Well its that time again, another open at the grange. I fully intended just to go for the roach this time and my rigs reflected that. No matter what peg.
9m Bottom line: Colmic Goldie in .4, in conjunction with .11 - .10 tied to 16 Silver fish Maggot and i was going to fish this in around 4-5 feet of water. This would be a deck line and would be getting the cannon ball treatment with a mixture of dead tumeric maggots and 50/50 roach 3000 and brown crumb. Bait wise i'd be looking at 2 red maggots.
3m to hand line: Colmic Goldie in .5, in conjunction with .11 - .10 tied to 14 Silver fish Maggot and i was going to fish this in around 2-3 feet of water. This would be a deck line and adjustable to up in the water if it suits. I'd want to get the fish coming in frequently but not to many at a time so i'd put into action...
On top of my pole line i also put the bomb rod up just as insurance, but i wasn't in the mind set that i was going to use it.
As soon as the all in went i chucked 4 decent sized balls into my 9m swim but starts on the 3-4m swim.
***Now you may notice above that i'm using a heavy float for shallow water? Bet your thinking IDIOT. Well no, i'd always reccomend an over weight float for fishing to hand as generally you've got alot of slack line above that water so you want as much as a bolt as you can get, and these tear shaped floats do the trip nicely in the bigger sizes!***
I was straight into roach, decent ones at that! As i say above. i kept trying to plop a small top up ball in every couple of fish and as a result one was in every minute. I was getting a decent weight together within the first house and even had a decent perch AGAIN.
I was fishing to hand with a double 4 elastics and what happens? Carp! 3 times in a row! They wasn't particularly big (Around 2lb) but they gave a good fight on the light tackle.
I'd been catching all day, so sadly not many pictures...But here's the end result...
41lb of Roach and 6lb of Carp...
A bit of my match winning bag.
I truly believe that the reason i was 30lb clear of second places was just the speed and the amount of bait i was feeding, i believe the other guys were fishing far to far out and were waiting for the carp for far to long. Big fish wont stay in your swim unless there is something interesting to go at. If there's a small amount of feed they wont bother if other fish are there, this includes roach. By the end of the match i'd gone through....
All that was full when i arrived! Apart from the buck obviously.
- 4 Pints of Dead Maggots (Tumeric)
- 2 Pints of Pellets.
- 5 Kilo's of GroundBait.
- 1 Pint of Live Reds.
My personnal tips for fishing to hand on a short pole would be:
- Use a Bigger hook 14 would be ideal for double maggot.
- Use a Light elastic.
- Use a heavy float and experiment with shotting patterns. I'd rather pic the biggies up off the bottom that the smaller ones mid water so the bulk shotting 3 inch from the hooked worked for me today. (Something to think about).
- Get your fishing in a couple at a time by using the small top up balls. Its easier to control and you wont spook so many away.
- You want you hook to come to the bottom of whatever section your holding, so adjust length of line to suit.
- Use grease to make the line between float and pole, float. You don't want this to sink.
- If your having difficulty hitting bits. Even after you've tried moving your shot down and shallowing up, trip some Amnesia Memory free money as the line between pole and float.
Well thats about it!
Not a long post but you should get a very good idea on how to fish to hand if your struggling.
Catch you later.
Nate@Fish4thought.
