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.

Worthington Woes

So it's been about a week since my last visit to Worthigton and I think I've sulked enough now to write about it.

Me and Paul headed down to the lakes for a tip session, hoping to catch some nice bream. Arley reservoir was our home and with the water level dropping we managed to find some pegs off the path on the same side of the car park. 

We set out to fish the tip all day, so I set up with my 12ft theory rod and was using some of mavers stone river line after having trouble with my reel line on my last outing. My groundbait for the day was bait tech pro natural bream and hook baits for the day were sea maggots, worms or corn. Dead maggots and hemp were being fed in the feeder. Paul had a similar set up only his mix was a 50/50 blend of bait tech omen and special g gold with the same hook bait options.

We both set off by putting some bait down and then switching to smaller feeder and sandwiching loose feed in the feeder. Although, as it would later transpire, I think I was using smaller feeders than Paul and not putting as much in.

As the day progressed as sat back and watched Paul put a steady run of skimmers and bream together whilst my tip remained motionless. In fact, it remained motionless for the whole day while Paul sacked up. 

I'm not going to say much more than that. In the end, I set up a waggler rod and fished it about 3ft deep to catch a good amount of perch. This avoided the blank and I actually quite enjoyed it although I would have liked some roach or hybrids to put in an appearance.

As a side note though, me and Paul use the same reels so we did a comparison on reel turns and discovered that I was fishing about 10 turns further out than he was. He also used fishmeal in his groundbait.  So, next time I go there I am going to fish shorter and try a mix much the same as Paul's and see if that makes the difference.

Weekend off this week and then it's back on club duty on the 6th September at Hall Lane

The Fishing Gods were...........

............not in my favour!!!!

Friday 15th August should have seen me back on Blue Mink for another days sea fishing, this time with first-time boat anglers Martin and his brother in law Ian. It's fair to say we had all been looking forward to this trip and with dodgy weather putting an end to his trips earlier in the week, I was well happy when I phoned skipper Andy on Wednesday to confirm it was all looking good. 

Friday morning was to be an early one, with a 7am pickup on the beach meaning I was picking up Martin and Ian at 5:30, however, as I was leaving the house at around 5:10, I got a message from Andy saying that the port had locked the gates early, without explanation, and he couldn't get his boat out. This obviously put an end to the trip and gutted isn't the word. The port authorities have a lot to answer for and I do feel for Andy as weather had put an end to his trips in the week building up to this and when it was finally looking good, this happens.

Anyway, I had a sulk in the house for a little while, and following a brief consultation with her indoors, I decided that I wasn't going to let it beat me and quickly planned a trip to Worthington lakes, hoping for some bream action.  So I quickly got my gear sorted and off I went to coppull anglers ready for them opening to pick up bait and day ticket. All this went smoothly and it was about 8:30ish as I started making my way to the lakes from the car park. I opted to fish Arley reservoir and on arrival I could see the water was well down from my last visit

A quick scan from this area and I decided to go down the left hand side and fish from the peg with a fallen tree out in the water; with it being set away from the path, I should be left alone in peace and quiet.

As I went down to the peg, I initially planned on fishing on the right of the fallen tree and once I got down there I went about mixing my groundbait for the day however, my desire to get wet surfaced again and as I went down to the waters edge I slipped on my arse and started sliding into the water, and the more I struggled to get up, the faster I slid in. As my foot went in the water up to my calf, I manage to get some purchase and dragged myself out. Not too wet but fully caked in mud. 

I quickly composed myself and realised no one had seen me. A quick assessment saw me change to the left hand side of the tree where the bank wasn't as steep. I was wearing my trainers when I slipped in so I ended up in my wellies for the rest of the day with no socks on as I used the local foliage to dry out my socks and shoes 

Plan for the day was to fish the tip as I had a bit of a nightmare last time and I wanted another crack at it. My bait for the day was Bait-Tech Pro Natural Bream groundbait mixed straight out of the bag, no extras. I had some casters and hemp to add in to the feeder as I was fishing and maggots and worms as hook bait choices. I also planned to set up a waggler rod fishing up in the water as this had worked really well for me last time.

