Little High, Little Low!

As the saying goes, all good things come to an end and sadly this was the case with my good run in the Thursday evening matches at Carterhall Fisheries. Having won the previous four, I went into last Thursdays match confident, and drew a peg from which I could reach the island so I fancied catching a few.

I caught ide steadily through the match, but unfortunately lost a couple of carp that cost me, they just tore off around the island and I couldn’t stop them. I weighed 21-0-0, which put me third in the match, behind Nick Ratherham who caught eight carp for 22lb, and venue expert Jack Rothwell who won the match with a cracking net of 29-12-0 of ide taken up in the water on maggots, giving me a proper battering off the next peg in the process.

I said last week it was Jacks turn for a bit of good luck, as he has been second for the last three weeks, always finishing a couple of pounds short despite taking some cracking nets made up entirely of silvers. This was his week however and he fished a blinder, he is defintitely one to look out for in the future.

On Saturday it was Round Five of the Ranskill Summer League at Lakeside Fishery, and after a disappointing second in section last week I was looking for a good result to put my challenge for the title back on track. With a good turnout of 35 anglers, nearly every peg was in and I was expecting a tougher round than usual.

The drawbag was certainly kind to me, I pulled out peg 41 which (confusingly for those who don’t know the venue) is in between pegs 29 and 30. This can be a brilliant peg when the fish are in the area, and though no massive weights had come off it in the previous couple of weeks I still fancied it for a few fish.

To give you a brief idea of what the peg looks like, it is in a channel with an island at 14.5 metres, and a lot of the big weights that come off the peg are caught up to the island under an overhanging bush, which looks like a real snag pit. Thankfully its not as bad as it looks however, I think the water is too shallow, so the fish just swim out of it.

As those who have read my blog before will know however, the venue is also stuffed with silver fish, and I was reluctant to neglect these as they are real weight builders, and an hour chasing carp at the start of the match can see you playing catch up all day. Besides, while a match win is nice, my real priority on the day was a section win to keep my league hopes alive.

For this reason, I opted to fish worms and casters short at six metres, and I planned to sit on this for the first couple of hours and gauge how the match was going before deciding whether to go under the bush. I had a reasonable first couple of hours, but the stamp of fish seemed smaller than average, and while I thought I was beating the anglers to my right and left, I could hear Simon Short catching well in 31, so I decided to hedge my bets and start flicking a few pellets under the bush.

Around half way through the match I decided to try it, and lassooed an 8mm pellet on a shallow rig, before slapping a rig on the water under the bush. As I turned around to pick up my catapult, I felt my elastic coming out and carp number one was hooked!

It was a good size as well, about 10lb, and so I went straight back out on it and took another one about 6lb. I then had a quiet ten minutes, so I went back on the silver fish line so as to let the carp settle again.

This set the tone for the afternoon, tow or three fish from under the bush then rest the line, I couldn’t put a run of fish together as they kept backing off.

I ended up with 10 carp, two chub and my silvers, which went 83lb. This proved enough to win the match on the day, with league rival Nigel Wheatcroft coming second with 44lb. Les Richmond took third place with 38-14-0, but luckily for me he was in Nigel’s section so he dropped a valuable section point.

In the league overall, this means that Nigel is a point in front with 6 points, while me and Les are tied second with 7 points, with me in front on weight. There is a long way to go yet though, and I must say it has been a really enjoyable series so far.

From one extreme to the other!

After such a nice days fishing Saturday, Ranskill was always going to be a hard act to follow, and seeing the match results of the last few weeks on the River Nene I wasn’t exactly confident of catching a lot of fish.

With it being the last open match before the Winter League Final, I knew it would be a big match however, and just hoped to draw on a shed full of bream.

I spoke to Matt Godfrey who had been down there on the Saturday and caught well, taking 7lb of skimmers on the pole, putting his international experience of warm weather bloodworm and joker fishing to good use, and he painted a mixed picture of a very patchy river.

I must admit, after I had spoke to him about rigs and styles of fishing etc, I was tempted to not take my tackle and just go and watch as they are styles that I am just not familiar with, and I felt I would learn more by watching.

Bait was already ordered however, so I decided to go down and just fish feeder for big fish, with the aim of winning the match, and this is what a lot of other anglers were planning to do so fortunately my lack of experience was disguised.

Me, Matt and his dad Kev travelled down on the morning and met the other Triana lads who had stopped down in Peterborough, and had a few beers the night before. After a brekkie in McDonalds it was onto the draw. Somehow, out of 132 anglers, we managed to draw within two pegs of each other, in an area that was described by Steve Barraclough as Shite!

I mixed a load of groundbait up and set my feeder rods up, before having a chat with the Thatchers lad at the side of me, who also was less than confident!

At the all in I put 12 feeder fulls of bait in a clear spot I found at 20 turns, and then kicked off with two red worms on the hook. I couldn’t believe it when first cast my tip wacked round, but was somewhat disappointed when all that came back was a 2oz perch!

To cut a very long and boring story short, I had one more perch on the tip all match. I missed a bite that nearly took the rod off the rest, but when I picked up there was nothing on, and I may have pulled out of a fish, but it could just have been a piece of weed, I’m not sure.

Simon Fields and Barry Oliver were joint section winners with 1-7-0, and I weighed 6oz which put me 6th out of 10. Matt had 15oz for fourth, and all in all its fair to say it fished pretty tough!

Team captain, Bryan Hawkes was unlucky, finishing first out of the main money with just over 6lb. Mr Consistency, Andy Shaw won his section, with the rest of the team doing reasonably well from the areas that they were in.

One thing I can’t get my head around is that the river is obviously improving as bait is going in, with weights going up week on week, yet they are shutting the river to anglers in the five days running up to the match. Still, I don’t profess to understand this kind of fishing, let alone why the organizers are doing this so if anyone has any ideas as to why this is happening I would be interested to know!

Unfortunately, I can’t get down to bank run at the weekend, much as I would like to as I have previously agreed to fish a match locally which is being run by the Angling Star. Still, I have every confidence that the lads will deliver the goods. Best of luck to all those competing!

Tight lines until next week