The Clay Pit - Weston Pools

Pemberton Central Match
Weston Pools - Clay Pit
Saturday 6th June 2015

Weston Pools Website

To say that I had been eagerly awaiting this match is an understatement.  I always like trying new venues, especially ones that come with a bit of hype.  There is always that anticipation of whether venues meet the expectations that had been built up.  Weston is one of those places.  Last year, when I was booking the matches for this year, this match and our return visit later in the year were my high points; the ones I couldn't miss. 

Now we have approached the first of 2 matches on Weston this year and our destination is the Clay Pit.  This is a lake off the main site of the fishery and one that is, I am told, 20ft deep in some places.  I always find these kind of waters challenging to be honest but I challenge that I relish.  I made a phone call to Richie at the fishery earlier in the week to confirm the booking and double check the rules.  From booking the matches and phoning for advice, so far I have found Richie to be one of the most helpful fishery staff I have ever come across.  He advised me that the lake is stuffed with fish and a pellet up in the water approach will be needed.  With this advice in mind, I had been thinking in the days leading up to the match that, to keep things simple, I would base my whole set up around this approach - using my whole 5 pint bait limit (fishery rule) on pellets and have pole and waggler set up to target fish in this way - how simple could that be?  Not as simple as you thought, as a message to a fishing pal later in the week saw me faced with the dilema that a lot of anglers will face - the dreaded "here's how you should fish it" message.  Now I have been guilty sometimes of confusing things by trying to follow others advice rather than sticking to my own plans and I've had good results in the past by sticking to my guns.  The catch there though, is that I have done that on venues that I have fished before.........having never fished Weston before I was a bit more conscious of the advice given, which was not to bother with pellets - and just fish maggot (albeit with the method feeder as an option while priming the maggot swim).  With this added complication, I found myself doing what often causes me grief in a match with bait limits and I split my allowance between pellet and maggot - would this hamper my chances of a good result.  Lets find out!!

On arrival at the fishery, my first thoughts were very positive, whilst there was a bit of construction work going on, the set up looks very proffessional, and after visiting the shop to pick up some bait, I had a little wonder around one of the other lakes on site - Belvedere.  It was a very nice water, well looked after and seemed a pleasant lake to be on.  Sadly, I didn't explore much more as duty called and after dipping my 3 keep nets (another fishery rule), I awaited the rest of the club to book in and sort the draw out.  The fishery staff were once again very helpful, and one of the lads (and if he reads this, I am very sorry but I didn't get your name) helped us out with the draw.  With 15 of us on the match, and the Clay pit being a 29 peg water, we were going to get plenty space.  Word at the draw was that peg 9 was one to be on, and from the map we had seen, peg 9 is at the end of a point that sticks out into the lake.  As I was noting down the draw, I ended up being last to draw and was quite surprised to see that at the end of the draw, the last peg remaining for me was the much sought after peg 9 - this rarely happens to me (honest).

The short drive to the lake was easy enough and first impressions were that this was like no other commercial fishery water I had seen before.  I believe the Clay Pit is exactly that, an old clay pit that has been acquired by the fishery to add to already impressive portfolio of waters.  I am not sure how long the fishery has had control of this lake but it is impressive, with matgure trees and marginal growth giving the feel of an abondoned old quarry pit but with what was obviously a commerical style stocking policy.

When I finally got myself down to the peg, it was evident that the peg didn't stick out into the water as far as the map suggested but when stood there, it does go out some way into the water.  With this in mind, and the frequent topping of fish in front of me, I decided to try to keep it simple.  I set up 4 rigs, of varying depths from 12" to 5ft.  Each rig was set up to fish a banded pellet.  I planned to fish this short intially with extra sections ready should I need to chase the fish further out - the waggler rod stayed in the bag as I felt I wpouldn't need it on this peg,  Hedging my bets on bait choices, I decided that I would have 4 pints of pellets and a single pint of maggot as a back up - this would allow me to fish positively with the pellets but still have a back up by way of the maggot if things were difficult.  This approach allowed me to be set up very quickly, so before the all in, I had a little walk around the lake to see what the other pegs were like.  For company I had Dave Benson to my right on peg 7 and visitor John Unsworth to my left on peg 11.

