By Jake Marshall | No Comments
Last updated: Friday, May 16, 2008

Well after a couple of weeks break after Frant a good double header weekend was definitely in order. This weekend saw a bank holiday Monday and this bank holiday Monday was always dedicated to a Farnborough Junior match, however, the day prior I was at Hartleylands farm for the first round of Paul Chatfield’s brilliantly organised summer league.It was a blazing hot day and everyone was well and truly up for it today, there were shorts and vests and bare chests everywhere at the draw and the hot weather defiantly would help us catch some fish. I couldn’t wait to get a nice bit of shallow fishing done and catch plenty of fish. After some confusion at the draw which said I was on a crummy little lake on the same peg as another bloke, we soon sussed that I was actually on Nicks, one of the best lakes. A smile came across my face and I couldn’t wait!!I rushed to my peg to and sat down, when everyone were at there pegs i notice I was the only person with an angler either side of me, but oh well there were still plenty of fish moving.

These small lakes have islands around 20-30 metres which can easily be reached with a small method feeder or small pellet waggler. My main plan of attack was to fish a small method as tight to the island as possible. However i fed a long pole line and a short one. Long i would loose feed 4mm pellets to catch shallow, and short I would loose feed 3 bits of corn every now and then to tempt some of the bigger species that are resident in the lake. On the shallow line i set up a 4×16 Carpa Porth for on the deck, a 4×12 Preston Somo for half depth and a 4×10 Somo for around a foot deep. These were all tied to 0.11mm Preston Powerline to a Size 18 PR28 on the shallow rigs and a size 18 Preston PR21 on the bottom rig. The shallow rigs were set up on a Preston 9H through the Preston pull bungs and the bottom rig was set to an 11H also through a pulla bung.

My rig for my 6 metre line was a 4×14 Carpa Chimp tied on 0.13mm Powerline to a size 16 B911, this rig was set up on Preston 13H through all three sections of my top kit.

The Match!

So the match got underway, I whipped my shirt off to try and improve the tan and potted in some 4mm pellets at 13m on my shallow line where the fish jumped at the pole pot! I was itching to get on it, but if I went on it too early I could only catch for the first hour and that would be a waste. So I chucked the feeder and the rod was off the rest straight away, I was greeted by a small pound size common in the net. I netted around 15 fish in the first hour or so all averaging around a pound a piece. However they soon dried up while the guy next to me increasingly improved his catch ratio to mine by chucking in the next peg (a noted flier might I add which hadn’t been drawn) so I was in need of some fish.

I went on the shallow line where I had been loose feeding and was soon catching really quick, bigger fish too, the fish on pellets seemed to be bigger than the fish I had caught on the feeder which were on corn. The fish I was catching were bigger than the ones the guy next to me was catching, so I stuck on it, I had a couple of four pounders, and some smaller fish catching around 15 more fish in the second hour. It was then that I hooked into another lump, I played it for around five minutes and got it up to the net, I went to scope the fish as I usually do, but he dived and I hit the line with my net and as it was only 0.11 Powerline he broke me, a few swearwords later and I soon had an 0.13 Powerline rig on.

I went back out and was rewarded with no bites whatsoever, so I replaced the 0.13 with a 0.11 rig and was getting the odd bite. I decided to chuck the feeder again in around the 3^rd hour of the match and managed to catch a few fish however I was getting constant liners, so I set the waggler up and chucked that out. I was into bites straight away and had soon netted a lovely two pounder. I was however missing lots of bites, so I shallowed up to around 8 inches deep, still fishing a 6mm banded pellet and was now connecting with a few more fish.

After a good hour and a quarter on this I had a good 45 fish in the net, not bad considering the guy next to me had double that! This is how solid his peg was (or the one next door) he would chuck the feeder out, and the fish would be jumping over it, to make it worse, he played his fish of the clutch and all I could hear all day was his clutch creaking, god that was annoying. Anyway for the last 20 minutes I went on my 6m line where I had been flicking 3 pieces of corn all day, I had fed nearly a tin of corn and as soon as I went on this line the float dipped under and I was into a nice two pound fish, all of the fish on this line averaged two pound, and the more I lift and dropped the float the more bites I got. I caught around another 10 fish on this line and at the end of the match I had a count of around 55 fish.

The Weigh In!

Well I thought I’d have about fifty pound, but when I tipped my fish into the net and they lifted them onto the scales and read off 60lb. I was pleased with that, was more than I expected, the guy next to me had 101lb and the guy the other side had 40 odd. So I hadn’t done too bad, anyway the section was out of 18 and I beat 11 so I was seventh. Not a bad result, considering most of the people who beat me had an empty peg next to them! Well that’s my excuse anyway!! And I even managed to get a nice tan, considering my shoulders were red raw!!

Keep checking the blog and see if I managed to keep a clean sheet on the annual Peatmoore Millennium Trophy for Farnborough!

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