Southern supercup semi final at colemans cottage

This weekend saw me and my bills tackle team mates fish the supercup semi final at colemans cottage, this is a venue we know well, and have had a fair but if success at, although that's more in the individual front as a few in our team fished the recent spring league, myself included, and we fish the odd open and the big money qualifiers, including the fishomania where I managed to finish third overall.

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!

My latest fishing fortunes

The last few months have been very rewarding for me, I framed in my one and only fisho qualifier of the year, finishing third, I won the first round if the essex inter club league at southminster pits, came 2nd at colemans cottage on a 36pegger on wood lake, I also added another evening league tital to my name, all in all I've seen lots of brown envelopes!

Il start with the fishomania qualifier, I started the day 46th on the reserve list, wondering if I would even come close to getting on, talk at the draw as usual was you wanted to draw copse, you have more room than anyone and it's not usually match fished every week so the fish are always ready to feed, otherwise having abut of knowledge of the venue, I knew wood could throw up a weight but didn't expect the other lakes to compete. I was fortunate to get onto the match as about 20 people didn't turn up (I think) I just about squeezed in and couldn't believe it when I saw peg 8 copse, this is a good peg (supposedly) and I was very happy to draw copse because at least I had abut of room. Despite the fact I have fished the venue few times in the last year, I've never fished this lake as it's not big enough to hold an open match. A quick chat with Paul the tackle shop owner and he told me Chris vandervliet(who drew just before me in the que) conveniently drew peg 17 on copse with the wind blowing into it, and Ross Harold was also on a decent peg, Paul told me they were both better pegs than mine so I new I would have a challenge on my hands to win.

I got to my peg very late, seeing as I had to wait for 120 anglers to pull pegs out, then wait another 30minutes In case any one turned up late who had tickets, this meant I arrived at my peg with 40minutes to get ready, which wasn't ideal.

I decided on a margin swim to my right which was abut like a 5m line as it had a spit going out with reeds that looked lovely, a swim to my left in shallow water next to some over hanging sedges that looked very inviting, and long pole to the island, although on setting up it was hard to hold in the wind. 

I started on my right hand swim with the idea of kinder potting, the left hand margin was big potted and long pole left alone unless I fished it. I had a good start catching about 30lb in the first hour, more than anyone else I could see before bites slowed up, a look down the left resulted in a good run of better stamp fish to get me upto about 60lb before yet again it died, at this stage I considered going long but on first attempt I almost took off with the wind so quickly the pole came back in, I considered chucking a tip over but the angler to my right had caught about 3fish all match and it was clearly not that great, he was also only about 3meters away from where I would have been chucking, so I discarded this and went back to the right margin. To cut a long story short, I kept a steady run if fish going by swapping between right and left side until the last hour when I only managed 4fish, this was frustrating, but after the match it seemed everyone on the lake had exactly the same thing, so I didn't feel I did much wrong.

I finished weighing 103lb, I won the lake beating Chris vandervliet who had 97lbi sh I think! Talk was that I had won it, but my hopes were dashed when a weight of 129lb came from pathfield, very unexpected, I was then relegated into 3rd after Gary bull weighed 145lb of peg 38 on wood.

Although I hadn't won, I was chuffed to frame in a big match like this, and even more chuffed to win my lake against top opposition. The feeling when people were saying I had won it was indescribable, and it's left me craving that feeling again. Next year I'm applying for more tickets and il be back to go that bit better!

My last big match win was at southminster pits, which was a 60 pegged. This is my third visit to the venue as I only go once a year on the inter club match, last year I was sat on a featureless peg watching every peg on the other side of the lake sack up in carp next to reeds in corners, it looked brilliant over there, I managed 13lb of roach for 5th in section that day, which was realistically as good as I could do!

