Wetlands fishery consists of two well stocked lakes on a waterfowl and wildlife reserve set in 32 acres of lakes and woodland and is located in the village of Sutton-cum Lound just outside Retford, Nottinghamshire. Both lakes are well stocked with carp well into double figures as well as plenty of bream, roach, ide and perch with match weight of over a hundred pounds not unusual in the warmer months. There is a café on site and well attended open matches are run every Monday, Wednesday and Friday.
Last summer, we joined Fishing4Fun editor Tom Scholey for a hearty breakfast in the café before the Wednesday open with 38 entrants. Unlike many features done in the angling press this ‘live match’ type feature really puts the pressure on the angler making him perform without being able to choose his peg, with other anglers all around him and worst of all perhaps with our photographer getting in the way and pestering him for shots all day. Would young Tom cope with the pressure? Read on to find out.
Tactics and targets “One of the main reasons I like Wetlands is because you never know where it is going to be won from or on what methods. Carp are the dominant species that win most of the matches but there are plenty of bream that can win and even if not winners on their own can pad out a decent carp weight into a winner.
This summer I’ve had a lot of success here with chopped worm and caster catching big weights of both carp and bream including an all bream bag of eighty-odd pounds. Hundred pound plus bags have been needed to win a lot of the matches but with the weather just on the turn I don’t think it’ll be quite that high today, it could well be a seventy or eighty though so I will still have to fish positively.
Today I have drawn peg 4 on the far bank. It is not an area I have fished before but there were some good weights from pegs 5 and 6 last week and from pegs 3 and 5 on our club match here a few months ago so there are some fish in the area so I’m pretty confident. I like and am confident in fishing with worm and caster on the deck so that will be my approach and the fact that the two guys either side of me aren’t worm fishermen may well help me out.
Tackle As with many commercials in the summer the pole is the dominant method here and will be my only line of attack. Many anglers also set up bomb or feeder rods but even though I’ve got one set up in a sleeve I’m not going to get it out. Had I been closer to the island I might have but for me the less I’ve got out and ready the less chance there is of me being tempted to give it a try and the more I have to concentrate on my main line of attack.
Bait and feeding I’ve brought a kilo of dendrobenas to chop and fish on the hook, three pints of casters, half a pint of coloured maggots and some pellets and corn for feeding in the margin. The way I feed, and it is something I’ve picked up from a venue expert rather than being my own invention, is a softly-softly approach with chopped worm and casters. I’ll start with a small cup of worms and casters and top it up every ten minutes or so until I start catching. Once I start catching I’ll feed a small cup for every fish.
The beauty of the method is that you can catch any weight from 20 to 120 lb because you are feeding to the fish in front of you. The more you catch the more you feed and the more fish you’ll draw in and if you aren’t in a good area and are not getting many fish you won’t overfeed and can still get the maximum out of the peg and a result if it is a low weight match.
I don’t feed the margin at all until the last two hours of the match usually and if I’m catching well on my main line might not feed it at all. When I do decide to feed it I’ll feed it heavily and noisily to try and trick the fish into thinking I’m packing up. It sounds daft but it works.
I’ve been alternating hook bait between double maggot and a piece of worm to see if I can find out what the fish want but apart from a couple of very tentative pulls there’s been no action yet. The tow on the lake is quite strong today making presentation quite tricky. Normally I don’t mind a bit of movement when I’m fishing the worm but it is stronger than usual today.
My first proper bite came after 45 minutes and was from a small carp of about a pound and interestingly came a metre ‘downstream’ of where I’m feeding suggesting that perhaps the tow is taking the slow sinking chopped worms with it. I’m going to mix the worms and casters together and start plopping them in in a ‘ball’, rather than letting them wash out of the cup to try and keep the feed tighter.
Second to fourth hours I changed up to a round bodied heavier 4×14 float with the bulk a bit closer to the hook to try and combat the tow and a 2lb bream on the first drop in promised great things. A blank half hour after that showed it to be false promise. Looking round the lake I haven’t seen anyone bagging up so it looks like it might be a lower than normal weight match although with the size of the bream and carp here it doesn’t take long to build a weight if they come on the feed.
