Arrowvalley lake and Skilts!!

This weekend saw the last match of my works club aggregate league on Sunday so i put my name down although this is actually the first match of the series i've fished!

But before that i fancied another go at Arrow Valley for a Friday afternoon session as i was at a loose end!

Arrow Valley - Ultimate Ultima!!!!

After last weeks lovely session on the tip for bream i fancied a few roach this time on the pole as there is some excellent roach action to be had!

I decided to fish a peg in front of the sailing club car park. Its a lovely sheltered bay 5-6ft deep tops and usually full of fish!

On my way over i got a pint of whites with some reds in and a bag of Roach Noire and Matchblend to be mixed 50/50. Bait sorted.

Tackle for the day was going to be the pole at 13m with a couple of kits with a soft set double original slip number 4 (mainly because its the lightest elastic i had at the time and couldnt be bothered to fit the cut back number 1's in my top kits for a one off pleasure session, in hind sight a good choise, read on!).

Rigs for the day were some home made floats i've been working on for silver fish/maggot work. they feature a 1.2mm solid plastic bristle with 0.8mm carbon stem. I've actually managed to drill out the bristle and glue the stem into it to made it strong and durable, which i fell is missing from commercially made silver fish floats.

2 rigs were set up, with 1 taking approx 0.2g and the second around 0.4g (i havent worked out the exact shotting capacity yet! something i need to do for all my floats)

The lighter rig had no. 11's strung out over the bottom half of the rig set 1" off bottom and the heavier had a spread bulk of number 10's with 3 no. 11 droppers set 2" on the bottom. Both rigs featured 0.14 mainline to 0.10 hooklengths.

Now i've recently had a sort out of the box and got rid of a load of old line which i felt had come to the end of its life and my line drawer was looking pretty sparse. So i decided to make use of some recent fishing mag freebies and used some 0.14 Ultima Power Silk as mainline and bought some 0.10 Power Silk for hooklengths.

I have got to admit i was extremely impressed with it!

So much so when first cast after putting 3 balls of GB with some maggot i hooked into a very angry 8lb carp on the lighter strung out rig.

The doubled 4 did a great a job and the fish quite nicely plodded around on the strike and let me ship back to my top kit, when it quickly woke up when it came into the shallow water! I had to give it some more pole but the hooklength held brilliantly and i landed it on a top 4 after about 10 mins and increasing pressure as the fight went on!! I'm sure other lines i've used at 0.10 would have broken way before the Power Silk didnt! The Hooklength looked perfect after that battering so i didnt need to change it.

All my winter hooklengths with B611 and G point Pellets from 0.10 to 0.14 will now be done with Power Silk. I would like to use itto make all my winter rigs (i have a set of summer rigs on 0.18/0.20 mainline, and a set of winter rigs on 0.14 mianline) but its a bit pricey at around £5 for a 50m spool.

Anyway the day wasnt the easiest with the roach being very finicky and i had to either swap rigs or play about with the shotting to keep bites coming.

I ended up with 1 carp, 4 bream to 5lb, 9 roach to 12oz and a couple of stripeys to 6oz in the 3.5 hours i ended up fishing.

Skilts Pool - Hymatic AC Fur and Feather.

The last match of the year was planned to be on Skilts pool, a really nice pool in Redditch, but with a killer of a walk. Not a long walk, just a hard one up a newly rotivated corn field! The pool used to be run by the needle industries and i fished when i was younger with my mom, but it had been recently taken over by Matchbox AC and they've done a great job getting all the pegs up to spec!

There are some right lumps in there and some cracking silvers so i planned on a 'catch most things that swin' line on the pole and a method line towards the middle of the pool. Also a throw away margin line that i knew deep down i wasnt going to get a bite on but had to be ready for if something turned up!

Bait for the day was a couple of pints of soaked micros' and 3mm's for a pellet method and pole, some pumped expanders and couple of pints of maggots and a pint of hemp.

Rigs for the day, from the top: -

1 - Maver paste float, 0.20 straight through to a 12 B911 - for the paste!

2 - Home made Pencil (2mm tip, 1.2mm stem) 0.5g with a spread bulk to 0.16 hooklength with a 16 B911 - for the pellet.