Finally set up I went about putting about 10 feeder fulls of groundbait in on the tip line before spending half an hour or so on the waggler while it settled. Unlike my last visit here, the waggler failed to produce anything at all which was a bit of a surprise but as my main aim was to fish the feeder, I wasn't too bothered and soon was making my first cast on it. Second cast and the tip went and a rather weak scrap saw me soon landing a hybrid, probably around the 6oz mark. Good signs on just my second cast and I quickly got back out but had to wait a good while before anything else happened. In fact, I was actually beginning to fear the worse when on a later cast, the tip wrapped round on the drop and a roach was the reward for my perseverance. However, it was certainly not my day and the only thing that had kept me from packing up much earlier was the fact that my socks and trainers were still wet. I had been feeding the waggler line all day and kept checking it for signs but it was totally dead today and I soon made a decision to pack it away and concentrate on the feeder for the final hour or so. Out of the blue a positive bite saw me playing the best fish of the day and just to prove that it wasn't a total blank, here is the biggest fish of the day, all 8oz or so of it

Sadly that was the fruits of my labours for the day and as the post says, the fishing gods were certainly against me today. I slowly packed away and made my way home, it might not have been the day I planned but there are a few positives to take away - 1: I didn't blank, errr actually that's it.

Here's hoping for an improvement in fortune on my next trip.

Partridge Lakes - Covey 6

On Saturday 9th August it was time to revisit Partridge Lakes as Pem Central took on Covey 6. 

I'd never fished covey 6 before now but as far as I was aware, it is very similar to Covey 5 where I had spent most of my winter so whilst the weather had warmed up and winter was nothing more than a distant nightmare, I will admit that my confidence was high for this match.  Paul couldn't make it today so I was given the role of club secretary for the day.

My plan for the day was to keep things as simple as I could. In winter I would have gone for an all maggot approach but today I decided to go for pellet, opting to fish 50/50 mix of 2mm Skrill and JPellets, about 3 pints worth with half a pint of the same mix of 4mms. 2 pint of maggot in case the pellet plan didn't work and about half a pint of corn. That took me to my 6 pint limit. I also had a kilo of old ghost green algae groundbait.

I drew peg 158 which put me on the bank close to Holbar, just short of where the island with pegs on it ended.

Plan was to fish tight against the mud line with pellets, then have 2 short lines, one fed with maggots hoping to draw fish up in the water and the other off to one side with pellet again on the deck. I then set up 2 margin lines, I had empty pegs on both sides of me so I plumbed up lines in front of each platform which I would leave for the first half of the match and then feed with groundbait.

As I called the all in, I fed a small pot of pellets on my short pellet swim and went straight across to the mudline with a jpellets soft hooker on and a small cad pot filled with 2mm pellets.  I didn't have to wait to long for my first bite and a small F1 was soon in the net but I did have to wait for my second, eventually I managed to put a small chub/ide in the net. This pattern continued for the first part of the day as I was catching slowly and generally getting F1s and chub alternatively. All the while I had been flicking maggots in by hand over the short swim and after seeing a few swirls I decided to put a small pot of pellets against the mudline and have a try for some shallow action and action I got!!! However, it wasn't the F1 action I had been hoping for and what came to the net was a run of really small silvers. I didn't pursue this line much longer, I was getting a bite a chuck but missing lots and the ones I hooked were always small silvers so I decided to switch on the deep pellet line and continue feeding maggots on the short line for another try later. Unfortunately, the deep line I had fed with pellets didn't seem to work and after a biteless 15 mins, I had another look on the mudline but before that, as it was around the halfway mark, I put a pot of gb on each of my margin lines, plus a few samples of corn. After a short wait the mudline sprang to life again but it was much the same as before, at least I was putting fish in the net though so I kept going with it for a while.

