Rosemary Wood - Moss Lake

After around 6 months of action, this match was to draw a close to my campaign with Pem Central this year. Prior to going into today's match I was sitting 3rd in the league but as I was going to miss the final match of the year I needed a good result at Rosemary Wood to try make a claim for 3rd place in the league.

After a good breakfast (where would fishing be without it), me and Wayne made our way to the fishery with Wayne telling tales of a poor day there earlier in the week when he went for a sneaky practice. So at the draw, talk was rife with poor reports from rosemary wood and worries of a fish kill being rumored from a fishery we are visiting later in the month, potentially more on that to follow.

My draw put me on peg 45. End peg for the day but at the wrong end of the wind and whilst I have fished the boards before, I've not fished this peg.

Plan for the day was meant to be a simple one. My main effort was going to be focused on the pellet waggler, with a feeder rod set up to fish either the method feeder or straight lead. For the first time on Moss Lake, I actually took my pole and fished a short pole line against the reeds with krill and tuna groundbait and sweet corn.

At the start of the match, I expected most others to go out on the feeder to start with so I planned on going straight out with the pellet waggler. I was using 11mm pellets today as normally the wind here is quite breezy but typically today it wasn't too bad. After 45 mins on the pellet waggler I had only a skimmer of about 1lb to show for it so I decided to try the feeder. Starting initially on the method feeder I had a wrap round bite on my first cast and was hoping this would signify the start of a bagging session but sadly a single carp of around 2lb is all that came of it. After trying the feeder for a while with no further success I decided to try the waggler again as I had been getting some line bites on the feeder whilst I was feeding pellets over the top. Another fruitless period in the waggler and by this time I was starting to lose faith, and interest if truth be told. A switch to the feeder again saw another solitary fish followed by a long period of nothing.

I was now pinning my hopes on my short pole line. A look here with corn on the hook produced a run of small roach and skimmers. Eventually, my enthusiasm, along with any hopes of a good result here, had all but disappeared and I sat the rest of the match out with the bomb in the hope that a big carp would pick up my single 11mm pellet. With half an hour to go, enough was enough for me and I called time on what was the worse match  of my year.

The weigh in showed 7lb-odd for my efforts and whilst the venue had fished poorly all round, I was only good enough for 13th out of 15, and to be honest I was lucky for that as Dave Benson on the next peg chucked back at least 10lb so I could have been one place lower.

Well do e to Alex, who chalked up another win and looks to have all but secured the league win, providing he can get a half decent result at Heronbrook in a few weeks, I'm sure Wayne and Angy will push him all the way though.

Hall Lane - Gwen's Canal

Saturday 6th September and as I awoke this morning I was greeted by grey skies and what looked to be a promise of rain this morning. Typical following a week of reasonably consistent dry weather. 

Sure enough as I got to the fishery, the rain was threatening even more and after taking a quick walk down the water, the rain made it's presence known. As is true to form, I have brought neither my brolley nor my boots so I was in for a soaking in the morning and a hope that it dries up in the afternoon.

For those that haven't been before, Gwen's canal is a long straight length canal, very uniform and a very fair match venue and in my opinion, the best water on the fishery.

Once all the guys had turned up, we had only 13 on, but what it did was give us some space and we decided to peg it roughly every other peg.  I drew peg 7, from which I was hearing its poor and never frames but also that it's a great peg. It's always hard to decide what is a genuine report and what is just pre match banter so I decided to ignore those and just see what the day brought.

My plan for day was to fish short of the far bank, about 13.5 metre, in about 3ft of water and gradually follow the fish up to the bank if they backed off a little.  I wanted to keep bait choices simple today so on this line i simply used a mixture of 2 and 4 mm pellets from marukyu j pellets and Skrill ranges and used the same soft hookers. I set up 3 rigs for this line, one to start with and then a few shallower ones for following them up to the bank.  The only other rig I had set up was a short rig, fished on just a top kit and short 3 section. Here I set my rig about an inch over depth and fished dead maggot over a bed of groundbait. My groundbait mix for today was a 'use-up' mix containing the leftovers of a bag of old ghost green alga and some marukyu 101 to bulk it out a bit. 

My peg for the day.

At the start, I fed my main swim with about half a pot of my pellet mix and then fed my short line with a ball if groundbait and about half a pot of dead maggots.

I went straight onto my 13.5 metre line and after a short wait I was getting bites and catching the odd fish. If I'm honest, it was a bit slow going but I was catching, after 2 or 3 fish I started to introduce some feed via a toss pot after every fish. The bites were coming but I was also getting a lot of missed bites that was becoming a bit of nightmare with soft hookers so I made a slight change and tried a banded 4mm pellet instead. This seemed to do the trick and I started hooking fish but they were reall small baby carp and this possibly explained the tricky bites I was getting on the bigger, soft hookers. Already though, Dave Bemson on peg 4 and Ste Green on peg 9 were catching more frequently and what looked like a much larger stamp, more importantly though, they were catching them tight across. So I made a decision to try across so on went my 16metre section and I had a look, but not before I fed another ball of groundbait and dead maggots on my short line. I had a couple if fish right across but all the issues I had at 13 metres I was also having against the bank, so after about 90 mins I refed my 13.5 metre line, put a small pot of pellets against the bank and decided to have a look short.