I called the all in at 10:30 and went straight out in front of me with 6 sections of pole and started flicking in small amounts of 6mm pellets by hand.  After a few tweeks to depth and shotting pattern, I finally struck on a good run of fish by fishing around 10" deep with my shot bulked above my 4" hooklength.  I did find though that I was getting a lot of bites but couldn't hit them - I had been getting a small stamp of fish thiugh so I tried a maggot on the hook and was immediately into some of the nicest but smallest looking carp, I had ever seen - at around 1 - 2" long though, I was never going to build a weight of them so I went bacck to the 6mm pellet and persevered with the missed bites knowing that when I did get a fish on it would be a larger stamp.  Occasionally having to vary the depth, I was really enjoying myself and with about 2 hours gone in the match, I was thinking I could be in with a shot of winning......I had a good view of the lake from my peg and with the exception of Wayne Fairhurst, I hadn't noticed anyone catching at the same rate I was.  This of course is where it went to pot, for as soon as I was thinking I was doing well, I seemed to hit a quiet spell and despite changing depths and even starting new swims to search for the fish, I just could seem to catch; I think I managed only 2 or 3 fish in a 90 minute spell.  Unfortunately, I had noticed that Wayne was still catching and now Dave Benson had started sneaking out a good stamp of fish from his margin swim fishing the devils bait itself; paste.  With perseverence, I eventually managed to start picking up fish again and after going long to around 12 metres and once again searching the depths, I got back into a rhythmn of catching again however it was noticeably slower than it had been earlier in the match.  I managed to keep this up until the end of the match but as I called the all out, I knew deep down that the win had crept away from me with Dave and Wayne both looking good.

We decided that the weigh in would start from Alex Yates on peg 13, which would leave me second to last to weigh in.  When the scales got to Wayne on peg 15, he placed 65lb on the scales, given the stamp of fish being caught, I thought this was looking to be a good weight.  Wayne is always a good one for playing down his weight of fish though so I was paying a little bit of lip service to him suggesting Dave Leonard on peg 17 would have beat him however this time it appears Wayne was playing it straight as Dave placed 70lb 10oz on the scales to sneak into first place ahead of Wayne.  As w moved round the lake, the weights were a bit lower until we got to Mark Anglesea, who managed to put 48lb 8oz for 3rd place at the time and following him, the weights got a bit lower again.  Eventually the scales got to Dave Benson, after a few weighs, Dave's total went to 80lb to put him straight in the lead with only me and John Unsworth to weigh.  I knew I didn't have enough to beat Dave and was doubtful of a weight to beat Wayne or Dave, but at this stage I felt I was good enough for a section win by default.  Sure enough, my weight of 57lb dead put me in line for a section win by default with just John left to weigh.  John 'the silent assassin' had other ideas though as he placed 71lb 4oz on the scales - I hadn't even noticed John catching that well during the match.  So that ended my chance of the section win as John's weight pushed Wayne out of the main prizes and into the section win.  Still, looking at the positives, I had come 5th overall on the day and 4th out of club members so it was a decent day on the club league front; the fishery had proved to live up to expectations and I am sure that it will remain on the fixture list with Pem for some time now and finally, after some unsatisfactory experiences from a couple of year ago, I actually enjoyed fishing for F1s.

Post Match Note:  On Sunday night, I was chilling out with a cup of tea and in the midst of a Facebook Messenger chat with my old pal Martin 'Big Dipper' Worswick.  In this chat Martin casually droppd in that a new Clay Pit lake record weight had been set on the Sunday at Weston by Matty Dawes from none other than peg 9 - putting 208lb on the scales.  Well done Matty Dawes - it was obviously all down to the pre-baiting that I had done the day before.

Changes afoot:  Over the next week or 2, I am going to have a play with the blog a bit to see if I can add some additional pages in addition to the main blog.  I am going to add a Pem Central page, where I can post a fixture list and results from each match.  I am also going to add a sea fishing 'species hunt' page where I can record notable catches of species - I've had this idea from the species hunt competitions that I have seen in magazines and in facebook groups, only this will just be for my own benefit.  Finally, I was thinking of adding something in for Lure fishing, where I might record the results I have with particular lures.  I think these will be a work in progress over the next few weeks so as and when the pages go live, any feedback would be appreciated.