This time however my fortunes had changed and I drew a corner peg on the same lake, it looked fantastic, loads of room and fish topping in the corner whilst setting up. Last year this peg had about 40lb and the match was win with 70lb so I fancied my chances. I spent a good 20minutes plumbing every inch of my right hand margin, and finally settled on 13meters down the bank, just past a little bush and more importantly a relatively flat bottom without tree roots, the rest of the swim was horrible and full of roots and snags which would have made fishing a nightmare. I fed a cup of groundbait (this was 50/50 sonubaits krill and sonubaits sweet f1, a margin mix that works everywhere I go and have complete faith in) with some dead maggots here and chucked a tip down the corner, after 10minutes I'd had nothing so thought I'd see if I could mug an early carp on the pole line, the float flew straight under and a short scrap later a nice 6lber was in the net, I went straight back in and had another one, by this time only 25minutes had passed and I had already matched my weight from the year before, not too shabby!

I topped the swim up with more groundbait and maggots and went on my roach line as there are some cracking roach in here and felt I could catch these until the margin was really ready. After 2 minutes and 2 decent roach I saw a tail sticking out the margin. I proceeded to catch 3 carp in 3 put ins and then topped up again. I decided this time to go straight back over the top, and had another withing minutes. I got into a nice routine catching 2 or 3 carp off a pot of groundbait with a few dead reds. I had a slow spell in the middle of the match, but otherwise caught very regularly. I finished with 26 carp for a match winning143lb, beating the 'reed' peg who came 2nd with 78lb.

I had a great day and was really pleased to win by such a great margin, I had got the feeding pattern spot on all day and hardly lost a fish!

The rig that did all the damage was a  Nick Gilbert margin float, I used a heavy 0.4g as the swim was about 2.5 foot deep these also feature a 2mm bristle which helps the float stay up when you get liners, personally I am completely converted to heavy margin floats for carp, regardless of depth, I'm happy to use a 0.4g which is about 4x14 in less than 18inches if the target is carp. I see no reason to fish any lighter, I have all the shot above a 4inch hook length, so my 10 maggots are on the bottom and not going anywhere, we all know how positive margin carp take the bait aswell so there's no reason to make life hard for yourself, after all what's the point in feeding accurately with a pole cup if you fish a light float that's going to waft about when a fish comes in!

I also came 2nd a colemans cottage the other week on a 36peg match on wood lake, I weighed 154lb which would normally be enough to win with this many people on it but I got pipped by Gary bell with 164lb. I won't disclose my tactics for this match just yet as the maver match this is coming up next week on here, but more importantly my team bills tackle are in the semi final of the bait tech supercup in 2 weeks where we will be trying to make out way to the final for a second year running.

These results also mean I have 7points after the first 2 weeks of the anglers mail/preston innovations matchman of the year, which is a great start! Although I am under no illusions that I could win this competition as I fish team matches all year round, if I'm to score points it will be venues I fish once or twice a year that can be very Peggy, this is much harder than fishing 2 or 3 local commercials that run big matches in my opinion. I also don't fish a Saturday and Sunday so will most likely fish half the matches if many! Hopefully though I can score a few points and keep my name on the leaderboard a little while longer.

Thanks for reading

I will be back with more!

Colemans Cottage spring league F1 Bagging!

The last few weeks I've been fishing at Coleman's cottage in the spring league. This is run by the onsite tackle shop owner Paul chambers. This league is 12 consecutive matches, which in my opinion is a few too many as its hard for anglers to commit to that many matches in a row without having team commitments, an example being I had to miss the first round due to it being the same date as the Essex interclub league final round on Maldon canal. This meant I was on the back foot straight away and seeing as I will be missing the last two rounds, I will have no real chance of winning the league, but my goal has been to finish in the top 30, as the top 30 go through to a Final where you fish for (hopefully) a decent pay day. Being at Coleman's, which is a fantastic venue, it has drawn many top anglers in to fish, including big names like Simon Colclough, Terry Edwards, Gary miller, Tony Curd and Danny Grimsby  to name a few and with attendances so far up to 74anglers, it's not easy to frame. Sections have been 6 or 7 in a section, with a section win gaining 4 points, 2nd gets 3, 3rd gets 2, then if you weigh you get 1, yet again I personally don't favour this way, but I guess it is done so that people can't walk away with it so much and you can afford to miss a match or two.