Rumour had spread that Carl was bagging down at the bottom end of the lake on peg 135, which was mixed news for me, obviously I wanted to win this match so news of someone else bagging isn't always great but as Carl had missed a few matches this year, he is not in contention for the league winner so thankfully, it wasn't one of my main rivals.

It wasn't long before my mudline slowed again so I decided to have another look on the shallow swim but a lack of action soon ended that, however, as the deep pellet swim didn't work, I tried my deep rig over the maggot line and managed to put a run of bigger chub, ide and skimmers together before yet again that seemed to die off. At this point I decided to try my margin lines, I'd already re-fed them with more groundbait by this point so I went straight over with a nugget of corn and crosse my fingers. Tentative indications were showing straight away but it took a while before my first proper bite, which resulted in a short fight before the fish took me round the platform and eventually snapped the hooklength. At least it was a sign of better fish so I put a small amount of feed in and switched sides but for some reason, the other side was dead and no signs or bites soon saw me switch back to the other side. I was soon catching better carp and despite losing a few I managed to boost my weight with about 3 or 4 better stamp carp. Time was eventually called and whilst I didn't do too bad, I felt the peg could have offered so much more. As I was packing up, I could help but think about how I seem to consistently struggle to keep fish coming and how any swim I catch on seems to die off really quick, defo one that I need to think about more carefully. 

As we started to weigh in, I had to listen to the usual moaning from Angy and Jordy who were both trying every excuse under the sun to explain why they both recorded lower than average weights for themselves, of course I didn't mind too much as Angy is a main rival in the chase for top spot and to see him fall short of the mark filled me with optimism, as did league leader Alex's low weight. Fingers crossed mine would go better and as it got round to my peg I put 24lb 12 oz on the scales to double Alex's weight and even better against Angys, so i had managed to close the gap on them but Wayne had weighed in over 40lb so he was going to get a good points boost.  As we continued it looked like the long straight was throwing up better weights with 2 weighs recorded over 50lb and another in the high 30's. Carl was second to last to weigh and he put 65lb on the scales to record a well earned victory. John Ruddy out another 40lb weight on the scales as I was seeing myself slip further down the board for today. Final tally put me in 8th place so not great but not bad, defo room for improvement but a disappointment from a water I expected myself to do better on.

In the car park, Jordy and Angy were still at it, moaning away so I used my new powers as club secretary for the day to ban them......you might say power has gone to my head but I rule with an iron fist!! No doubt they'll ignore me though and come back for the next match, luckily for them Paul will be back in charge.

So the leaderboard is not looking too different at the top with Alex still leading but Wayne's 5th place today has put him in second place, just one point adrift of Alex while I am now a few more points behind in 3rd place, of course we have the ability to drop our worse score so I am going to save that for the very end of the fixtures, for dramatic effect.

Next outing for me is sea fishing again on board Blue Mink, which I will report back on. Pem have a couple of weeks off while a few of the lads go to Ireland. I might see if I can sneak a cheeky bream session in while I have the time, I know Paul said something face timing some of the lads out there while we fished a local water, just so he could feel like he was there.

Tight lines!!

The story so far........

In my recent posts, I have said I would provide an update on the league standings in Pem Central.

The results are now up to date and I will report on the top 3.

Currently sitting top of the shop is Alex Yates on 72 points. Following up in second place is Mark Anglessey on 78 points. Sitting in joint 3rd place on 80 points is Wayne Fairhurst and yours truly.

Tight at the top and with only 15 points seperating the top 6 anglers it's all to play for in our remaining 4 matches. 

The last matches are Partridge Lakes Covey 6, Hall Lane Gwen's canal, Rosemary Wood Moss Lake and Heronbroon Meadow Pool.

Fingers crossed I can put a good run in on those last 4 matches.