Friday, December 21, 2007

New Foum Added

Have a look on the right and you will see I have added a forum for any questions you have and general fishing chat.

Wednesday, December 19, 2007

Maggotdrowners Match at Monks.

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You have no doubt noticed there have not been many blog entries lately. This is because I rarely venture out and fish a match in the cold. The problem being on most venues you can almost predict where the winner will come from and a few will catch well while the rest struggle, which I find rather frustrating. So against my better judgement I decided to fish this match at Monks Lake.

The venue for the day was going to be Lake 1 which is the best one to choose as the fish tend to be in most swims so at worst everybody should catch something. 25 turned up to fish this match that was being run under the Maggotdrowners Forum banner. It was only open to forum members and there were plenty of familiar faces at the draw and a few new ones. I like fishing these matches as it is never too serious with plenty of banter. The temperature was barely above freezing and there was an east wind so the conditions were unpleasant!

I quite fancied a draw on the far side of the lake with the wind of my back today as I reckoned that where the winner is likely to come from. My drawing arm deserted me today and I pulled out 18, a peg on the wrong side of the lake but thankfully I still had the wind blowing from behind me. I still expected to catch a few fish though.

Tactics for the day were going to be simple. I set up a 13ft Maver Reactolite Number 1 float rod and My TD-Sol reel. The rig was a 3AAA insert peacock waggler, set a few inches over depth. This had a 0.10 trace and an 18 Kamasan 611 hook. All the shot was under the float apart from a number 10 6in from the hook then two equally spaced number 8s. This was to be fished in about 4ft of water. I also set up 1 pole rig! This was a Carpa Chimp 4 x 16, this size of float was needed to combat the tow, this also had a size 18 attached to a 0.10 hook length. Shotting was nothing complicated with a bulk and two number 10 droppers. Elastic was an 8 latex. This will be fished at about 11 meters as a backup to the main waggler line.

Bait for the day was 3 pints of white and red maggots, plus a couple of pints of soft expanders.

I will mention something I see a lot, guys setting up multiple top kits, a waggler, feeder, bomb etc, then have about 6-7 different types of bait on display when a couple of simple rigs and baits would do. This says to me that they have no confidence in what they are doing or haven’t found out what works at the fishery.

Anyway back to the days fishing. At the off it was out with the waggler around 20 meters and feeding a pouch full of maggots about every minute. I was feeding quite a large area so I can cast to the back of the feed and slowly twitch the bait through it to induce a bite. Bait was double maggots. I was also feeding pellets on the pole line at around 10-11 meters every few minutes to try later on. Vince on the next peg had a carp first bung on the waggler and most others fishing the method where soon into fish! Bill next door seemed to be struggling on the pole so I think the waggler was a good choice to start with.

During the next couple of hours I did pick up a few F1s , tench, ide and chub. Bill to my right had switched to the waggler by now and was catching more than me, but on the other side Vince was struggling and I guessed I was ahead of him. A quick look on the pole at 11 meters produced nothing which was surprising as I thought they would be queuing up there by now!

Back out on the waggler again and it was slow going just picking up the odd fish during the next hour. Twitching the bait through the feed area seemed to produce the bites with double white maggot the best bait. I did switch to feeding a few maggots on the pole line and intended to have another look later on. Looking up I spotted those on the far bank turning blue with the freezing east wind in their face, I was so glad I wasn’t with them!!!

The 4th hour of the match I went out again on the pole and this time had a few bites picking up some small chub, this eventually died on me and with 45 minutes remaining I was back on the waggler which I had continued to feed. It was solid out there now after giving it a rest and I put about 15lb in the net in the last part of the match including a surprise perch around the 2lb mark!

The whistle went to signal the end and I doubted I had enough to win with possibly 30lb odd in the net. The scales arrived and so far Matt’s 37lb was the best weight on my side of the lake. Bill on the next peg had 35lb and I was sure he had beaten me. My first net with carp in it went 26lb 12 oz, followed by my silverfish that surprisingly pulled the scales down to 10lb. But only good enough for 2nd place on my side of the lake and 4th overall. As I guessed the area on the far side that I fancied produced the two top weights where Omega Mike did well to land over 50lb on the maggot and waggler.

Here is the full result on the day considering the cold weather the lake fished well with no blanks.

1st Omega Mike 54lbs 12ozs
2nd M.T.Net 44lbs 04ozs
3rd Yalding Bloke 37lbs 00ozs
4th Nick Gilbert 36lbs 12ozs
5th gibbinsbill 35lbs 00ozs
6th Jay L 29lbs 14ozs
7th Steve Clinch 29lbs 04ozs
8th Up-Yah 21lbs 12ozs
9th Kev the Catch 21lbs 08ozs
10th Grouty 20lbs 04ozs
11th Sven C 20lbs 00ozs
12th Jim Boase 19lbs 04ozs
13th Peter 18lbs 10ozs
14th Chris 18lbs 00ozs
15th Vince 17lbs 00ozs
16th nomorelongwalks 14lbs 00ozs
17th spamwham 13lbs 10ozs
18th Clive 13lbs 00ozs
19th Dai 11lbs 08ozs
20th aliwoo 10lbs 04ozs
21st petemid 9lbs 00ozs
21st The Hat 9lbs 00ozs
21st Ron B 9lbs 00ozs
24th Zephyr 4lbs 02ozs
25th Wily Coyote 3lbs 12ozs

I won’t be out much now until the first of my League Matches Down Hartleyland Nicks Lake. Hopefully it will be a bit warmer then!!