I have fished 8 rounds of the league so far, I've drawn really poorly on some, and bang on with others, doesn't seem to be any middle ground for me so far, and I think I have 17 or 18points, which puts me roughly around 14th/15th/16th area of the league table, more importantly I think I have enough points to stay in the top 30 if I don't fish any more matches.

My most fun match of the series has to be when I drew peg 56 on stepfield a few weeks ago, this is one of the 3 or 4 best pegs on the lake, if not the best peg on there! it's fair to say I had abit of a grin on my face when I drew it out the drawbag. it's been a good section winning peg since the league started, and also framed in a couple of matches. new side of stepfield is full of small f1s, mostly averaging less than a pound. my way of fishing this lake seems to be abit different than others, most people tend to fish long or start on 2+2, but I start on a top kit! yes a top kit! providing I have at least 3 foot of water, if not on goes another section and that where I start. My aim on a match on here is to catch as short as possible for as long as possible, they always back off after a while, but you can catch very quick when you catch short, I basically catch till I can't get a bite and then add another section and start again.

I started the match on this day on a top kit plus one, as on plumbing up I had about 2 feet on a top kit, then a section further out it was like a cliff face and went down to about 5foot, although ideally id rather catch in shallower water, I couldn't find anything better short, and with such a feature underwater like id just found, it had to be the perfect place to start. I Also plumbed all the way across finding the depth, it gradually got deeper to the middle and then sloped up, and I found I could use the same rig from about 5 sections to 8 sections if I needed too, then I set up another rig where I had about 3 foot of water across slightly to my left, this peg has a lovely aerator straight  across but with the wind I never had a chance of holding the pole. I also clipped up a bomb rod next to the aerator in case I couldn't hold the pole at all (it really was blowing a gale with winds up to 50mph on the day) whilst clipping up I hooked a carp, in the mouth, it had actually taken my quick stop, must have been hungry! after that I decided the first thing I would do on the whistle was to chuck the bomb over and see if I could snag one or two quick at the start, as carp are not easy to come by on this lake, and are a lot bigger than the f1s! My rigs were all 4x14 malman slim f1 floats, these are basically a super strong Chianti float which is perfect for this type of fishing as you need the super sensitive presentation along with a strong float to withstand bagging. I dot my floats to a pimple, and then use bristle grease to hold them up, this is the best way to fish for f1s with pellet when fishing dead depth, I then use a strung out bulk of no 11s spread 1cm apart, starting from the 4inch hooklenght of 0.10 using an 18 b911 f1 hook, for me this has been the perfect rig set up. I also have 4x12s for shallower water, also 4x10s in case its incredibly hard and 4x16s for down the track in the 6- 7foot+ depths. although these floats may seem heavy for the depths of water, I have found its on the final 10-18inches of water that really matter to getting a bite, so the quicker you can get to that point the better, especially when your catching quickly.

On the whistle I put about 30micros on my top kit plus one, and chucked the bomb out with some pop up bread on a hair, I had 2 big f1s in two chucks, which was good! but not the carp I had hoped for, on my third chuck it sat for about 2 minutes before a small f1 so I came short on the pole.

