As expected, everyone was saying we were the favorites in the run up to the event and at the draw, it was quite obvious that one of the teams was trying to put us off by piling on the pressure, as a team we simply shrugged this off and carried on as we were, most likely putting this pressure back upon there shoulders!
Match fishing is a funny old game, and two things stand out to me as things that have a massive impact on your day. One of those is confidence, in this instance, in our position if knowing the venue quite well, we knew what we was doing on each lake, and if we were lucky enough we'd know how to approach a peg we'd fished before, and we knew what baits to bring in order to comply with the bait restrictions at the venue, an area no doubt people tripped up on. More importantly though, the other stand out factor is having a drawing arm! Our captain Danny mason seems to have one of these magical elusive limbs that everyone in match fishing wishes they could possess! When it comes to a team match, there's no point in having a couple of fliers and some rubbish, you need a good solid draw. It's fair to say we got just that, we had two good pegs on pathfield, pegs where there's always a few bites to be had, which should be maximised by our chop worm caster catch everything that swims approach, we had one very good peg on wood, with another decent peg in the shape of peg 29, this is one round from a corner which means you have room, which as we have found in the big money matches counts for more than anything on this lake, my mate Mark 'Paul' Banks drew this one so I knew he'd do the damage from there as this was a peg he'd won a 60+ pegger in the spring league.
Then is was onto step field where captain Danny mason was on a good reliable peg on old side, and he'd drawn me probably the best winter peg on the lake in shape of 56, I had this peg and the ones almost either side in the spring league probably more than any other angler so I had an idea of the area!
After thanking the captain for our good fortunes and the use of his golden arm, we all headed to our pegs confident! We really wanted to win this match as last year we finished 2nd in the semi final at monk lakes and we really wanted top spot!
On arrival at my peg (which I pretty much ran too) I was the first person at the lake, I stood on the hill behind to get a picture of the lake and the wind was roaring down the end to the 30s and 40s, my peg was flat calm and I didn't like the look of it! In my experience of this lake, end pegs produce big weights of carp, whereas anything in between is an f1 race, I also new after an hour this race would slow up so you have to absolutely make the most of it.
My approach today was to start on a top kit with pellet shallow, pellet shallow is the method on this lake in the summer, and although I hadn't fished the lake since spring, I knew I could catch close early before it dies then moving out after, this worked for me in the winter so I saw no reason why it wouldn't be even better in the summer. Another thing about this lake is that, in the first hour, everyone can catch a fish from every inch of there peg, close,long,short,down the edge whatever is was you can get almost a bite a chuck. With this in mind starting on a top kit would allow me to catch more fish in that period than anglers fishing say 5m or 14m etc etc. I also had another tick up my sleeve, in the form of varnished lasood pellets, now being me, I leave nothing to chance, I spend a lot more time preparing than I do fishing, and this no doubt catches me more fish, in this instance spending time the night before lassoing and varnishing 15 hook lengths would be worth their weight in gold. I'd worked out if you spend 10 seconds unhooking a fish then rebanding a pellet, you would lose 10minutes of fishing in the first hour if you was to catch 60 fish, which is perfectly possible on this lake. Therefore my lasso approach should prove exceptional! And as it proved I caught 50 fish in the first hour on a top kit using just 2 pellets!
My rigs for the day were small dibber floats, with 0.15 main line for durability to an 0.13 hook length with an 18b911, although later in the day I changed down to 0.11 hook length. The 0.13 was more to bag up early doors. I set my rigs a foot deep as rules state and set up a rig for across on the deck for carp if I was struggling, along with a method rod in case it was hard too.
My feed today was sloppy groundbait, although it's not something I normally do, as I tend to fish and feed pellets, it seems to be the method as of late and is be daft not to try it, this also proved a brilliant decision and the word piranhas comes to mind with the reaction I got from the fish!
I started the match by feeding some slop and slapping my rig on the water, I hooked a fish first put in, netted it, unhooked it, slapped my rig again and as I was putting the fish I had just caught into my keep entry another was pulling the elastic out! I enjoyed this blinding action for the first hour and had around 50 fish for a brilliant start. I got into a lovely rhythm slapping, hooking fish, feeding, netting, unhooking, slapping, all the time I was just making the most of the early fish as I new it would die off!
Soon after I was adding a section to the pole and had to follow the fish out, this lasted another 40minutes before I was moving further out, towards the end of the match I was fishing 11 meters catching just the odd fish, as the fish had become very crafty to catch, it was very frustrating towards the end, I felt if I could fish shallower I could have still caught well as the f1s would attack the slop on impact then spook off but wouldn't feed deeper, I tried all kinds of ways to present the bait and the best was to slowly lower the pellet on top of the slop, hard work in the end, but I finished up with 140fish for 101lb and an important section win. The windward end had somehow not fished although it looked perfect, and the next best weight was 81lb further down the lake, I was buzzing and couldn't wait to get the gear away and find my team!
One we were all back we totted up our talley, which was 20points, this included my section win and team mate Alan lees section and match winning weight of 154lb from peg 6, and marks second in section and 4th in match 129lb from peg 29. Julian had also come second and dean and Danny had not had such easy days but still beat the anglers around them and secured good team points!
The results where called and we had done enough to win with second having 29points, it was a fantastic feeling and what we had came to do! We were all buzzing and I still am while I write this piece!
Hopefully we can have a better final after last years not so great result!
Thanks for reading and well done to all the other teams that qualified, see you at barston lakes!
Reece your stories make for interesting and pleasant reading. Mark Goodwin CAPS
ReplyDelete