By Stewart Lister | No Comments
Last updated: Saturday, June 14, 2008

Saturday saw us travel to Sunny Devon to compete in the Inter Counties match at Milemead fishery in Tavistock. This series is the brainchild of John Forster and initially it was to be contested by teams of 8 from Cornwall, Somerset and Devon. Unfortunately Somerset couldn’t find enough anglers so at the last minute had to pull out. Never mind there is always next year. The match is split into to two leagues A and B with exactly the same entry money and prize fund. The winning team is fishing for 800 golden nuggets!

Pieces of eight! Pieces of eight!

Our A squad was a little short due to the SW Super League at Porth on the same weekend so I drafted in three super subs for the day. The Pirate of Penzance aka Jim Smith is still ‘living’ in our neck of the woods so was eligible, along with Bolingey supremo Mike O’Gorman who incidentally is on fire at the moment and cannot stop winning! Gwinear and Bream expert Mark Lazell also joined the ship. The rest of the team included Andy Dare, Skip McCabe, Boz Phillips, John Waples and myself. We had drawn the Carp Lake and were up against Devon’s finest who also had the same problem losing anglers to the

Super League.

The carp lake was a new experience to me and to half of our team so was going to be interesting. As you would expect it is full of carp and there are a load of skimmers and roach present. It was the carp that we were after with the skimmers as backup. At the draw I made the mistake of putting my name at the top of the team sheet, and when I drew 23 for myself out of the bag it was met with silence! Not what I wanted to hear so to speak. Every other peg I drew out was greeted with the words of flyer, I don’t believe it or if the fish are there he will empty it!

I was told that my peg had a good edge and should catch there. The problem was I was out on a spit facing the main lake, I had to my right Nick Jones and we were at right angles to each other, this in effect made our pegs a bit limited. We had a gentleman’s agreement not to fish longer than 14 ½ metres and make it pole only otherwise we would have been fishing down the same hole or crossing lines. My edge swim was very close due to a tree to my right, it did look good but I was concerned that putting keepnets in a lake that does not normally see nets would slow that line down.

My tackle consisted of .3 gram Cralusso Capri rigs to tackle the five foot deep swim at 6 and 14 ½ metres and the edge. I also set up a shallow rig for carp. Bait was dampened micro pellets, pellets, corn and frenzied spicy cat meat.

Here we go

The match started and I cupped in some micro pellets and went over the top of those with corn hoping for a couple of early bream, my peg started fizzing immediately but no bites. I was pinging pellets out at 14 ½ metres slightly to my left and after 30 minutes saw a swirl! I was on the long pole and shallow as quick as I could, and within minutes was playing a good fish. It unfortunately was foul hooked and came off. I tried that line for the next 40 minutes without so much as a liner!

From my peg I could just about see the whole lake and could tell that we as a team were doing ok after a slow start we were pulling back a few points. Skip initially caught fishing the long pole over to the far bank but was slowing. Next to him was Devons Mark Cullerton who was sacking. To my left was Bob Rand who was fishing over a sunken island and catching well. He was giving a running commentary about every fish and bite! Skip was getting neck ache and I was getting earache! Dirty tactics from our opponents!

My match didn’t really start I had a couple of bream and two carp for just under 15lb! I was a little annoyed with myself for not bringing any casters with me, as silver fishing would have been a better option considering the peg I was in. I am definitely drafting hindsight into the next match as he is brilliant! The rest of the team did well especially our super subs as two returned with a top three in section and the Pirate was a section winner with 54lb.The match was won by Mark Cullerton with 71lb. Cornwall were victorious on the day beating Devon by 8 points. Mind you they were a man short!

On the other lake the B squads battled it out under difficult conditions and made it a clean sweep for Cornwall by taking the spoils with 29 points to 43. Well done lads! The next match is at the end of the month at Gwinear.

Walkabout Wednesday

Wednesday saw me travel back to Devon and Stafford Moor for the Fish and Chip match and I was really looking forward to it after last week. At the draw owner Andy was in a jubilant mood after a string of good weights had been taken from his first class fishery in the last week. He told me that there were a couple of pegs left in the bag that could possibly achieve a double ton! I had a dip and pulled out peg 32 the look on his face told me that I had not drawn one of them! But, to be fair the peg produced a second last week with 150lb so I was confident of catching a few.

I wandered around to my peg and saw that I had an island but it was a very long chuck! The wind was quite strong left to right and slightly facing. I doubted that I would be able to feed the island but setup a straight lead in hope that the wind would subside! I also set up a Cralusso rocket light and had a good plumb around with this looking for the edge of a gravel bar that I was told was in my swim. I eventually found it to my right. I decided that I was going to concentrate here. It was about ¾ over towards the island. I was going to fish to the maxim ‘It’s better to fish in the wrong place well, than the right place poorly’

I also assembled a pellet waggler and a long pole to fish shallow. I just wanted to see if this would work. My thinking was that the top places in today’s match were going to come from the other bank low numbers and peg 36. So I was going to experiment with the long pole to see if it was a viable method nothing ventured nothing gained.

At the start I went on the straight lead and fired pellets over the top. I tried to get some 11mm towards the island but could get nowhere near! I fished the edge of the bar for an hour for two skimmers! I had also been feeding at 14 ½ metres so I gave that another hour for two more skimmers and some roach. This wasn’t looking good. I went back to the van for some PVA and fished the island for awhile with the T bag but that didn’t produce anything! But I knew that nothing much was been caught on my bank. That is with the exception of Dave Stockton who was catching well on peg 36 on the waggler.

His travelling partner Chris Haines was also catching really well opposite him on peg 1. It was looking like a happy trip home for those two.

Give em some

Personally I was at a bit of a loss as I just could not find any carp. I made my mind up to feed heavily on the waggler line and just fish shallow for the remainder of the match to see if I could force the fish to feed. Well, that is what I did and have to say that I finished the match with more keepnets in the lake than I had carp! Let me explain. Andy’s rule is no more than 60lb of fish in anyone net and silvers to be kept separate. So expecting a large weight I put in four keepnets at the start, rather than more as and when during the match. I finished the match with three carp but they had loads of room!

The match winner was Dave Stockton with an impressive 175lb of waggler caught carp. Dave had waited for 4 years to draw that peg and made no mistake when he finally did.