I was straight into fish on the pole, catching a smaller stamp of f1s than usual, but I was putting fish in the net one a bung and from my experience of this lake it's hard for anyone to beat that even if they are getting odd carp and big f1s. I caught nonstop for the first 2 hours, feeding about 20micros in a small frenzee soft pot for every 2 or 3 fish. the reason I didn't feed every fish is quite simply because its way more time consuming filling a kinder pot up each time. I was fishing either a 4 or 6mm expander on the hook, I like using ringers expanders as they stay on the hook great just from pumping them and you don't need to add gelatine or anything silly. 6mm caught me bigger fish, but once id caught the big fish in the swim I then missed bites from smaller ones so it was important to keep changing to make the most of the peg. now a key thing I have found particularly on this lake, is how you lower the rig in, despite the fact I was catching one a bung, if I didn't lower the rig in correctly you could sit there and not get a bite, my method here is to bomb the rig so the float is out the water and a little line, maybe about 8inches in total from float tip to water, then lower it really slow, and I mean really slow, this never fails to get a bite! on the rare occasion it does, it probably means there's not allot of fish in your swim, but I don't leave it more than 10 seconds then I lift and drop again, this is a deadly tactic for f1s and one you should try if you don't already!

back to the match, after 2 hours my swim completely died, by this point the wind was so bad I had no chance of holding the pole anywhere across, I tried adding another section and I could barely hold 2+2! I knew straight away I was in mega trouble if I couldn't get the fish short again, I then decided I had to try the bread again and try my best to rebuild the short line. I simply threw 5 or 6 4mm pellets every minute over the short line whilst fishing the bomb to hopefully draw some fish back and get them confident while I wasn't fishing it. on the bomb line, I really didn't expect it to be that good, on previous occasions I've always caught a few carp on it, but only big f1s seem to have it as it seems too positive for small f1s, id also found a feeder was no good because however small a feeder you used it really was too much bait and they back off, fortunately though I had a really good hour on the bomb, catching a few carp but plenty of big f1s, I had possibly about 30lb in the hour on the bomb, which was probably more than id caught in the first 2 hours on the pole, so I wanted to get the most out of this, unfortunately id died completely and the bloke to my right started catching so I guess they had moved on.

At this point I came short on the pole again, and found myself missing bites! id clearly drawn the fish shallow by my regular loose feed, a quick try on a shallow rig just didn't catch the fish quick enough and they just didn't seem quick enough. I went back on the deck and started trickling in micros which really got the fish going again, I caught more and more as the day went on after this, especially the last hour it seemed to the best it had been all day, I kept having odd chucks on the bomb during this final spell, hoping to snag an odd carp, but only found the odd f1, and by this point they were no bigger than the pole line so just persevered for the remainder of the match, finishing with 150fish in total. A proper cracking days winter fishing that for sure!

My fish totalled 102lb so you can see what I mean by small stamp of fish! 2nd on the lake was further down the lake with 37lb. the peg to my right had weighed 21lb and the peg to the left had packed up and gone home! Id walked the lake, and section and even framed in the match taking 2ndplace payout, most fun I've had all winter!

The reason I say that was the most fun match I've had and not the best is because I was on the flyer and won easily, the best match I believe I have fished this series is when I drew peg 54, which is close to the flyer, but 55, 56 and 57 are certainly better pegs! On the day I managed to weigh in 89lb, and take the section win against some top anglers on all of the better pegs, and finish 3rd on the lake and 5th in the match. I fished identical tactics to how I fished peg 56, except on the day I actually managed to catch really well shallow on a top kit for the first hour to put 60 fish in my net before it started tailing off as the lake tends to do, 2nd in the section was peg 56 with 80lb on the day with a browning backed angler. so for me this has been my best match!

I've had a few other decent matches, but I've drawn horrible on wood lake and have been on the wrong peg on the wrong day on a couple of occasions, but I've beaten the anglers either side of me nearly every time, which is sometimes all you can do, these harder pegs have made me really work hard to get extra points, and without that extra effort i probably wouldn't be in the top 30, so I'm happy with that.

In the next few weeks my team Bills tackle will be practicing for the first round of the angling times/ bait tech super cup, we have drawn Colchester at their water so we expect it to be a tough match, but after we reached the final last year we are all going to be fighting to make it their again as it was a fantastic experience and a competition I would love to win. I will post updates once we have fished this match

thanks for reading,

Reece.