Speed Machine

Willow Garth fishery is a well established fishery that has been producing good fishing for more than twenty years now but in recent years it has suffered from neglect becoming very overgrown both with weed in the water as well as on the bankside covering the pegs. A few years ago local matchman, Stuart Ward acquired the rights to the fishery and has slowly but surely turned it into one of the jewels of the regions fisheries. The banks have been cleared, proper fishing platforms have been installed in most of the pegs and the overgrown weed problems have been sorted out.

The quality of the fishing has proved to be revelation as well, particularly the silver fish sport with 20 and 30 pound weights commonplace in the matches all year round topped by a weight of over fifty pounds of roach last winter. The fishery is also renowned for its big carp with fish to close to thirty pounds having been recorded and Stuart has started work on digging out a third lake for commercial type carping sometime in the future.

We joined Triana North star Carl Rowley who only lives ten minutes away from the fishery for an experts run down on how to catch big bags of silvers from Willow Garth.

Talking Tactics

“In the summer the smaller fish tend to dominate the weights here so your approach has to be geared towards catching them and catching them fast. You probably need three hundred plus fish to weigh in thirty pounds so you are looking to catch at least a fish a minute so getting everything exactly right is critical. Catching as close in as possible and as shallow as possible are the keys to success here so my main line of attack will be with casters up in the water using just the top three of my pole.”

“Casters are the top bait for catching silvers up in the water here at Willow Garth. They make more noise than maggots when they hit the water, they are easier to throw accurately by hand than maggots and they tend to attract a better average stamp of fish than maggots.”

Carl has brought three pints of casters and a few maggots but intends to keep things as simple as possible by feeding only casters and fishing with a single caster on the hook. “I have tried fishing with more robust baits like maggots or pieces of worm on the hook but have found using a caster on the hook brings more bites and with the caster hooked properly and my rigs set up right I don’t miss many bites so don’t see any plusses to using maggot or bits of worm.”

Tackling up
“I’m going to set three rigs up today. The first two are for fishing right up in the water and are identical in every respect apart from the float. I use a carbon stemmed PI Bazzerla PB8 for calm conditions which cocks slowly as the styls settle keeping the rig as straight as possible all the time. The problem with the float is that if there is any wind at all it gets blown all over the place before it cocks and is difficult to control so I also set up a wire stemmed Preston Vito float that cocks straight away and is not disturbed as much by the wind as the carbon stemmed float.”

Both are 4×8 in size and are shotted up with a string of No.7 styl weights that Carl cuts in half before putting them on the line. Depending on the float he usually finish up with between 13 and 15 half styls a couple of inches apart with the last one four to six inches above the hook. He likes to keep his line as fine as he can get away with for better presentation so uses a 0.08 WB Clarke line direct to a size 18 Kamasan B911 hook of which he said “perhaps a heavier hook than you might usually use for roach fishing up in the water but it is a strong hook that doesn’t bend out of shape and retains its point well, both key issues when you are trying to catch 100 fish an hour.”

“Even though I am expecting to catch in the top foot of water I will set the floats at two and a half to three feet deep so that the bait will sink through that top foot straight down rather than in an arc as it would with the float set a foot deep. I expect to catch almost all of my fish as the bait is sinking through the water rather than when the float has fully settled and the bait is just dangling in the water so will re-cast regularly.”

Carl has got Vespe No.3 elastic threaded through the top two of his match 3’s with a winder bung so that he can adjust the tension if he needs to depending on the stamp of fish he’s catching. “I want it set so that I can swing fish straight to hand on the top three I’m planning to use. Too tight and they come in too high up while too slack and I have to net too many to keep my speed up.”

The third rig is a slightly heavier 4×10 Drennan roach float set at almost full depth and shotted with a string of 7 No.13 shot that will get through the water a bit quicker for any fish that sit below the competing small roach and rudd. Often these fish are a better stamp so Carl uses a stronger No.4 elastic. “I will only use this rig if the fish slow down on my shallower rigs but it is an essential to have set up and has produced plenty of fish in the past.”

“In a match I would set up duplicates of each rig to try and save time should I get any tangles but today I’m just keeping the duplicates on their winders rather than putting them onto top kits.”

After getting his rigs set up Carl went about getting his fishing station organised properly. When speed fishing everything has to be in exactly the right place, your box must be level and stable, your bait tray at exactly the right height to reach feed easily, your keep net directly under your left hand so you can drop fish in without looking and your landing net and disgorger readily to hand.

Time for action

There was the tell tale swirl of feeding fish as Carl’s second pinch of casters hit the water and so started one of the most impressive displays of silver fish bagging we have witnessed on the magazine. By feeding between 6 and 10 casters every 15 seconds or so Carl soon has the fish boiling in his swim and fish after fish are soon coming to hand or net. With his strung out shotting pattern and by laying the rig straight on the water most of the fish are simply hooking themselves against the pole elastic and tip. How important having the rig exactly right was made clear when we watched another angler further down the bank missing bite after bite on a rig set a foot deep with just 3 no.10 shot on the line compared to Carl coming in with a fish on every single put in.

After putting 120 fish in the net in the first hour the bites slowed down slightly. Carl thought the fish might have backed off a bit but rather than following them out with the feed he continued feeding his top 3 line saying “If I start following them out they will keep moving further and further out as the day goes on and it will get slower and slower the more I have to keep breaking the pole down. By keeping the feed in the same spot they will come back – they are hungry and want the casters so they’ll have to come back!”

Sure enough after a quieter ten minutes they were back and he was quickly back into his groove again. To get an idea of just how quickly he was building a weight we put the stop-watch on him and in one three minute spell in the second hour he caught 9 fish including a couple of bonus 4 to 6oz fish for almost 2lb. Phew!

Three hundred

Carl plopped his three hundredth fish into his net after 2 ½ hours and despite such a prodigious catch rate what was most noticeable was how smooth and unhurried his whole approach seemed – the fact that he had not had a single tangle in that time says it all.

The second half of our five hour session wasn’t quite as productive as the first but as Carl said “without the pressure and incentive of a match situation I find it hard to keep the intensity going for a full five hours.” Having said that he wasn’t exactly slouching around and catching a few rays in the second half as he added a further 220 fish at more than a fish a minute to finish with a stunning total of 520 roach and rudd for a mighty 52 ½ lb. One of the most impressive performances our reporter has witnessed in more than 20 years of doing features for fishing publications.

Venue Profile
Willow Garth Fishery
Arksey, Near Bentley, Doncaster South Yorkshire

There are two well established lakes on the fishery offering a total of 40 to 45 pegs, both containing good stocks of quality roach that have been caught to over 2lb, as well as huge quantities of small roach and rudd, perch, tench a few bream and golden orfe and carp to over 20lb

Day tickets are available on the bank

Club match bookings are welcome and dates are still available for this summer.
Contact: Stuart Ward on 01302 563728

How to get there
Leave the M18 at Jct 4 and head towards Doncaster. At the 2nd roundabout turn right and follow the signs to Barnby Dun. Turn left in Barnby Dun and go over the swing bridge towards Arksey. In Arksey turn right onto Marsh Road which becomes Shaftholme Road and the fishery is through a gate on the left but is poorly signposted and you will almost certainly drive past it before you see it!