This proved to be a major turning point in the match for me as I started to put a run of good sized fish together and make up for the slow start. I was feeding small nuggets of groundbait and a small toss pit of dead maggot after every fish but sure enough, it wasn't long before the small fish made an appearance again so I decided to put a big ball of groundbait on this line and try against the far bank again, but this time using dead maggot and feeding groundbait. This did the trick and a run if better fish followed until the small fish showed up again. What followed for the rest of the match was a pattern of me fishing short until the small fish turned up, when they did, I'd feed heavy and move to the far bank and vice versa. Other than a quiet last half hour I caught well for he rest of the match and really enjoyed the day. When the all out was called I had 67 fish on the clicker but was unsure of my weight due to the large numbers of small fish that I had. I made a private estimate at around 40-45lb.

We started the weigh in at the far end of the canal and the first 3 anglers set a good benchmark with a leading weight of 67lb coming from Wayne Fairhurst while Bob Crank and Mark Anglessey were only 4oz apart on 54-4 and 54-8 respectively. The weights dropped a bit as we made our way along the centre section of the canal but as we got up to Ste Green we were back in the 50's as his weight went to 52-0. Feeling me and Ste had similar numbers, I felt my smaller stamp would put me lower than that and my 45lb estimate might have been close however, as always proves to the the case, I was very wrong and my weight went to 52-12. A narrow next peg victory over Ste for me. Only 2 left to weigh ad Dave Benson was clearly going to challenge for the lead. His 2 nets went to 89lb, a cracking result. Only Alex left to weigh off the end peg. His total went to 58lb putting him 3rd overall. With Dave and Alex both placing in the match, that meant I won my section by double default and saw me finish 6th overall. 

I wouldn't normally be overjoyed with a result of 6th out of 13 but truth be told, I've had an enjoyable day, which given my current form, is a massive improvement in itself and I will say that I did really enjoy the day.

The league is looking really tight at the top now with Wayne and Alex sharing top spot with 2 matches to go and with the ability to drop our worse result, it looks like it's going all the way to the wire. I am currently in 3rd place and would be well in contention if it wasn't for the fact that I'll be missing the last match.

Rosemary wood next for us and that will be my last club match for 2014.

Lure success (kind of)

I managed to sneak out for a couple of hours on Sunday afternoon with the lure rod, so moving further up the locks from rose bridge, I tried the basins around top lock and the Kirkless inn.

The usual snags were plaguing me again though as the first cast with a drop shot setup resulted in a snag and eventually my 6lb flurocarbon leader snapping.

Setting up again I switched from a drop shot to a small jig head, initially a ecogear shirasu head but after 2 more snags took the only 2 of those I had, I switched to a fox micro jig. Targeting the canals perch, my main lure for the day was a ecogear grassminnow s. Moving up a basin to just outside the Kirkless inn, the lock overflow was pouring in and creating a crease in the water along the near margin. I targeted this area on a slow retrieve, opting not to jig along the bottom to try and avoid the snags. To my surprise I felt a little bite and an over keen strike saw me lift a small perch clear out of the water. It stayed on the hook for only a split second before making an escape. A bit eager on my part but at least the take was more success than I'd had on my previous outings so I was feeling good about it. I moved on at this point and tried a few other areas, thinking the commotion will have disturbed any other perch in the area. Sadly the other areas were not as productive so on my way back home I tried the basin outside the Kirkless again. After trying a few casts around the same crease with no success I was ready for home when I decided to try out one of the more unusual lures that came in my ecogear pocket in set. It's an 'extra zone' bug ant style lure that resembles a small crayfish I suppose. Anyway, I gave this a few casts and on my second retrieve I was lucky enough to get a strong take and a giddy fight soon saw another small perch making it's way to the bank. Sadly this came off the hook again before I properly landed it, in this instance though I'm pretty sure that the jig head I was using was a bit small for the lure so I'm going to try a bigger head next time. 

Anyway, all in all I think it was a successful trip and certainly an improvement on my previous lure Fishig sessions. I still need to plan a longer day with the lures and try to find somewhere with less debris beneath the surface.

My attention is now turning to hall lane. I think I'll be needing some new rigs for this one as I think I've pushed the limits on the ones I have tied up at the moment.

For any snapchat fans out there, I've recently moved into this domain, search for fishernutstu. I plan on using this to upload instant shots from my fishing trips.