The Partridge Family

Since the new year I fished several matches on Cudmore, on Suez and Brewsters lakes. But I have been consistently unable to get on the preferred Suez, constantly drawing Brewsters. A couple of section wins, and a couple of nowheres, without a personal weight above 11lb, had me looking elsewhere, especially when the highly entertaining Scouse mafia moved on to pastures new. The shocking weather hasn’t helped Cudmore, or anywhere else, but I decided to target somewhere new with a larger head of small fish.

Partridge – Visit 1

The Partridge complex near Warrington is a family of lakes (ok, this Partridge Family joke is a bit contrived, and no-one under 35 will remember it, but so what). They runs opens Saturday and Sunday, with no need to book in, so my brother and I spent a Saturday mooching around, and then returned the following week to give it a crack. The lakes currently used in opens are canal type affairs, approx 12-13 metres across and stuffed with small stockies, typically 3 to the pound.

The first match I fished was three weeks ago, and I drew peg 37, a nice-looking corner swim with options across and down the margin to the empty peg 36 to my right. The web chat rooms had suggested maggot and micro-pellets were the best, so I plumbed up across, found 2ft near to the far bank, and put in three swims, spread across about 5 metres of the far bank. My left hand swim was next to a canopy of grass that had grown out, the middle swim was next to some dead stick-ups, and the right hand swim was by the end of the island. (I wasn’t short of features).

In addition, I put in two lines down the track, one to the left and one to the right, and also a margin swim down to the platform on 36 on my right. By the time I had set up all these lines, I had forgotten where I’d put my first swim, so had to put the plummet on again and go over and check!
I decided to attack it just like Suez, so on the all-in put 2 maggots and 7 or 8 damp micros into each of the far lines, and cupped in ~25 maggots into each of the middle swims. I put just micros, maybe 20/30 into the right hand margin.
When I dropped in on the far line with maggot on the hook, something amazing happened – the float went under. Rotating across the three far swims, feeding and then leaving, I had a steady stream of stockies for the first 30 minutes, but then my middle swim started to die, quickly followed by my right hand swim, leaving only my left hand swim still producing (grass canopy). I re-fed my middle and margin lines but it was way too early to come onto them, so I faced a dilemma – plunder (and possibly ruin) my one productive far swim, or try and persevere rotating across all three. I opted for the latter, allowing myself no more than two quick fish off the canopy line before sitting and waiting on the other two lines. This yielded odd fish, but was slowing me right down. Of course, this is where venue knowledge is so vital – stick or twist?
Determined not to kill my one remaining productive line, I had a look down the middle, but could only muster an ide, despite spending 10 mins on each line. My brother Pete, drawn to my left, had started to catch down the margin so I optimistically had a look on my margin swim with pellet – not a bite.
The angler to my right was starting to catch down the middle, but appeared to be feeding absolutely nothing. He wasn’t going mad but was now catching quicker than me. I started to think that if I could combine my opening hour with his middle hour, I might be on to a winning combination. I spoke to him later and he was dead honest, telling me he was feeding very occasional small balls of fishmeal groundbait and fishing it out.
Back to the chase, and with maybe two hours to go I decided to exploit the grass canopy line. It actually stayed alive reasonably well, producing steady fish all match, probably helped by the two further 20 minute spells I had trying to make my middle and margin lines work. I ended up with 13lb, way off the 20lb winning weight. The relatively heavy feeding with maggot down the middle had been a complete failure, but I had learnt a lot.
Partridge – Visit 2
This time I whisked up a bag of Ringers Dark green, and as Steve May put in a last minute appearance, gave half of it to him. I drew Peg 7 which looked to be a typical peg midway along one arm.

I set up exactly as before, using a Gaz Malman float over and a Hillbilly float down the track. My brother Pete has got into these hand-made floats recently, using Malmans, Hillbillies and Sconees, so after hearing him rave on about them I agreed to give them a try. The far bank float has quite a thick tip, which I prefer when dotting right down, because when I do this with a fine tipped float I can’t actually see it.

In the middle I only put one swim, feeding it with a small ball of fishmeal every half hour. The track here was actually a bit deeper than the previous week, probably 6ft plus, so I’m sure the fish will come shallow here in the summer. Andy May assures me that if you’ve got proper depth in the middle of a snake lake then you can put your track line right in front of you, only if you have less depth here do you need to put extra sections on go to the left or right. On this basis, I put my track line straight ahead of me. Again a margin to my right was fed with pellet.

And again the three far lines I put in produced from the off, this time lasting precisely or 1 hour and 15 minutes, when it started to slow. All three far lines were more or less dead by 1 hour 30 minutes into the match. I then had a quick look down the track and had a few iffy bites but no return, so I came in on the margin. With 3mm expander on the hook, I took a fish a chuck for half an hour before they drifted off.
I had kept feeding over, and managed to pick up odd fish when I went back across, but it was slow. I decided to try something different, and started pinging maggots tight over which yield a few quick fish but then nothing. It just felt wrong so I stopped it.
When I came in again down the margin I had 4 fish quickly before losing a slightly bigger fish (10 oz maybe!) in the nearside vegetation. This killed the swim completely and I didn’t get another bite off it. In the last half hour I had 3 or 4 fish down the track, but was plagued by iffy bites (liners) and foul-hooked fish. I’m not quite sure what was going on. I’ll be putting a heavier float on next time.

At the scales I tipped on a big 19lb, which was enough for the section. The overall match was won with 26lb, which would have been achievable for me if I’d been able to get the track swim working. My brother Pete won his section with 21lb, mostly from down the middle, so we’ve shared ideas and are going to the next match armed with more insight. The hand-made floats did their job well. I still think ‘a float is a float’, and there’s not too much difference between them, but on balance the hand-mades do shade it, so I will be grabbing hold of a few myself.
Steve May had 17lb, but said he found it a bit predictable. There is a plan to put a few 2lb-3lb fish in it to give those who have fallen behind something to play for. Me, I loved it, and will be back next week. I think commercial fishing is all about building a schedule for the full five hours. If I can work out how to sequence and stitch together my long, middle and margin lines, I may just have a plan. I’ll keep you posted.
Partridge – visit 3
Not much to report on this one, which was last Saturday. I was home by 2pm, having taken 45 minutes to get my first bite, and managing only 7 further fish in the next 2 hours, by which time the bloke to my right must have had 30lb, catching one a chuck from the start. They put us on Pool 4 for this match, which didn’t appear to be so consistent. I was on peg 77, and bagging-machine to my right was on 76. He had a corner to go at, and was pegged at the end of the island, so it looked nice but to be fair to him he must also have done something right. I presume he went on to win it but I don’t know for sure. Good luck to him.
There wasn’t the head of fish in front of me, but I also think made a mistake by starting a bit too long, fishing tight to the far bank cover. Next time I’d start a meter out from the far bank, maybe in 3 foot of water. I guess that’s the problem with only small fish in the lake – once you fall too far behind there is nothing you can do. So I opted for the cricket instead – another bad decision.
Never mind, I’ll be back on Saturday, seconds out… Round 4.

PS. I forgot my camera…can you tell?