Langold Lake Grand Open

Hi Folks,

I'd like to take this time to invite you to fish a mini series which is currently getting organised at Langold Lake.

It will be fished as a mini series with two qualifiers moving onto a winner takes all final.

The road to the final is as follows;

The cost to enter is £30 per man. With additional small pools on the qualifying days. In essence all an angler has to do is compete with 3 men on each qualifier to enter the final, so if your not an out and out match men, its not impossible for you to get to the final at all.

I've split the qualifiers up into sections to give every angler a better chance to get to the final. So if one area of the lake isn't performing,your all in the same boat so no matter what, it'll be a fair match for all.

I've also split the qualifiers up into Pole and Rod and line, this will test all anglers thus allowing everyone the chance at qualifying with there preferred method. Truly allowing the all round anglers to shine.

Its going to be a great opportunity for forty anglers to compete on a natural circuit for a nice size of money.

So fella's whats stopping you?

Down to the rules.

Nothing over the top at all. Here's a short and sensible evaluation of the rules.

1. No Blood worm or Joker.
2. Pole limit of 14.5m
3. On the pole days a 1 kilo of bait allowance is allowed to be pre-baited into the peg in the allowance of time you have to set up (So before the match starts).
4. All matches are as follows; draw at 8:30 start at 10:00 - finish at 4 with a rolling weigh in.
5. No Spodding.
6. Landing nets must be used on fish above 5oz.

Grange Caravan Park Open - Blyton 5th March

Well its time for another open over at Blyton...

Obviously i have been doing well the past few months over here and i'd be targeting the big roach again with hopefully the added bonus carp somewhere along the lines.

For starters i drew the end peg on the far right of the lake. I wasn't going to change my approach for today even though i got an end peg which normally means feeder work on this venue.

I decided to set up a handful of pole lines and just as a back up a simple feeder rod rig.

First rig:

Line 1 (3m to Hand)
As i always use for this, the to hand rig was to be .5 Colmic goldie tied to .11 direct to a size 16 drennan silver fish maggot. (As usual a big float for a big bolt effect, put this to a double 4 elastic and your sorted).

I also tied 3 spares up of the above rig, Mainly because when fishing to hand is a fish drops off at the last second of swing, the line carries the momentum and tangles round, you can combat it a little by whipping your top 2 forward but it rarely stops it.

Line 2 (Pole Method)
I know its still at bit early but one day i'm not going to set this up and then wish i had! So it may as well be up and waiting just in case! I've now moved to using the Browning Kobra flat methods as i feel there a lot better build quality then the Preston ones and a fraction of the price!

Line 3 (Feeder Line)
I was just going to set up an everyday feeder set up, you all know by now i never use a method on the rod and this is no different. Just an ordinary Drennan Groundbait feeder with a short tail!

Bait wise

As you can see, my bait was pretty much maggots, maggots and more maggots. A mixture of maggots with turmeric, dead reds and ordinary live reds, i'd be looking to spray around 2 - 5 dead maggots every fish and looking to use the top up balls like last week every 3 or 4 fish. I'd also be looking to fish the least bait on the hook as possible while still getting bites, in other words i want to try and get away with a single red on a 16 or even a 14 if possible, to create a higher more fish - bite ratio.

Time to get in...


Well it was time for the all in, i started my swim off by chucking in 2 very large balls of just ground bait, its important to create a wide spread area when fishing for silvers to attract the maximum amount of fish in your peg as possible. I started on the 3m like and was almost instantly into the roach. It didn't seem to be going as quickly as the previous week though, maybe a fish every 5 minutes or so....


11:00

The first hour had passed and it was starting to pick up, i was getting the roach up to around the 1lb mark so a pretty good stamp of fish in anyone's book. I decided to stay on this line and just keep a gently trickle of bait going in.


13:00


A couple of hours later i was still on the same line but the fish were getting pretty small. I decided to keep at it, as long as i were keeping fishing entering the net then that's good enough for me. I didn't notice any one getting any carp so there was no point coming off this line. Every ounce counts!


13:30 


Well, i hooked my first carp and it didn't take long to shoot off, but with the balanced tackle it seemed to calm down and come in alright, without any drama anyway!...

As long as you take your time with them, they'll come in when you want em too....

