Just a report on my recent match, not been being much of late and havn't done much apart from Section wins and Placing for the past couple of weeks so here's a full match report with an excellent out come.
First of all i drew peg two:
After i seen the peg i drew i decided on my lines, which were to be a 6m and 11m Pole line's and 30 - 40 Yard feeder/Bomb lines. The red squares i will get to later on;). I'd also fixed up a little Pole-method style rig just in case.
In a bit more detail:
6m Line: Colmic Goldie .2 put right down to the tip, on .11 with a hook length being .10, i'm targeting lots and lots of roach and fishing to hand so i wanted a good few feet off of the tip of my pole and a nice big hook (Drennan Silver Fish maggot 16) which is going to be fish on single maggot. I'm looking for a nice flat area for this rig with the ethos of fishing dead depth with a spread shotting pattern. The area i was fishing was 3ft deep. I was only really expection roach and the odd small carp today so i opted for a 9h Elastic.
11m: Colmic Goldie .2 put right down to the tip, on .11 with a hook length being .10, i'm targeting lots and lots of roach with this rig too so still using a nice big hook (Drennan Silver Fish maggot 16) which is going to be fish on single maggot. I'm looking to fish mid water on this rig and spreading maggots every minute or so in minimal numbers. I decided on a hollow 6 elastic for this line as its rare you get the carp shallow in the summer months never mind the winter!
30-40 Yard Bomb/feeder line: I like to alternate between these two lines. I'll start off on the bomb, if i get bites i know i dont need bait, if i dont then i simple soak a couple of pellets and chuck em in a drennan g/bait feeder. Hook wise i'd be going from 3 dead reds to maybe trying corn a few times. I'll start on the longer line, if i get liners i pull back, this gives me more opportunity to explore the water. You have to be careful when fishing at range on this venue as the ledges can be very sharp and often it dramatically changes. See below....
The Pole Method Line: Generally i only use this off of a top two here. Its mainly a big fish system that i use BUT it'll catch the bigger fish in any species. You cant get much simpler than the rig i chose today. It consists of a stiff direct line .15 power line to a 16 B911, and the feeder needs to be free running. All i used today were two soft shots to stop the feeder from going over the hook. Its all that's needed for today. If i were expecting plenty of fish, i'd just simply do the exact same, but tie the hook length to a swivel with a bead over it, but today, this will suffice nicely.
Thats the simplest way of doing this method, its just import to go direct and use a stiff mono line with soft shot. Like i say if i were expecting a rushed day of carp i'd simply from the shot for swivel. That way it gives me a fast option of changing hook lengths quickly. For this method, i never use a method mould, its abit pointless, as your only under arm swinging it out, you dont need it to be aerodynamic. I'll be using soaked pellets today, but for major match weights i'd use a mix of swimstim and condensed milt mixed very sloppy, just enough to hold it on the feeder until it hits the water then BOOM it explodes. I also like to position my top two low to the water (Busy times touching the deck!) and to around 10-11 o'clock.....
So lets get started then!
The match started and i decided to go straight for my 11m. Its always been a favorable silver fish line on this pond so why not! I was only in seconds and was into the roach, every minute or so getting a pull, then while playing the fish introducing more maggots every time just to give them confidence immediately after catching one.
After about 45 minutes the size of the roach was really going down and i'd started to miss alot of the bites even with a big hook. I decided to try the deck line @ 6m.
Which shortly followed this decent perch!...
Followed by even more roach:).
Eventually all my pole lines went dead, its fairly normally for this venue while targeting the roach. It seems to fish brilliant up until around 12 o clock then they go off the feed. I decided to try to target some carp on the bomb. I'd never actually tried it here as its very deep and its also pretty violent on the bottom (See previous diagram) but it was worth a go on the triple dead red.
Well, it went better than i'd expected, i started off feeding nothing and was starting to roach again just on the bomb. As soon as i knew there were fish there i began to introduce some feed. I really work on my own ethos of not introducing bait until I've located fish, this stops you having little piles of bait all over and with a bomb, just means just can explore loads more. I began to introduce some soaks 2mm pellets in a Drennan G/bait feeder every now and again. The feeder had a 25g weight on it so i didn't have to fill it up to cast out everytime.
Eventually i got a right wrap round on the tip....
It gave an odd 'Noding' fight, i thought it was a bream but it turned out to be a 5lb carp!
Once the fish were present, i being to introduce more feed but still very little. After the carp it was back on to the roach, i had a feeling the numbers of roach were bullying the odd carp which were present out of the swim so....This is were the red dot comes in! Its a very good idea to just go to the left or right by 2-6ft of your established swim sometimes and that's exactly what i did... Followed by another 3 consecutive carp this one being the biggest of the other 3...
It didn't end up being a bad day to be honest. I'd made a mistake the night before by leaving my landing net and handle at home! My own fault, i've just replaced all my luggage and with all the bits i put away i'd forgotten one of the most important items, but luckily my mate had a spare one.
It ended great for me, I ended up winning with 15lb of Carp and 27lb of roach.
Its a really good roach venue this, i'd urge anyone who wants a change just to go on it for a day. The small opens are £10 but a day ticket is only £4 and you can go wrong with that.
That's it from me, I'm fishing the canal for the first time in a while at the weekend (Pleasure fishing) so i'll get a post up with that at some point.
Nathan
@Fish4Thought
