ended up in the net. Andy Shupak next door was also struggling, only catching silvers, and it seemed all the field were having the same problem with foul-hooked fish, most of which seemed to be coming unstuck. One of the Frecheville lads, Bob Dunstan, was 11-1 down at the half way mark in the match!
Around this time, someone must have flicked a switch somewhere, as I had a good positive bite on the waggler, and landed another carp, this time around 5lb, and Andy started to get a few indications on his pole line too. I’d fed a line at 13m all day, and when Andy had two fish and lost three in quick succession, it was obviously time for a look.
Within five minutes of dropping in on the pole line I was playing a carp, another 5lb fish. Bites continued till the end for both Andy and me, but he was catching carp while I was catching big skimmers, and falling steadily further behind. I did manage to snare another carp but it was a baby by KJS standards at 2lb. Some of the skimmers were actually bream come to think of it a couple of them nudging 3lb, but most of them were 10-14 oz in size.
A late switch to 14.5 and then 16m only yielded more skimmers, and I had to concede that Andy had got the carp lined up by playing a waiting game with the pole and sticking to the one line, with what proved to be the right approach on the day. As the scales arrived, 22lb was top weight, Andy taking an unassailable lead with a steady 50lb 10oz.
My 30lb 3oz next door could hardly count as respectable, but saw me into 2nd place, with Ian filling third with 23lb two pegs away. This was how it stayed until the very last man to weigh, that man being venue record holder Fred Turton. Fred was on end peg 19, notoriously a snag pit, but home to some real lumps. Word had spread along the bank early in the match that he’d had a few fish, and when he lifted his net out it looked close.
The fish must have been hollow though, as the scales settled on 40lb 4oz, securing second place and nudging me and Ian down to third and fourth respectively. Things looked up though as we found out they were paying the top four! I still felt I’d gone about it wrong though, trying too hard to make the wag work, when a more attentive approach to the pole line may have seen me run Andy a bit closer. All in all, I felt I’d got out of jail a little on the day.
Sunday, and the usual trip through Bawtry to Bank End, and I was rubbing my hands at my peg 8 draw! The wind had got up overnight, but it was off our backs, and the pegs around me were in the lee of the farmhouse, making for a comfortable days fishing on pegs with some good recent form.
I plumbed up at almost 13m and found a nice flat spot in the steadily sloping bottom. This was supposed to be my banker swim, I’d just have a few on the tip until the carp turned up in numbers on this line, then steadily amass a 50-60lb weight. In my dreams!
The match actually started off well for me, first chuck on the feeder I picked up to wind in & found one attached! The fish was hooked under the gills, but not to worry, it was in the onion bag so no problem. Little did I know it was an omen for what was to follow. A fish on the next chuck, this time hooked in the mouth seemed to show my cunning plan was going well. However, 20 minutes later and no more bites saw the wheels come off just a bit!
John Lindley on peg 6 had also had a decent start, with three fish in the net, but it seemed all the lake had switched off, not an entirely uncommon occurrence at this time of the year. This was when my problems started. A huge bite on the tip saw me a little perplexed as I picked up to no resistance? Winding in, I found a small scale on the hook, and wrote it off as one of those crazy things that can happen on commercials at this time of year, when the fish start to have ‘other things’ on their minds.
A couple of casts later, another bite saw the fish come unstuck on the way in, and while there was no evidence of the fish being foul-hooked, it didn’t feel right when I’d first picked up on the bite. This repeated itself right through the day, catching fish but experiencing odd ones coming off for no apparent reason, with the odd scale as a ‘battle souvenir’. My pole line that I’d lovingly nurtured for the first two hours threw a fish up first drop, and just to highlight what a strange day it was, it was my smallest of the day, instead of the expected bigger stamp that usually come to the pole line.
Nothing I could do would buy another bite on the pole despite several attempts, so I settled down to a last hour on the tip. John two pegs down had been catching in fits and starts much the same as I had, but seemed to have the numbers on me, and my fish didn’t seem to be any bigger than usual, but I felt it could be close between us for the section. A late, late burst of four fish in the last 15 minutes boosted me up a little, but as the whistle went I was hoping that John would frame and I would then perhaps nick the section.
Owners Andrew & David soon arrived with the scales, and john posted 17lb 11oz. My estimated 12-13lb actually went 16.14, leaving me rueing the fish that had come off, or rather not finding a solution to the problem of them foul-hooking up against the feeder rig. A quick chat with John after the scales had left showed he too had experienced more fish losses than normal, so it seemed the foul-hooking epidemic we’d experienced the day before at KJS had followed me up the M18! I took a walk up to Graham Webster on peg 11, and he’d weighed 10lb-odd, which had put him 3rd up to press. A phone call from his mate in the high numbered pegs had said it had fished hard down there, and he reckoned we could be the top two with our weights!
As I packed my last bits and pieces away, John came back round from the other side of the lake and confirmed that indeed we were first and second, and the lake had fished badly right through. Last laugh went to Graham Lavender on peg 7 between us. He’d come in for some untold stick all day, called ‘fishcake’ (battered both sides) asked if he wanted some Savlon to soothe the aches of the spanking he was getting, etc. and his near double figure weight won him the section by double default! You can’t have a bad day at Bank End, if you don’t catch much, at least you’ll have a good laugh! So, on the face of it a second and a third form three matches is not to be sniffed at, but when you break it down, with a little more luck and a couple of better decisions on each of the days it could have been much better. Hopefully weeks like this one will be few & far between or I’m going to be getting a right dentists bill!
good write up again mark all noted for when we next cross poles keep it up.
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Tom
