Something’s Burning

It was good to see 20 plus anglers milling around the car park at Gwinear, it felt like a ‘big match’ for the bank holiday open. I had heard that Gwinear was on fire but what I saw in the car park was not what I was expecting at the fishery. I heard shouts of ‘Roger your car’. At the far end of the car park smoke was billowing from the front of Roger Bakers car, the ageing scribe set of running like Usain Bolt winning another 100 metres, only to find some wag had placed a small smoke bomb under the front of his prized possession! It was a giggle; I’m not sure Roger thought it so funny but he soon saw the funny side of it and joined in the laughter.

Andy Dare was holding the bag of dreams and I had my dip, out came peg 13 on phase 3. This peg is around old peg 19 and was very close to where I fancied fishing which was two pegs to my left. I would have been very happy there as it is where the fish have recently been showing shallow, when I walked around to my peg they were topping in numbers, I hoped that I could encourage them to dine at my table!

Simples

It was a simple set up, a gram rig to fish in the deep water, a half gram rig for 6m and some shallow rigs in the hope that they would move out of the bowl to my left. Bait was some dampened micro pellets 6mm hookers, some corn and a few worms. At the start I potted some micros and worms on two lines and started on the 6m line. A 2lb carp first drop gave me some confidence but it was the scout unfortunately and he never got back to tell his buddies where the free offerings were! 15 minutes later and I was out fishing long on the deck and I started to find some fish. It was hard work as it was very windy but the float was going under so stuck at it.

I plodded on throughout an enjoyable match but I had too many quite spells, the fish didn’t want to know shallow and I caught all my 30 carp on the bottom switching between two lines. I recorded around 55lb to come about halfway on the lake. John Hethrington won phase three with 75lb from peg 20 to complete a good couple of days for himself. Again everybody felt that they had a chance of picking up the lake money.

The urge to bag

On Wednesday morning I had the urge to go Mawgan Porth and quickly got my gear ready there were a few booked in and I really fancied a day bagging up. Bernie was in attendance holding the bag today and I was pleased to see peg 46 in my hand again, I will be called Robinson before long if I keep drawing on the island. Come to think of it he was on an island for years, that wouldn’t be a bad thing as there are a few cracking pegs over the bridge!

As I got to my peg it looked like it was about to start raining rain, the first job was to get the brolly up I was not getting drenched like last week. Just as well I did as it started raining at 11am when the match started and it stopped at 4pm when we finished, strange how that seems to happen at the all out!

I remembered the last time I fished this peg and the slow last 90 minutes I was hoping that it was not a repeat performance for me today. I set up four rigs all J13 floats that were going to serve two purposes for me. They were my edge rig and also my shallow ring in case I needed to fish a little further out.

Flying start

Starting close in the fish were there and it was one a bung, for the first two hours on 6mm pellet and then within minutes of entering the third hour it was slowing down! I had 120 fish in the nets at the time but was now struggling for bites. I started feeding at 5m and eventually got the odd carp fishing shallow, I was getting loads of bites but it was my mates the pesky skimmers. I must have thrown back 10 pounds of them! I had 40 carp in the last part of the match so once again the peg just died on me.

Conundrums!

On a previous occasion when the swim died the weather changed with rain on the way. Today the rain just got heavier as the day went on so maybe it is a pressure thing that puts the fish off? It is also the build up to the full moon on Friday so a culmination? Perhaps, I just fed it wrong but a few of the other anglers also said they struggled for the last couple of hours, we can’t all have done it wrong, can we? Just to confound things John Leeds was on peg 47 behind me, he had a slower first couple of hours but caught well towards the end of the match. As I was throwing those pesky skimmers back I could hear him land carp after carp! It is a strange old game this fishing but I for one am glad it is, otherwise if we didn’t have to think about it would become boring.

The verdict

The scales came around and there had been some good weights with Harry leading the pack with 176lb until we came to the island. John Leeds put just short of a double ton on the scales to take the lead and I fell an agonising few fish short with 181lb it was another close run match, enjoyable if not a little frustrating!

Congratulations to Wayne Ledbury who is also known as ‘Wrong Lake’, today he fished the’ Right Lake’ and recorded his personal best of a 114lb which comprised of 57 fish, not a bad stamp for MP, well done buddy. He has been attending the venue a lot recently and it looks like his efforts are now starting to show.

1st John Leeds peg 47, with 197lb – 7ozs
2nd Stewart Lister peg 46, with 181lb – 12ozs
3rd Harry Billing peg 9, with 176lb 5ozs
4th Stuart Snape peg 42, with 168lb 11ozs
5th John Clapham peg 41, with 149lb

Watch out, Anglers about!

It was great to see 8 match anglers waiting at the gate of Trewater’s on Saturday morning when I arrived to run the Saturday match. There has been little interest over the last few weeks so I was pleased to be fishing ‘The Farm’ once again. Sadly no one else turned up but what the hell I was certainly going to enjoy my days fishing on this brilliant venue!

We were on the middle lake today and I pegged every other peg. I offered the bag to one of the anglers for him to determine my home for the day and I was pleased to see him hand me peg 30 which I have fished a few times before. I would have liked one of the corner pegs particularly 26 which I have never managed to draw but I am sure I will one day. The wind was quite brisk and blowing straight down the lake it was going to make presentation and feeding difficult.

The match

There is a nice bit of cover on the inside of this peg which also gave me a nice depth for an inside line so that was the first rig I set up. I also had rigs to fish in about 6’ at the bottom of the shelf at 5m both a pellet rig and a paste rig. I also set up two rigs to fish shallow and I planned on doing this after a couple of hours, I guess I was hoping that the wind died a little!

I had my usual Yorkshire Bait Green Betaine ground bait which also served as my paste, plenty of dampened garlic micros and some expanders and some 4mm pellets. The match started and I fed some GB on my five metre line and some pellets down the edge. I started close on paste and was ready for action! But the fish had other ideas as they didn’t seem to be on that line. Looking around and nobody seemed to be catching with the exception of Martin Davenport on peg 26 who was putting a few in the net. Out to 5m and two small tench opened my account followed by a skimmer or two but it was proving more difficult than I thought it would be.

Shallow attack

I decided to go shallow early and started pinging pellets at 11m where I could just about hold the pole steady! Before long a few bites started, resulting in the odd fish, it wasn’t fast and furious by any means but they were nice fish around the 10oz mark so good weight builders. Feeding was the problem, I’m sure if I could have put the bait in the same place it would have been much better. Slapping got me a few extra as they came to the noise. Going into the last hour and I had to go back on the bottom to keep some fish coming they were smaller samples but welcome. I finished the match with 67 fish for a total weight of 49lb 14oz which was good enough to win the sweep, just! Martin had 45lb from peg 26 which run me close followed by Bill Ward with 35lb from peg 34.

On the boat

For the first time in a number of years I will have to miss the autumn festivals at White Acres due to family circumstances. I was obviously disappointed about missing them but family has to come first. However, I was over the moon when Harry phoned and asked if I fancied going to Ireland to fish the King of Clubs, the dates were perfect for me so we are off next week! I have a mad week now getting my gear ready for hopefully some great silver fishing in the Emerald Isle I have not been over the water for around 20 years so it is more than due. I will let you know what happened when I get back around 20th September.