I had another bream in the second hour but no other indications so decided to start feeding the margin line earlier than usual just to see if I could pick up a bonus fish. In the third hour I started to get a few bites and caught a small zander, a perch and a couple of
I switched back to the lighter 4×12 rig at the start of the fourth hour because I didn’t feel I was getting any better presentation with the heavier rig and changed down to a size 20 hook on 0.12 line to try and catch everything in the swim as it looked like it was going to be a low weight match. I caught three or four roach but with only about 6lb in the net things weren’t looking good. Going into the last couple of hours I connected with a real elastic stretcher and pulled out of it almost immediately and was cursing my decision to change to the smaller hook until I found a bream scale on the hook. The following put in saw me land a carp of four pounds.
Fifth hour That carp was the start of me getting a few bites and fish. I hadn’t changed anything but the regular feeding had finally drawn them into the swim. From a situation where I was sitting witching a motionless float for minutes on end I was now getting indications on a regular basis and there were fish topping in the area and occasional bubbles coming up over the feed. In that hour I landed two more carp, two bream and a couple of roach but also pulled out of a further four foul hooked fish.
I’d doubled the combined efforts of the previous four hours in one hour and with plenty of fish in the swim now could, with a good last hour, get myself into the reckoning for at least a section win if not a place in the frame.
Final hour I started the final hour with two lost foul hooked fish in two drops, you can tell they’re foul hooked because you don’t connect with them until the pole is a couple feet up, before catching another 3lb carp. The swim was fizzing with bubbles now and I caught a bream on the next put in. That good final hour I needed was happening. Unfortunately I had an incredibly frustrating half hour when despite my float being in the middle of big clouds of fizzing bubbles I couldn’t get bites and only caught one more pound skimmer.
Had I fed too much? Maybe I hadn’t put enough in? Should I be on a different hook bait? Be fishing up in the water or be fishing just off the feed? These are the questions I’ll maybe be able to answer after I’ve been winning matches for thirty years but right now I couldn’t fathom it out. You can read how the experts do it and you can be told how to do it but at some point in a match you have to be able to figure it out for yourself and to be able to do that you have to have experienced a similar situation before…or be lucky.
I tried stopping feeding and feeding more with no apparent change but for some reason that I can’t explain in the last fifteen minutes I started getting bites again and caught 3 more bream, and lost a three pounder at the net, to get me past the thirty-pound mark, hopefully.
When the scales had done their circuit of the match and the results announced my 32 ½ pounds was some 16 pounds away from making the very tight main frame, where the top
With hindsight I wonder whether I should have fished the bomb or spent more time targeting the carp in the margins in that slow first half of the match. Perhaps I would have caught a few more fish but perhaps by not fishing my 13 metre line all the time and by not keeping that worm and caster plopping in regularly I wouldn’t have built the swim the way I did and had those good last two hours. I don’t know the answers and in a way it is the unknowns in match fishing that make the sport so interesting to me. One thing I do know though is that I can’t wait to get back here for another match.
Could you give me direction to wetlands never been before but going to give it ago. The report was superb mate
Its just off the main road into Retford Geoff, do you know where Hallcroft is? It is signposted on the main road about a mile before you get to the Hallcroft turn off. The vilage it is in is called Sutton Cum Lound.
Hi Tom fished wetlands today drew peg 44, set off with pellet on the feeder,with micro inside the feeder but with no luck then i went out to about 8m and tried pellet again no joy. After 1 hour with out a sign i went down the margin with pellet i hit a decent carp about 8lb but that was the only fish i could get out of the swim. so i tried the chopped worm and caster at about 9m , and started to catch the bream you mentioned. The wind got up and presentation was almost impossible but i had a few more bream to weigh 24lb to take third spot. So thanks for the advice and i give it another try just for a pleasure session.
hi Geoff, went myself yesterday. weighed 48lb and won nowt, it fished its nuts off! My mate, Paul Emmingham weighed 63lb and only got his section!
It was two windy to fish the pole though so I just sat on the maggot feeder, had a nice mix of carp and bream/ ide and enjoyed it.
If I had been able to fish worm I would have fancied it though, they really got their heads down.
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