First Win Of The Year!

Well its been a bit of a strange weekend for me with two very different performances!On Saturday I was off to Lindholme to fish the teams of 3, my team is Alan Scotthorne, Lee Kerry and myself so we have a good chance of winning it. Neil has decided to decided the outcome on weight which makes things a little dodgy as some teams could fish the last few when it gets mild and sack up!!!!

Anyway we had a job to do and strangely enough I drew next to Alan and Alan was opposite Lee, it was blowing a hooly and I half fancied my bonsai 62 draw altho I didnt think we would beat the 40’s which are awesome at present, I decided to set up a long pole swim and a bomb and a feeder to cover my options. I kicked off on the pole and couldn’t get a bite off anyone of my 3 lines which I was a bit worried about, Alan had already caught a few fish on the tip so I followed suit and quickly netted two of my own but I wasn’t very optimistic as I wasn’t getting a liner just the odd bite out of the blue, everyone elses tips where never still. Also John Kelly was chucking to the same point as me and had the same problem. And after two hours my 2 carp where not very encouraging, I could see Lee catching and Alan was catching steady so least they were putting some weight together. I decided to give the pole another crack and had a few fish on it, but again there definitely wasn’t many fish there either. So with an hour to go I had about 8 fish and decided to just fish the bomb for the last hour I did manage 5 or 6 fish but my measly 19lb didn’t help the lads much.

Alan weighed 33lb and lee had 44lb and with that we were second on the day. But the less said about the day the better!!!!

Anyway on the Sunday it was to be the second round of the Thorne pairs and after a good first round we were both buzzing, now after getting beaten off the next peg last time I was determined not to let it happen again!!!! I had a re think of my mix and decided to add another mix to make it more sticky and im much happier with it this time round. Anyway I drew for us again and put myself on peg 296 at Stannilands boat yard, and put lee on peg 140 at the New Inn length. My draw was bang on and I was really happy with it and Lee’s was ok but knew he would be fine there as his form on the canal is nothing short of awesome!!!! When I got to my section I realised id forgot my barrow so had to carry my gear to my peg and I was soon loaded up like a donkey and headed for peg 296, as I was walking up the towpath I noticed that there was at least 18inch of water missing from the canal!!! This is something ive never seen before and I was worried what the fishing would be like as a result.

When I got to my peg the lads said they where going to fill the canal back up again during the day so I knew it would be important to plumb up really regular during the day. I also had a feeling that the roach would be elusive for the first few hours or so, and in my experience its best to put a decent hit of bait in, in this situation so when they finally do ‘land’ they don’t leave you. I set up 4 rigs this time a .4 and .6gr senses lomme pencil style float on 0.10 maver genesis with and 0.06 hook length and 22 fine match hook. I also set up a .4gr rive 4 float for the 16m raw line, and a 0.4gr wire bristled float for the perch. The mix I came up with was 30% Dynamite Silver X Canal and Lake Brown, 30% Dynamite Black Roach, 30% River and 10% brown crumb, all passed through a flour sieve a couple of times to get rid of the large particles. This made a nice fine sticky mix that I was sure would be ideal. Anyway my plan was to feed 5 balls of leam with 150ml of joker at 7m and 6 balls of groundbait with 250ml in at 13m, I also fed some raw at 16m as a just in case swim as you sometimes catch bream on this section.

Anyway at the start of the match it was clear there was no roach to be caught, and the only fish being caught where tiny 3 to the ounce perch!!!! I decided to get my head down tho and just leave the longer swims alone incase the roach did arrive, I didn’t wanna drop on it and catch 2-3 quick ones before they settled and end up spooking the rest of their mates!!!!! So anyway after 2 and a half hours and probably 100 perch for roughly 2lb I was winning the section as everyone else didn’t seem to want to catch the tiny perch and would rather sit biteless, then I got a call off Lee who had done the same then after 3 hours dropped long and caught roach straightaway while everyone else in his section couldn’t catch one!

I promptly shipped out and had a roach straight away of maybe 6oz and followed by 40 or so of his mates! I even had a really nice fish of around a pound all on single joker, and no one else could catch one. I was really enjoying myself when someone had to go and call time! I weighed 9lb 8oz and second in the section was 5lb followed by some 2lb’s so I’d done well, a quick phone call to lee and he’d walked his section too with a brilliant 5lb 10oz. What was interesting was both me and lee hammered the perch for 3 hours then went across, everyone else in both our sections went long early. In Lee’s section he had 40 roach while everyone else had 3-4! Now that cant just be a coincidence.

Anyway as it turned out I’d won the match and we also took the pairs spoils too. So after two rounds and two wins its looking very good for our campaign!!!