14:30

Well we were into the last hour and i'd been catching roach most of the day with the one bonus carp. The roach were still coming in to the turmeric reds and i was happy with that. It did start to slow down towards 14:45 but it soon started up again with another bonus carp...

A little bit larger than the first this took me right up to time so it was to be my last fish, not a bad carp really on the gear which has been fished with today. Would of gone around 5lb.

The match ended and after the weigh in, it was to be my win again....55lb this week:)

Very pleased with my performance today, only criticism is that i may of over fed at the start. I broke my own rule to be fair. I don't normally feed until i start catching fish but i presumed there would of been fish already waiting. It wasn't costly but it could of been!

Thats it from me for now:)

Nathan@ Fish4Thought

Langold Lake Open 4th of March

Hi Folks,

Well, this was another extremely hard day at the lake and the weather wasn't going to help at all!

Went to to the draw and got one of my favorite pegs on the venue, number 39 (The little lilies - or were). I like this area of the lake as its got a lot of options, its not to shallow nor is it to deep and you generally will always get the fish in this area no matter what time of year.

The Peg

I'd only be setting my feeder rod up today as generally its only a feeder fishing area, though it can be productive for tench and bream on the waggler, but only on the night's and evening sessions.

Yellow Marker - This is basically were the little set of lilies appear. This can be a very good feature to fish to or slight off them in the evenings in the summer months!

Red Marker - This would be my line for the day. Its probably around 50 - 60 yard chuck and is the deepest area of the peg. Its a position to try first and adjust to suit if you get any liners.

Green Marker - This marker indicates a section of still water. If i were struggling i'd certainly give this ago. Still or should i say flat water is typically warmer, so if you can chuck to or on the edge of this area you can possible get your self an edge.

Blue Marker - I wouldn't normally even attempt this line but on the day i saw a few nice carp jumping about early on in the match!

I wouldn't be trying the island or the still water areas today as i didn't have access to longer rods until a few days ago! Its around about 100 yard chuck and i would of struggled with my 10 footer!


The Bait

I'd opted for the same mix i use throughout the year which is Bream 3000 from sensas. I believe its one of the best bream ground baits on the market and mixed 50/50 with brown crumb can get great results indeed. I've also been experimenting with a certain additive to my groundbait's for the last couple of weeks and i'm pretty sure its making a difference, especially at the lake or it could just be luck? I dont tend to put any particles into my mix at this time of the year so its just purely the crumb and the ground bait.

I'd be fishing with red maggots in variety's of live and dead, as well as different additives i'm currently testing.

10:00

The all in. No rushing just get it in the right place first time. I generally don't feed a lot of bait before i see fish. So for the first 5 minutes i cast in every minute or so with just a medium drennan ground bait feeder, just to get a littler introductory bed of bait down there.

I'll only introduce more when i see or get signs of fish.

12:00

Well, the weather really turned for me about 11/12 ish! It was absolutely terrible. I have never been to cold when fishing in my life! I'd set up with the wind coming right round my side and it then started to rain and even snow!

I did half a couple of decent skimmers in the net by now though!

14:00

Now we were into the last couple of hours left of the match and i hadn't really seen anyone get anything yet so i was on my way to another win, so i thought. I'd now started to really struggle getting the bait were i wanted it. I'd lost a few feeders pushing the casts to much as i had a really strong head wind, so i wasn't fishing in the placed i wanted to!


16:00


Well the shout for time came and it couldn't of come sooner! I'd been sat on the bank in the rain, snow and horrible wind with no body else to talk to as everyone else were on the other side.

I'd no idea what other people had got and how they'd gotten on so i was looking forward to the weight in. As i looked a cross i was shocked to see just 2 anglers left on the lake from starting numbers of around 15. I was even more shocked when i saw the other 2 remaining fellas get there nets in!!

As it turned out i was the only person in the match to catch anything!! That's a definite first for me

The weight turned out just below the 8lb mark with a small tench added to that in the last ten minutes.

I reckon the next match will fish a lot better now we know were the bream are. That's half the struggle with shoal fish. If anyone would like to attend any of the matches your are very welcome. Just email me on the above address and i'll give you directions.

Catch you later.

Nathan @ Fish4thought