Today I fished Kerry Kirkwoods Christmas match at Heronbrook. Three Mosella Northwest anglers turned out today; myself, Steve Broadbent and Wayne Rooke. Arrived at the fishery to find all the lakes frozen over from Friday night. The open match was going on Island, Bridge and Canal so we would have Meadow to ourselves. 28 anglers turned up so would be 4 sections of 7 anglers. Now this water is moody at the best of times and I have struggled in a few of the winter league matches to put runs of fish together, you have to work hard at it particularly if you draw in one of the poorer areas. The draw was kind to me today and I pulled out peg 21 which is a corner peg and is at the end of a straight starting at peg 16, in winter these are known good pegs. I have wanted to draw this peg for a while so was looking forward to it. After spending half an hour breaking a channel in the ice and clearing the swim I got my gear sorted. A simple approach today, 2 rigs one for pellet across in 3ft of water and one in the track for maggot. Pellet rig was 0.12 to 0.10 hook length and a 20s LWG with a 0.4gm SZ Black Widowz wire stem float. Shotting was a bulk and 2 droppers. Maggot rig started out kinky light 0.12 to 0.10 hook length with a 20s Tubertini 808, SZ 0.2gm Piranahz, shotting was strung out no11s. Started out short on maggot, fed a couple and had a bite right away...foul hooked big carp. Spent the next 5 minutes trying to get it back from under the ice. I eventually did and had it on a short elastic on my top kit when the scale I was attached to came off, typical ! Went back in and fished a further 15mins without a bite. Went across and spent the next 2.5 hrs dodging melting ice and loosing either foul hooked fish or properly hooked fish at the net, 8 in total. This seems to happen a lot on this water and on peg 19 was my mate Steve Broadbent and he was having similar problems, although he had put a few fish in the net compared to my one big F1. The melting ice eventually cleared completely and then the wind and rain came making presentation difficult. I had come short again and my 0.2gm float was just to light in those conditions so I swapped the rig out for the same but a 0.4gm float. This sat better and I caught a big F1 and a roach straight away, bites dried up and despite moving lines cancelling out I couldnt find anymore feeding fish. The wind dropped for the last hour so I went back across and caught a big carp right away. Another good sized F1 and another big carp followed as well as a proper foul hooked carp which almost reached Steves peg before bottoming out my NG 8-10s hollo elastic and snapping the hook length. Meadow fished hard today and I knew Steve would be in the frame as he caught steady for most of the match, despite losing 13 fish. I was the beginning of my section and watching through the match I was confident. Steve weighed 43lb which put him first up to me with 28lb 2nd and a big 23lb 3rd. I had clicked up 23lb and when Steve shouted over at the end of the match what weight I said between 20 and 25lb. The scales went round to 23lb dead, putting me 4th in the match at that point. I walked the rest of the section and had won my section comfortably with 11lb coming 2nd. The last section weighed and the results where called, Steve had won it and I came 4th picking up a section win. Happy with the result and made up for Steve, who also won the random pairs with Kerry! Well done pal. Talking to Steve after the match we both noticed that the fish we got in where all extremely lightly hooked in the top lip, thinking about it I have noticed this previously. The conclusion is that sometimes the carp as well as the F1s on that lake at times dont feed as vigorously as others, in terms of mouthing the bait. We think the key is not to rush the fish and had both noticed that stripping to much elastic and putting to much pressure on the fish caused the hook pulls. Lesson potentially learned here so next time I will take more time and put less pressure on the fish particularly when they are on your top kit plodding around. Maybe hold back on stripping the elastic? A lovely days fishing and thanks to Kerry and Wayne for organising.
Posted on: Sun, 14 Dec 2014 21:15:46 +0000
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