All anglers will no doubt have a particular venue that they cannot stand, you know the one I mean, the one that you deliberately go out of your way to avoid, the one that would never normally get consideration when looking for a pleasure session…………….well Horwich’s next match was on mine…………………Charity Farm on Pool 1.
Now my dislike for this venue runs deep but I am not going to ponder on the reasons behind this and I think for now it’s fair to just say I don’t like the place. In fact in the days preceding this match I was contemplating having a weekend off but as I hadn’t been out the week before and I had already paid for my peg through my match subs, I figured I’d might as well give it a go.
So, a slightly earlier start than usual saw us making our draw at 7:30. We had pegged the lake ourselves so I am not sure what permanent peg I was on but I was around the left hand side as you approach the lake from the car park. I was a bit out of the way to make use of the island in my swim so I opted to fish an all-out pole match today, concentrating on 3 main areas, 1 swim at 11 metres, one at approx. 5 metres and another down the edge.
My main line was at 11 metres and on this line I had 3 rigs set up. The first rig was to fish on the bottom, while the other 2 were for the upper layers, with one rig set at approx. half depth and the final rig set at around 18 inches. The plan was to feed this swim with a bit pot of pellets and then I would loose feed 6mm pellets over the top with a view to bringing the fish up in the water. There were plenty fish topping as I was setting up so I had high hopes for this line. The 5 metre swim was to be a simple set up to fish 6mm cubed meat on the deck, this was periodically fed with a big pot of meat and finally I set up my margin rig which was to fish meat again but I was also going to cup in loose groundbait over the top.
At the all in, I fed the lines as described above, with the exception of the margin swim which I would start feeding later in the match, and went straight in on my 11 metre swim with the deck rig. After approx. 15 mins with no indications I decided to start loose feeding pellets in a hope to draw some fish into my swim and get them feeding shallow. I persevered with this for a while, continually feeding and looking for bites or liners that might indicate the fish are feeding up in the water but after nearly an hour I was still without any sign. Normally I would continue fishing on the bottom until indications showed the fish were up in the water but as I was having no signs on the bottom I decide to switch to my half depth rig and have a punt that the fish may be up there. After a short period of time, laying in my rig in different ways I got a few indications by flicking my rig over, almost like slapping but much more casual, and letting fall through the swim on a tight line. I managed to convert a couple of these indications into fish but they were only small Roach, not the carp I was after, patience prevailed however as after some frustrating minutes missing bites, which I put down to being small Roach just mouthing the pellets, I managed to hook my first Carp of the day, a short battle followed and I soon slipped the net under a nice looking Common Carp of around 4.5lb. This seemed to be the kiss of death for my shallow swim though after going back out it seemed completely devoid of life. I quickly brought the shallow rig back in and after re-feeding my short pole line, I went back in at 11 metres on the deck to see if anything had moved over my long pole line while continually loose feeding over the top. This line once again produced nothing so another look on my half depth rig was in order. Following the same pattern as before, I spent a few minutes missing bites from the smaller Roach before hitting something much more substantial, in fact when I struck at the bite I could have sworn I had hooked a brick, until it started to move!! The following battle was a tough one as I fought to try and keep the carp out of my swim to avoid spooking the other fish and to also keep feeding ready for when I went back in. The fish eventually decided to come closer to me which allowed me to ship back to my top kit and play the fish close in but this then presented more problems as the fish was doing its best to snap me in the margins and under my platform. Sadly after a few more minutes the hook pulled and the fish got away, perhaps I was bullying it too much but I fear if I hadn’t tried I would have lost it under my platform anyway, would I be left to rue this fish as seeing it in the water, it was easily over 8lb and could have gone to double figures. Another look on the long line produced nothing as I was even more convinced now that the bigger carp are spooking from the swim when one is hooked. Rather than going back on this line I decided to rest the swim a bit but continue feeding to bring the fish back in whilst trying my 5 metre line. With a 6mm cube of meat on the hook, I was immediately getting indications and it wasn’t long before my float buried and resulted in a decent Roach, I stuck at it and over a 30 minute period I managed to put a few really nice Roach in the net. If this hadn’t been a match I could have quite happily fished for these Roach all day but conscious of the fact that I needed Carp to win, it wasn’t long before I was back on the long line looking for the shallow Carp. As the match progressed only one more Carp came from the shallow swim and trying to catch them was becoming quite frustrating, another look on the 5 metre line resulted in absolutely nothing – things were looking dire!! By this time I had started to feed the margin swim so with just under 2 hours left of the match I had my first look, with meat on the hook I was searching for the fish all around where I had been feeding but there were no signs of any fish. I did hook into a lot of debris on the margin line which was not helping so after at least 45 mins working this swim I gave up on it and came back to the 5 metre swim where I finished the match with one small roach in the last hour. At the all-out I have to say that I was happy to call it a day as the result was frustrating to say the least – would I rue that lost Carp. As the scales went round it was obvious that nobody had fished well. Matt won the day with a 30lb-odd bag of fish followed closely by George who had a good last hour in the margins to put another 30lb + weight on the scales. My net went to 12lb-odd and whilst the lost fish would have pushed me up the leader board, it would have still left me short of a match win so I don’t feel too bad about losing it. Whilst packing up I was considering the could have beens and the what ifs but one thought stuck in my mind more than any other, and that was that I should have followed my initial instinct and stayed in bed. I won’t be going back to Charity Farm in a hurry!!
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