People seem to think I am some sort of venue expert at Hartleylands and spend a lot of time at the venue but I am far from a regular, I have only fished 4 matches at the venue since May and rarely pleasure fish the lakes, though it dosent matter really as carp are carp wherever you fish and once you have a method sussed you can adapt it for any venue.
The first match I fished the pellet waggler was the two day festival getting 1 section win and a lake win to take the title, the 2nd a Bromley club match which I won with 88lb. Then a third place in an open weighing in 107lb from what I consider a poor area, on that day Mike Jamerson won the match with 127lb on the floating feeder, I felt that day if I had drawn in the middle of the lake with a bigger area to draw fish from a net of 150-200lb was on the cards with the pellet waggler. That is what prompted the challenge as I reckoned on any day and with a fairish draw the waggler can beat the floating feeder every time.
The plan was to fish Nicks lake pegs 23 and 25 but we decided to change lakes on the day as the wind was blowing awkwardly and there didnt seem any point in making thing difficult, so peg 17 & 20 on Bramley lake were picked, I won the toss and picked peg 17 to fish, the only reason is it was closer to the car! I expected the weights to be slightly less on this lake as the fish are a smaller stamp and you dont seem to get many lumps to boost your weight, but I was still expecting to get around 150lb
I had 2 rods with me one set up with a 4g puddle chucker to a 0.14 trace, attached was a size 14 hook with a hair rigged bait band set the fish 24-12in deep, the other had a 3.5aaa short pellet waggler for fishing less that 12in,, this had a 0.16 trace and a 12 hook, bait and feed was 6mm hard carp pellets as I always like to feed what I am using on the hook, I also had some 8 & 11mm pellets for hook bait although I didnt expect to use them. Initially I clip up at a distance to just drop short of the island margins but after about half an hour I will remove this after getting a feel for the distance cast then it allows me to give line if needed if I hook a bigger fish.
I kicked of with the 4g rig feeding about 10-12 pellets every 10-20 seconds, and after the about the 5th cast 2-3 minutes into the match I had the first small carp, I reckoned in the first hour I had around 30 fish, things were going quite well with around another 30 added in the second hour although most were on the small side, by casting around the feed area a bit in the next couple of hours I was picking up a few bigger fish but most remained on the small side, the last hour the fish come right up in the water and were boiling on the surface every time I fed, a switch to the shallow 3.5aaa rig and cutting the feed back a little had me catching one a bung in the last hour putting around 50 fish in the net.I wasnt sure how Mike was doing as I was busy fishing myself but I did notice he stopped fishing about 5 minutes from the all out so guessed it hadnt gone as well as expected, or maybe he had caught so many he didnt need to fish for the last 5 minutes!
As it turned out Mike put 93lb odd on the scales a very good weight that would win nearly every match that had been held on the lake, but I had 135lb a little less than expected as I failed to pick up many of the bigger fish but still over 30lb above the lakes match record which I think is 104lb.
In conclusion I dont think the match really proved what was the best method only what worked on the day, then again I still think the waggler will beat the floating feeder every time until Mike can convince me otherwise!!!!!
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