The Grand Finale!

With a lot to play for last weekend with it being the last round of both the Ranskill Teams Of Four League, and also the Lindholme Winter League, I was really fired up and I don’t think I have ever been as prepared for a weekend!

With Terry Oldfield unable to fish the last round, I had drafted in my mate and angling legend Andy Geldart to complete our team of four, and after a breakfast in the onsite café, we were raring top go and dip our collective hand in the bag of fate.

I ended up on peg 31, with Mark Holmes on 23, Dave Tomkinson on 14, and Andy Geldart on 4. I would describe them all as average pegs, but wouldn’t say any one of them was particularly good. I opted to fish chopped worms at 7 metres, a method feeder up to the island, and another worm line down the side in the hope of some slabs down the edge late on.

I had come prepared with plenty of bait- 5 pints of casters and two kilos of worm as well as some micros for the thod, and some big pellets should I decide I wanted to ping a few on a shallow line.

At the all in I put a pot of worms in at seven metres, and and started over the top with a piece of worm on the hook. I was into small skimmers and ide straight away, and I had quite a good first hour catching one a chuck on the bottom. I could tell there were a lot of fish up in the water, but I was reluctant to fish for them too early, as experience tells me you tend to have a good hour as soon as you fish shallow before the swim dies altogether.

I kept plugging away on the deck, and as far as I could see I was battering everyone around me, but with some very good carp pegs in my section I knew I had to put as much in the net as possible, as it doesn’t take many 10lbers to wipe out a nice net of silvers.

After around 2 hours of catching on the deck, I felt the time was nearly right to try shallow. I filled my kinder pot up, and shipped out with an 18inch deep rig. I put my rig in, and was just about to kinder pot over the top when my elastic came out!

This set the tone for the next hour and a half, with a run of better ide coming shallow. The stamp was notably better than the ones I was getting on the bottom, with them probably averaging about 1lb.

I have found in the past that kinder potting rather than loose feeding is the best way for the ide shallow, as loose feeding tends to just attract small roach and rudd. Also, unlike other types of shallow fishing where you would try and present a falling bait along with your loosefeed, I have found that the best bet is to put your rig in and then kinder pot your bait in over the top, as the bigger fish seem to sit mid water, and come up intercept your bait, when you feed and your rig is already in the water, yours is the first bait the fish come to.

It was all going so well, and then disaster struck! As we were going into the last hour, I felt my line drifting away from me. Past experience tells me that when this happens here the worse thing you can do is chase it- when the silvers back off from a line it can be like flogging a dead horse trying to get them back. For this reason, I decided to have a change of plan and chuck a method feeder out for a carp.

My plan worked and a few seconds after the feeder had hit the water the tip was round and carp number one on. What wasn’t in the plan was after I had got it back a couple of turns, my mainline snapped! I cant rmember the last time that has happened to me.

And so began what I can only describe as an hour of mayhem. Things didn’t go my way, and I fished like an absolute tool! I went under the bush to my left where I had fed for bream, and when the float buried I proceeded to strike like Zorro for some unknown reason, entangling my rig in the tree! I then proceeded to knock my hook box in, followed by my bait. I set the method back up and chucked it straight in the tree losing another feeder, and tried back over my pole line to find it full of micro perch and skimmers! I reckon I put 3lb in the net at the most in the last hour.

Nightmare

And this is where the story gets really messy. The scales arrived, and 39lb was winning the section, I was pleased to weigh 57lb which comfortably won the section, and when Andy Sutton blew out with 20 odd pound I knew I was guaranteed second in the individual stakes. Carl Sweatnam above Andy ended up with 57lb odd, beating me by ounces, which ended up being enough to win him the match!

That meant I tied on points with team mate Mark Holmes for first in the individual, but he beat me on combined weight over the league, by a margin of just 5lb. Not only had that bad last hour cost me the match, but the individual league honours as well. Gutted!

All in all though, you cant be too disappointed with second in the individual, the team ended up third and our combined winnings totalled nearly £1000 so it was not a bad winter all things considered.

Lindholme

Despite Matts consistent efforts to get me to go out on Saturday night to a party near his house, I managed to resist temptation and stop at home and tie a few rigs. When I picked him up the next day, I was glad I had done, as he could hardly open his eyes and kept falling over things!

A breakfast seemed to settle him up a bit, but he still wasn’t his usual self. With me on 23 points and him on 22 we were both after a section win to push us up into the top 15. With Oasis and Loco in we were both praying for a draw on Oasis, as this is the lake we know best. I went in first and pulled out Loco 7- gutted!

I got to the peg and I had plenty of room, with the wind pushing into my bank. I didn’t have an island chuck, which I was told all the best pegs have on the lake, so I thought my best chance of a few fish was to catch short, as the lake is quite deep, so I fancied an extraction at five metres.

I had bought a load of casters, as initial reports suggested we were probably going to be on laurels, so decided to fish worm and caster on my short line, and also chuck a method feeder on a line about 20 turns.

Half an hour on the method at the start of the day saw no bites, so it was onto the worm line short. I kept picking up the odd small silver fish and trout, but not the carp I was hoping for, despite feeding positively, and I was starting to wish I had fished meat on the line instead.

All of a sudden I had a run of bream, all about 4lb so I began to think fishing worms wasn’t such a bad decision after all. Then they went as quickly as they came, and I was back to the tiddlers. A couple of late carp left me scratching my head as to whether fishing meat would actually have caught me any fish, or whether they just turned up late on and fishing meat would have seen me miss out on the early bream

I ended up with 33lb which put me 4th in the 12 peg section. This meant I finished in 20th place on the same points as Matt, who had a grueller on Oasis to finish 7th in his section. A disappointing day all round.

Heres to hoping my luck improves for next week, when we are off to Kiveton Waters on the Sunday, and Woodlands on Thirsk in the pairs match on bank holiday Monday.