This Sunday I was off to cable pond in Clare, I've never been to this lake this late in the year before, so I had no clue as to how it would fish. I had bloodworm and joker with me in-case it was really hard, and hoped to catch a good bag of silvers over this.
My match was already looking downhill before id even got to the draw bag as I realized id forgotten my wheel kit for my seatbox! All i can say is I will never make that mistake again, and it certainly wouldn't be possible to carry my gear along a river bank like in the old days.
I drew peg 17, which I felt was down the wrong end of the lake, although we have been here only a few times, the winner always comes from the top end as they seem to get bream and the bottom end doesn't! So being the very bottom peg I didn't feel overly confident, but there's section points and matchman points to be won at every match so I was going to try my very best.
I started the match by feeding chop worm and caster on one line, and joker on a longer line, unfortunately there's not much to say now as I simply sat there for 2 hours bite less I was working through the lines and by half 12 id managed 3 little perch and a roach, not even off the joker line!
At this point i went behind to my gear and got my bomb rod out, on three 10mm discs of bread went and I chucked it just off the island in front of me, its about 7-8 foot deep just a few feet away from the island here.
I sat for no more than 30 seconds before the tip wrapped round and I had a carp on, I couldn't believe it! After a 5 minute battle I had a nice 7 lb carp in the net, certainly not a bad thing considering I couldn't get a bite on a bloodworm.
I spent the next few hours fishing the pop up bread and having a quick look on my pole lines and just going through the motions, I picked up a few more little perch but nothing was happening.
Word came down that someone was getting a few bream and big roach up the top end, so with an hour to go I knew i had to get another carp if I was to win, I didn't feel as though anyone was going to beat me for the section with silvers, and I certainly wasn't catching any so I felt going for another carp would be the best thing to do.
I fished the last hour casting all over the swim just trying to place my bread in front of a carp, but no joy, with 5 minutes to go i reeled in and had a roach about 6 ounces hanging on the end, little bit random, it even doubled my weight of silver fish! I was left with the tricky idea of whether i should recast to where i caught the roach, which is where I caught the carp earlier, or cast into the fishy looking channel to my left, I decided to cast back to the same spot, and whack, the tip just wrapped round, 30 seconds later the whistle blew!
I took my time with this one, as it was absolutely a make or break fish, after a 8 minute battle it was in the net, a nice 8 lb carp.
I must admit, im not normally one to get lucky in these sorts of conditions, im normally the one who works hard catching loads of fish just to be beat by some lucky sod who catches a lump!
Unfortunately though I wasn't lucky enough to win, first place had caught 21 lb of bream and roach, a fantastic weight considering the lake was iced over the day before. My final weight was just over 15 lb, more than enough to win the section as 2nd in the section had caught 5 lb.
So I had managed 2nd in the match and 1st in the section, from a peg where I could have come dead last, its fair to say i had a fair bit of luck, but i fished to the conditions and unfortunately there were just no silvers in my peg, not even joker could pull them in, I had to catch some carp and I managed two, I didn't even set my rod up at the start as I just didn't think you would catch one after the lake had been frozen as this isn't a normal commercial full of fish. So Id had an extremely good result considering, I had beat all my main competitors in the overall league aswell which was a bonus. You need results like this in order to win league titles, so I hope I can keep it up for the remainder of the season.
Its off to ash grounds at the Fennes next week, which I really look forward too. You can catch some awesome bags of roach here in the winter, and if your in the right peg you can even bag up on f1s or bream on the right day, so bloodworm and joker will be the order of the day, and i fully expect to catch a good double figure bag of silverfish next week, providing the weather stays consistent.
Thanks for reading this week.
Tight Lines
Reece Hearn.
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