Right, here I am again writing up yet again another review of one of my match fishing expeditions. I’m enjoying writing for you all but I’m afraid I will have to keep this one short as I’ve got another to write up after this and I still haven’t done any revision this week!! Well, Saturday May 17th was this years date for the annual UK Pole Champs, this year it followed tradition and was yet again held at the Willow Park complex in Ash. Last year I drew peg 6 on the small lake and had 56lb of paste caught Carp at six metres and this was good enough for me to win the match individually, and to help our Farnborough Pink team to win the match dropping one point!
The Tactics
So this year I was hoping for a good draw somewhere on the small lake as I had never fished middle before, but whatever lake I was on I was going to set up, a paste rig, a couple of shallow rigs and a on the bottom pellet rig for Skimmers and Bream. All were on 0.11mm Powerline straight through apart from the paste rig which was on 0.13mm Powerline. The chosen floats were: Preston Somo’s for shallow fishing, a 4×12 set at half depth and a 4×10 set at quarter depth, these were shotted with small bulks of 11’s half way between the float and the hook and the hook was a size 18 Preston PR28. The paste float was a ‘Big H’ slim bodied pattern in the 4×12 size tied straight to a size 12 PR21 this rig consisted of no shot at all and was set to dead depth. Finally the pellet rig was a 4×14 Carpa Porth tied to a size 18 PR21, the shotting pattern was a bulk of tens with two number ten droppers, the bottom dropper 15cm from the hook and the next dropper 15cm further up and the bulk 15cm above this. So that was my plan but would it work?
The Draw and the Match
I was drawn on peg 5 on the middle lake and although I didn’t fancy it I knew I would have my work cut out to do as well as last year! I had drawn next to fellow Farnborough angler Bradley Proctor and he was as jammy as you can get and I knew it would be even harder this year! I set up to fish all four of the rigs above at 14.5 metres and was going to ping pellets over the top. I decided to wet the pellets down so that they made a bit of a plop when they hit the water and so that they enticed Bream as well as Carp into the swim. At the start I cupped in four balls of Sensas IM5 groundbait here and then pinged over the top, at six metres I fed half a pot of 4mm pellets so that I had a short line to fish paste over. I went out on the pellet ring on the bottom and was into a small F1 after about ten minutes into the match, Bradley next door went straight out on his shallow ring and had two in two puts, but I didn’t want to ‘hammer’ the fish just yet as I wanted them to settle in my swim, I caught a few skimmers and bream and then proceeded to get constant liners, so I decided to go shallow. Half an hour later I had four or five carp/F1s in the net and was neck and neck with Bradley, until he hooked a LUMP and netted what looked at least 8lb. So the match went on neck and neck fishing shallow for the first two hours, I had about 10 fish and was constantly missing bites. I decided to have a look on the paste line and straight away my Preston 13H was soaring across the lake, after a short scrap I soon had a nice 4lb common in the net. I carried on catching fish but was constantly missing bites and foul hooking fish, I went back shallow, caught a few then started missing bites, so I went back on the paste. The match carried on like this but I decided to slow my feeding down in the last hour and 30 minutes as the fish were much bigger on the paste and if I could catch consistently on that I would do well.
By this point Bradley was miles ahead of me, but in the last hour I went on the paste, and caught about 6 in half an hour one of which was 6lb. It was now that Miles Levy a Willow regular came and sat with me and told me I wasn’t far behind the match leaders as they had all caught small fish. Great I’m thinking, few more fish and I’ll be there. In the last half an hour I netted 5 more carp to 4lb Miles was sure I’d done well, but I had a gut feeling that Bradley had done me as he had three fish in the last 10 minutes shallow!
The Results
I ended up with around 20 fish and weighed in 53lb 6oz and young Bradley next to me weighed in 54lb something. One word sums it all up and that is – Gutted! It was so close, but I was pleased for him as he was over the moon and is only twelve years old!! All I can say is lucky git ha! Well I was still second overall and had only dropped one section point in two years of fishing this match so its not all bad!! But more importantly the famous Farnborough Pink kept a clean record and once again we won the team match outright!
Just a quick thank you to John McCarthy for some good information on how Willow was fishing and roll on next years!!
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just wondering, do you know of any upcoming junior open matches
thanks leon
jake its not the first time mate that lev got u going ps thank you for the comment see you on the bank bradley
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