Easter Rising!

Last Sunday saw the penultimate round of the Lindholme Winter League, and having missed the previous round due to being in Cornwall, I was after a good result to keep me in contention for a place in the top 15, and a share of the £10,000 payout.

Matt was also after a good result to put him up there, and its fair to say we had our serious heads on, after a full breakfast we arrived at the venue and had a stroll round. We were both hopeful of a draw on Oasis lake, as of all the lakes at the venue this is the one that we both seem to have done the best on. Sir Matt dipped his hand and pulled out peg 59, four pegs away from where he won the lake from in the previous round, and a big smile came on his face!

I followed him in and pulled out 48 on Laurels, in an all to familiar section of doom, with Rob Hitchens, Paul Yates, Paul Cross, and John Allerton to beat! My peg was on a point, but at the wrong end of the lake, with most of the weights being from up the other side, where John had drawn earlier in the week.

Still, I approached my peg positive and took the decision to fish chopped worm and caster, hoping for a mixed bag, as the lake contains everything from F1’s to proper carp, to trout, chub, ide skimmers and roach. When I plan on fishing worm as a main line, I like to concentrate on it fairly exclusively, as I believe it is a bait you need to keep feeding regularly in order to get the best of it, and you never really know when to feed the line unless you are fishing it.

For this reason, I decided to keep it simple, setting up just a worm line at 13 metres, a line down the side which I could feed by hand and a ‘Thod Rod which I planned on casting to the other side of the bay with should the going get tough.

Rigs for the worm line comprised of a 4X12s Carpa Chimp tied up on 0.12 Mosella Xedion line through to an 0.10 bottom and an 18 B911 hook. One thing I can’t sing the praises of enough is the Mosella Impact Genius Bait System, I cant believe how well it keeps casters compared to how I used to keep them, in black bags with the air out. I used some I had from White Acres, and they were still as good as fresh.

At the start of the match, I put a full small pole pot in to get some bait on the bottom, and then kicked off with a worm head over the top of it. First put in bought only a small roach, and fifteen minutes in I was still waiting for a ‘proper fish’ but by topping up regularly with a kinder pot, the swim started getting stronger towards the end of the first hour. I was catching chub and ide regularly, interspersed with the odd F1 and small carp.

It really was lovely fishing, and I was really enjoying it. I love shipping out, and not knowing what will be on the hook the next time the float goes under. The only problem was, Rob Hitchens, Paul Cross, and Paul Yates around me were all catching well on pellets, and I was worried that they were getting better stamp fish.

There were a lot of fish moving on the surface, but the only problem on Laurels and Willows is you can a never be sure whether they are F1’s or just trout chasing the fry or after flys on the top. I decided to bear it in mind, and think about a shallow approach in the last couple of hours if I felt I was falling behind.

With two hours to go both the Pauls and Rob were still catching, and I seemed to be getting nearly all silvers now, with the F1s having deserted me. Reluctantly, I took the gamble and started feeding shallow. I went out with the rig set to a foot and slapped my rig in, the float settled and then buried, and an F1 was on its way to the net. Easy this I thought.

Half an hour later, I was back on the deck, having caught nothing but roach since that first fish, and small roach at that. To my surprise, I took three big skimmers in three drops, and didn’t suffer any line bites, which I expected having fed casters regularly while up in the water.

I caught the odd fish on the deck for the remainder of the match, everyone seemed to have slowed down, so I reckoned it was a matter of just getting my head down and catching what I could. I did keep loose feeding though and it certainly didn’t do any harm!

When the scales arrived, Rob Hitchens had weighed 50lb, and Paul Yates was winning the section with 58lb. I was disappointed when my fish went 48-0-0, so close and yet so far. I reckon my biggest mistake was trying shallow, just loosefeeding and fishing on the deck would have probably seen me second in the section at least.  Luckily, I beat everyone else in the section, and third out of the ten pegs section meant  good points for the league.

Red Rooster Godfrey did the business from Oasis, winning his section and moving him one point in front of me in the league. To say he had 10lb with two hours to go its fair to say he put up a pretty awesome performance to catch 53lb, and he was rightly chuffed to death with the result.

A brief tour of the pubs of Kiveton was kept firmly in check by thoughts of the bank holiday pairs match at Woodlands the following day, and we were sipping tea by twelve bells, before heading off to bed to dream about catching 200lb shallow.