So bank holiday Monday, otherwise known as ‘Mayday’ saw me trek up to Swindon for the annual Millennium trophy event held at Peatmoor lagoon. Last year I managed to win the match with 14 bream on the feeder for 38lb and I didn’t plan to do anything different this year. It’s also a good event to have a catch up with all the lads as I hadn’t seen any of them since White Acres.
A nice early start to see it was lashing down with rain, GREAT! Considering it had been 30 degrees the day before. However, by the time we had met everyone and we were at the draw the rain had stopped and it looked to be a nice day. This year I was drawn on peg 71, in an inset bay, not where I wanted to be at all, but nevertheless I was still gonna go for it! I was happy to see that I had drawn on the point of the island, just like last year, and everyone told me how much of a drawbag I was and how I would win the match, great I’m thinking, nice days bream fishing on feeder again. But I had my doubts, the bream don’t tend to like the blazing hot sun and the weather the day previous was bound to put ‘em off.
I set up one feeder rod, a roach rig, a skimmer rig and a down the edge rig just to keep our manager Colin Dance happy as he said I would sack up on carp! The roach rig was just a Preston Chianti on 0.10 Powerline straight to a 16 PR23, I was looking at fishing Casters on this rig, but didn’t plan to use it much, the rig was tied to a number 8 Preston Slip Elastic. The skimmer rig was a 4×14 Carpa Porth fished straight through on 0.11 Powerline to a 18 PR21 as I was aiming to use small bits of worm on this rig, this was tied to a soft Preston 9H Hollo elastic and this was set through a Preston pull bung. The edge rig, well that doesn’t really matter if I’m totally honest cause I didn’t pick it up once even though I loose fed corn down there all day long!
The feeder rod I used was a 11/13ft Preston Innovations Sentinent fitted with a 3/4oz glass tip. The reel was a Daiwa 3003CU and mainline was 8lb Daiwa Match Winner. In the end of the mainline I tied a 3inch loop which I tied my feeder to. I did this by passing the loop through the swivel eye, then passing the feeder through the loop and tightening. Most venues nowadays don’t allow fixed feeder methods so the paternoster set up would normally be out of the question. However after watching a few matches at Bough Beech I picked up a little trick on how to use a paternoster, but get away with it being a free running rig (will upload pictures to ‘Techniques’ section soon’. You simply tie your hooklength with a loop at the end as usual, lay this loop against the main line above the feeder, pass the hook around the mainline and back through your hooklength loop. So you’re effectively using the loop to loop method except with your hooklength and mainline. Once tied on the mainline slide it down to the top of the knot of the loop the feeder is on. The hooklength was 0.13mm Powerline as there were a few carp swimming about and I wanted half a chance of landing them, and the hook was a size 16 Gamakatusu Pellet, again a strong enough pattern but well suited to bream fishing.
The groundbait mix I used was 1 bag of the new Sensas IM5, and 1 bag of Preston Sonubaits Mix One, this is a nice fishmeal/pellet based mix and the bream love it! To this I fed a few wetted 2mm pellets and every time I cast out I would fill the feeder with chopped worms and caster and plug the ends with this mix. If I started to miss bites then I would cut back on feed and jus feed groundbait.
The Match
So the start of the match saw me pot in a full pot of chopped worms and caster at 13 metres. I then picked my feeder rod up, took the hooklength off and launched out 15 feeder fulls of groundbait plugged chopped worms and caster. I then replaced the hooklength, put on two dead maggots and chucked it out. I placed it on my rest and waited for a decent pull round, or at least a decent tug on the tip. When bream fishing I like to sit with the rod angled to the right, and sit the but on a but rest. This allows me to be able to move about without disturbing the rod position, and it means I can spot whenever the tip moves.
First chuck I had no signs, second none, but third I was rewarded with the tip being slowly dragged round and as I leant into my first bream I could tell it wasn’t a bad fish. A small scrap and a couple of minutes late I had my first 3lb bream in the net. Great start to the match! Well the next hour was slow and I didn’t have another fish! I had a quick look on the pole and didn’t have a nibble. So back to the feeder, the rod was soon off the rest and after an even better scrap I had a 2lb tench in the net. Next cast and I was off my box draining off my casters when the rod was ripped round, the lads sitting with me shouted at me as the tip dropped back, I leant into a much better fish but I could tell by the way it shook its head it wasn’t a bream. Anyway it was soon in the bushes sticking out of the island and eventually it came off, I came back to find no hooklength and was very frustrated. So I carried on plodding away as they say and didn’t have another bite for an hour. So I took the hooklength off and chucked out another 7 or so feeder fulls. I was rewarded with another bream straight away, this time on a head of a dendrebena and a dead red maggot. I chucked the feeder back out and missed a bite, gutted!
That was the end of that and with 20 minutes to go I decided to re-feed. I fed about another 8 feeder fulls of the chop worm and caster mix and sat and waited patiently. I new I was neck and neck with a couple of other lads for the match win but I needed one more fish to seal it. A small tug on the rod saw me lean into my third and final bream of the match. Just as I re-cast the whistle blew and that was the millennium trophy over for another year.
The Result
At the weigh in I put 10lb 15oz onto the scales and that was good enough to win the section by a clear 12 ounces! Close or what?!
I knew I had framed but as usual people were winding me up telling me that someone had 11 lb and ‘so and so’ had 12lb… bla, bla, bla!!
I was pleasantly surprised to win the match for the second year running, and was even more chuffed that the Farnborough Pink side had won the match dropping only one point. If your wondering about the Farnborough Pink name, well it originated from this match last year, where we had an absolute crueller and lost to the girls team! So from then on we’ve been known as Farnborough Pink and have only been beaten once since! Not bad eh?!
Watch this space and find out how I did two weeks later at the UK Pole Champs and see what happened at the second round of the summer league. There’s a bit of a surprise in there somewhere…..
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Tom
