By Tom | No Comments
Last updated: Wednesday, March 12, 2008

I had agreed to go down to Browning Cudmore to bank run with Triana North on saturday, and had been looking forward to it, I find I learn more doing this than fishing myself!

I picked Matt up, and we headed off down there on the Saturday morning, and with the weather feeling milder I anticipated the venue fishing well. When we arrived, it seemed the wind had got up however, and with the forecast predicting a bad weekend with gale forced winds, we weren’t sure how the day would pan out.

All the Triana lads seemed well up for it however, and I could sense a real confidence within the team. The team were reasonably happy with the draw, but not knowing the venue really well, we didn’t know where the bad pegs were! I have to say, I felt sorry for team captain Bryan Hawkes however, as he had drawn on the section on Brewsters, a lake that no one had fished in practice! Talk about leading from the front!

Matt drew on pool three, and was happy on there, as he had drawn on it twice in practice, and felt that the method the team had sorted would work well for him.

I asked Bryan where he thought I ought to go to be of most use to the team, with bank running being banned on the New Pools he thought it best I sat behind Matt, where I could see three anglers, so this is what I did, more a case of bank sitting than bank running really!

I won’t run through the match itself, as Matt has covered this quite extensively in his blog. As I said at the beginning of the article, I love watching other anglers fish, and Matt fished an awesome match, a real joy to watch.

Despite a shakey start, when the kid on the next peg took three carp on the tip before he had a bite, he soon took the lead, and I felt he was in front for most of the day. I could see Mark Wilson on Pool four catching, and an early phone call confirmed Paul Crossland on pool two was doing well in his section.

From what I could see, all three Triana lads were well up, and when I spoke to Bryan half way through the match and he said he felt he too was well up in his section, which was fishing really hard, I had a feeling that things were looking promising for the team.

When the match finished I had a walk round and spoke to Andy Shaw who hoped to be in the top four of his section after a run of better fish, and so it turned out.

The team won by a convincing margin, with everyone recording good points from the areas they were in. It was a fantastic feeling seeing them do so well, and even though I hadn’t fished I shared in their joy, and even managed to sneak on the team photograph!

They are a fantastic set of blokes, and even though I haven’t known many of them for very long, they have really made me feel welcome and part of the team. I can’t wait for the Drennan league to start in the summer to get into fishing with them. Based on what I saw on Saturday, I will have a tough job getting picked though!

Should Have Stopped In Bed!

Sunday saw me venture to Straight Mile for the eighth round of the Woodseats Winter League. This is a venue that has a history of being either very kind or very cruel to me, and unfortunately on Sunday, it wasn’t feeling kind! To keep any hope alive of doing anything in the league, I knew I needed a section win, and when I drew peg 43 on the back bank, with former police national champion Bob Poole on the end peg, I knew I would need a miracle.

The pegging was fairly tight, and more annoying still, there was a thick hawthorne hedge about five metres behind me, making shipping back a nightmare. My normal approach at straight mile is to fish at five and 14.5 metres with chopped worm and caster, and keep alternating between the two lines.

The venue has a massive head of roach, but also a good head of chub and carp that tend to dominate the frame. Bob Poole won one with 132lb of chub last year, which shows the kind of weight you can amass if you are sat on them.

The end pegs always tend to dominate here in winter however, I was lucky enough to draw one in the winter league a couple of years ago, and won the match with 73lb on a day when half the field blanked, which shows just how tight the fish can shoal up.

A lot of anglers fish with maggots for the venues prolific stock or roach, but I find it draws in to many blades, and though you often wait longer for bites with the worm, when the float goes it tends to be a decent stamp fish. I normally expect to catch roach short on the five metre line, then some bigger chub and carp long later on in the day.

The problem on the day though was that there hadn’t been a match in the venue for a month, so nobody really knew what to expect. We were all, in effect, stabbing in the dark.

I stuck to my usual approach, and was pleased when no one around me went longer than 13 metres, as I had a load of water to myself on the long pole, which I opted to fish at 16 metres. I had a promising start to the day on the short line, taking five stamp roach, while others around me were getting bits. Bob Poole on the end peg was catching well, as I predicted however, and when someone walked round after an hour and a half and told me he was admitting to 7lb already, I knew I would have to try and get some bigger fish. I had been feeding my long line, and decided to venture out over it.

Unfortunately all I could get was roach, but I was catching good stamp fish at a reasonable rate. I kept feeding heavily, as the head of roach in here dictates that you have to keep the feed going in or the stamp gets smaller. Besides, I wanted something on the bottom in case the bigger chub and carp turned up.

I didn’t feel I had a choice but to keep doing this, as Bob was still catching well, and I felt I couldn’t catch him up with roach alone. When, around half way through the match talk came down the bank of anglers at the top end of my bank catching carp, I felt confident sooner or later some bigger fish would show. With two hours to go, Craig Parsissons two pegs to my left took a chub knocking on five pounds, and this made me decide to scrap the short line altogether and sit it out long for the rest of the match.

Unfortunately, nothing materialized except a few more roach. I weighed 7lb 5oz for third in my five peg section. Bob Poole won the section with 13lb of roach, Steve Gasston was second off the peg to my left with a 12lb net of roach, he fished a steady match and caught all day down the track on maggot.

The frustrating thing is, if I would have fished in a similar way with the worm I am confident I could have caught more than the maggot boys, and probably have won the section, I had misjudged the amount I needed to catch though, and thought more bigger fish would show. I also thought Bob had caught more than he actually had. Back to the drawing board I’m afraid !

It is annoying when you leave a peg knowing you haven’t fished it right, but as they say hindsight is a wonderful thing, and it would only have taken a couple of the big chub or carp that showed further up the lake to bump me up to a section win or even a frame place.

League organizer, Mark Holmes won the match with a cracking 21lb net of roach, which shows a single minded roach attack paid off on the day. Next weekend, I’ve got Barlborough and Hallcroft so I can only hope my look improves for then!