By Wraggy | No Comments
Last updated: Wednesday, July 16, 2008

Wa-hey! Finally back in the fold folks! I’ve said it before on these pages; computers ain’t my strong point, and when they go wrong I’m totally knackered! In our house it’s become known as ‘the f***ing computer’ now! I was told it had got a virus on it, but my attempts to sort it out with glasses of water and antibiotics didn’t seem to be having the desired effect, so a phone call to my uncle, who is well versed in all things f***ing computer, was needed. He looked at it, looked at me with that ‘just stick to fishing and putting one foot in front of the other when you’ve got to get somewhere’ kind of look, took it home and hey presto, we’re back in business!

So, a brief look at what’s been happening during the time I’ve been out of action, f***ing computer wise. I’ve had a couple of proper batterings; the less said about those the better! Suffice to say, there were no excuses, either I got the method wrong on the day or didn’t switch early enough; very few of them could be blamed on the peg. Highlights have been a win in a match at Lodge farm on the Field Lake with 100lb 21/2 oz, catching shallow on pole and pellet, a section win in the 90-plus peg Cancer Research Charity match at Aston Park, beating local superstar Pete Morley next peg in the process, and most recently setting a new match record for my local Carter Hall fishery with 54lb 2oz, more of which later.

A trip with the Turners Arms gang to Woodhouse grange saw us fishing in some of the worst winds I’ve experienced in a long time, resulting in a broken number three on my beloved tourney pro, when a 6lb carp took a liking to the piece of worm I’d been steadily putting a net of Ide together with. Bit fortunate really, as I managed to get it over the net after a 40 minute fight on 0.10 hooklength and 6 elastic the wind had a last good go at the pole and snapped it like a twig, blowing me backwards over the box at the same time. To give you some idea of the strength of the wind, I’m only 5 foot 6 tall but almost 14 stone (yeah yeah, I know, I’m a fat little git! But I prefer to be known as ‘petitely statuesque’, or ‘compact’) so I take a bit of moving, but on this day it was difficult to even stand up!

A trip to one of my old stomping grounds, Wetlands, saw me sneak into the last frame place with some big fish late on, my mate Ian won at Carter Hall with a lovely looking net of ide and tiny stockies leaving me trailing in second, once again having spozzed a couple of late lumps (you all know the score by now, ‘better to be lucky than good’) and another trip with the Turners to Woodhouse grange, this time on the Ghost lake, saw me notch up another win, this time with paste, which resulted in a lovely looking net of ghost carp from 6oz to about 2lb, with a 3lb common chucked in to break up the vast range of colours. Definitely one I’d recommend for a nice days pleasure fishing that one. On that day I had a real old tear up with one of the club’s top lads, Geoff Cornwall, off the next peg.

We both started off fishing paste over pellet. Not necessarily the first choice tactic for this stamp of carp, but like me Geoff has had a fair degree of success using a scaled down version of what most people would regard as a standard paste rig, when targeting smaller specimens. For example, a typical rig for somewhere such as Hayfield would probably consist of a minimum of 0.18 line straight through to a size 12 hook, as finesse isn’t top of the agenda with a great big lump of paste on the end of your line! You hardly need to have delicately strung out no.11 droppers to present it properly, do you? My rigs for the stockies are more in keeping with their size, 0.14 through to a 14 or even a 16 hook, of much finer wire, and it seems to work for me. On the day we were nip & tuck all day, I’d get a few, then Geoff, as though it was the same shoal swimming between us, and the balance swung both ways as the day wore on. With just over an hour to go, both of our pegs were going away from us, but with one lad a few pegs away having had a couple of better fish there was to be no letting up.

We’d both fed a margin line, but with the fairly tight pegging and us being peg for peg I wasn’t holding out too much hope for it throwing a lot up. Geoff was first to break ranks and try his edge swim, and a bigger fish of 4lb first drop got me more than a little worried I can tell you! I decided to hold out on the paste line a bit longer, to try and pin the wandering shoal down a while longer, and it seemed to be working, as a run of fish had me feeling I was now in front by 6 or 7lb. To my horror, Geoff’s heavy elastic was streaming out into the middle of the lake, but it quickly sprang back, with a scale on the hook big enough to make a mini roundabout with! Fortunately for me this seemed to sidetrack him a little, and he got caught up in trying to catch the monsters that were obviously lurking in his margin swim, leaving me to line the ghosties up on the paste line.

He did get another bonus fish of 5lb or so, but two more zoo creatures made their escape, leaving him sweating as to who would secure second place. Baz Taylor was in the lead when the scales got to my peg with 32lb. My 54lb took pole position, many of them caught in the last half an hour when I had the line to myself. That’s the beauty of this game, it’s all about playing the percentages, making the right decisions at the right time, and hoping it comes off. Geoff could quite easily have come good with the bigger fish in the margins and I’m sure on another day he would have, but by staying on the line exclusively it allowed me to put a good run together and sneak into top spot. He did make second place, his bonus fish boosting him up to 38lb. These are the best matches in my opinion, now and again it’s nice to get in front and stay there early on, but the days when you have to work for every fish in a peg for peg battle are the ones you remember longer.

Just to bring me back down to earth with a real bump, my 36lb in the midweeker at Barlborough was totally eclipsed by shallow fishing master John Mills two pegs away, with a solid 78lb! That’s what I call a battering! John has his own unique way of fishing pellet shallow, his float is never still as he constantly lifts and drops his rig, and often a fish is hooked before the bite even registers. He makes it look simple but believe me it isn’t it takes a lot of practise and you need to get your feeding, rigs and timing all right for it to work to full effect. I’d recommend anyone who wants to learn about catching shallow to sit behind John for an hour when he’s in full flight, you can’t fail to be impressed by his technique and you’ll learn a lot in that time.

Another trip to my old favourite KJS canal again saw me questioning why I bother with the place any more! The match was run on the second stretch, which consists of a long line of narrow (10-11m wide) pegs followed by a wider area known as the bay. The venue is actually a land-locked disused arm of the old chesterfield canal, and the bay is one of the old turning bays used by the boats in days gone by. It usually turns into a match of two halves, one or the other of these two extremes is where the carp are holed up, and unfortunately you often know within the first hour whether you are in with a shout or not.

My peg put me bang on the edge of the narrows, in fact it is the narrowest peg on the canal at just 9m wide. Try as I might I couldn’t remember it having any form back when I was a regular visitor to the venue, but I consoled myself in the fact that there were a lot worse pegs in on the day, and maybe I was ideally placed to exploit any fish that were moving between the two areas. Now that is called ‘having yourself on’ around these parts, and it was a classic example, as I was walking around 90 minutes into the match! Most of the lads in the bay pegs to my left were getting odd fish, and I consoled myself with the fact that the pegs furthest away from mine were where the bulk of the fish seemed to be, while resigning myself to a fruitless afternoon.

I did manage to pick a couple of fish off at intervals when I could keep my little arse on the Rive box for long enough, but all in all the day was one to be written off as just a bad draw, borne out by the result which saw my 19lb beat everyone to my left in the narrows but only one or two to the right. 49lb won from the bay, and the back up weights made it look like a tight match, but in reality over half of the field didn’t have a chance of winning anything, and with the payout structured towards the top three or four places it makes the venue something of a lottery at the drawbag.

All change next day though! Carter Hall fishery is accessed through the Sheffield suburb of Charnock; indeed many of the locals refer to it by that name. On the bank it’s difficult to believe you are actually only 3 or 4 miles from the city centre, such is its rural setting, with sparrowhawks, pheasants, grass snakes and all manner of wildlife around you. It’s a small venue with 20 or so pegs, but the matches are always sell outs, due to the setting and the variety of fish present. Far from being a bagging venue, the attraction is the opportunity to win with species other than carp, as ide, roach and rudd all make their presence felt, along with occasional barbel and skimmers, not to mention the odd exotic looking carp. Just as a get out of jail card for when you fall too far behind, there are a few really big fish in there too, well into double figures that can make a real mess of a carefully assembled silver fish catch!

As I said earlier, my mate Ian Heywood won the last match with a mid-teen catch of ide, he’s a bit of a dab hand with the species, so when he drew peg 1, a noted ide peg, he was more than happy, despite being a bit the worse for wear after a wedding reception the previous night! I was on peg 14, which I was happy with as it gave me an island opposite, which looked very ‘carpy’, and some open water where I could target the ide well away from my big fish lines. I also fed casters short at 5m with a view to catching shallow, a tactic that had won me a match here last summer. Ian had fed maggot heavily on the previous match, it’s a method which has been paying off at a few of our local venues of late, so I was armed with three pints of Mosborough Tackle box’s finest, to give it a good go.

Initially I caught small roach, perch & rudd, but a bite 20 minutes in saw the 6 elastic dragged out of the pole and the familiar ‘thud, thud’ on the line as and ide twisted and turned in its bid for freedom. It was quickly followed by three of its brothers, until another run of small rudd signalled another big pot of maggots was called for. This pattern continued for the first half of the match, with odd fish coming shallower too, but I could feel the peg was starting to go away from me. I’ fed two spots across against the island, one in three feet of water, the other tight up on the shelf in 14 inches or so, both with Nutrabaits ‘Trigga’ pellets, and went in with a Trigga hooker over the deeper line.

The peg was strange in that on one spot I had 3ft tight to the bank but just a couple of feet away it was only just over a foot deep. I had odd indications initially, and then a missed bite (or line bite) saw me snag a carp on the way up as I lifted my rig out for another drop. Straight away I went in with the shallower rig over the other line, and never looked back, taking 10 or 11 carp in the final 90 minutes, simply feeding just enough pellet through a tiny pot to bring one carp into the peg at a time. These topped my 15lb or so of silvers up to a new match record weight of 52lb 4oz, and I was absolutely buzzing on the way home I can tell you! Local venue, fast becoming a favourite among the lads, and I’d got my name in the record books there, top stuff!

Right, that’s what’s been happening round these parts while the f***ing computer’s been playing up, hope you’ve all been getting among em anall! This week I’m making my first visit to a couple of venues, KJS Aston Bottom Lake and The Haven Fishery at Stainforth, as well as the latest match with the Turners, at Aston Park on the Stable Pond, so I’ll let you know how I get on, provided this f***ing computer keeps working! See you soon.