3 - Homemade maggot float, 0.2g, 0.14 to 0.10 hooklength with a 18 B611 - for silvers.

4 - Homemade margin, 0.20 straight through to a 14 B911 - for lumps.

5 - I also set up an SP1 in 0.5g with an 0.14 hooklength and 16 B611 for a compromise roach rig after the whistle. Hopefully i'd get a carp out on it if i hooked one, but the roach would still take a maggot presented on it! - for anything!

then 2 rods: -

1 - Maver Powerlite Feeder System @ 11ft, TD-R with 6lb sensor to a small garbo elasticated method feeder and 16 Mustad meat hook 0n 3" of 0.18 for dead red maggot hook bait.

2 - Maver Powerlite Feeder System @ 11ft, Daiwa Capricorn 0.22 Genesis to a small Guru pellet feeder and 14 QM1 on 6" of 0.18 for hair rigged corn.

The pole line was plumbed up at 13m in 9ft of water with the rigs set pretty much at dead depth. the margin at 9m to my right (i'm left handed) in 2ft of water and the rods clipped up at about 30 metres. A second line at 9m to my right in 5 ft of water dropping down the near side shelf was plumded for out and out silvers and would be fed with maggots only.

On the whistle i fed a quarter of a small pot of micros, maggots and hemp on the pole, half a pot of maggots in the margin and then chucked the pellet method and settled for a wait! i was going to give the method at least an hour while the pole line settled.

After 10 minutes of motionless tip it randomly pulled, plucked then went slack so i clamly pulled into the feeder and was pleased as the rod arched nicely and a fish was on! i managed to get a good few turns on the reel before the fish went on a run and started taking line.

It didnt want to stop and i got very worried about hitting the clip so i put some more pressure on. Luckily it did stop and i put a couple of quick turns on to settle my nerves! I dont know how close to the clip i got, but i bet it was wasnt far off!!!

I really took my time with this fish and 15 mins later finally put the net under, for the second time, a nice big common. Good start, who needs a silvers line now!!!

I re-cast and another 10 minutes later the tip went again, a proper pull round this time and carp number 2 was on, but a few seconds later the hook pulled! i was proper gutted because in the back of my head i knew today was going to be grueller and every fish will count, but at the same time 2 wraps in 2 chucks was good going!

Not - i didnt have another touch for the next hour!

So i got my pellet rig out and gave the pole line a try. 20 minutes later i hadnt had a touch so i tried my compromise rig and had 3 beautifully conditioned roach in 15 minutes! The pole line then really slowed so i topped up with some micros and maggots and went back onto the method. i didnt want to ruin my pole line.

A pattern emerged where i would try the method for 30 minutes (with no signs usually) then i could catch a couple of roach after a rest. This suited me quite nicely because at the half way stage there was only me and 2 others with a single carp each, but i was the only one also putting roach in the net.

I did have 1 more wrap on the method and i got a stocky 3lb carp to the net only for the hook to pull just before it got in the net! the air was blue! i then foul hooked a carp on my compromise rig as i was shipping back but it came off after 30 seconds!

Going into the last 1/2 hour i was getting a bit nervous as i knew 1 more carp from those with 1 already in the net could do me over, so i sat on the method hoping for a wrap and my eyes on stalks keeping an eye on everyone! Then disaster happened, my fishing partner leant into a fish and 10 minutes later (after some abuse from me) put the net under another carp!

i really thought i'd been done (but me and my mate were splitting any money so it wasnt to bad if he beat me) . i was nicely suprised when my carp went 10-8 and even more pleased when my roach went 3-10 for a 14-2 total!! my mate was admitting to a 7lb and 5lb carp but i know his estimations are pants! but today he wasnt far off and weithed 12-12!

I'd won, and felt really happy with my performance (apart form the lost fish) as my hard work with the silvers had definately earned me the win!

no major plans set for the next couple of weeks so it'll be Cob House for me paractising for the teams of 3 winter league!

Arrow Valley Lake - 9-10-09

Well with another weekend of no fishing, i had to get my fix somehow so i planned a pleasure session on my local Arrow Valley lake in Redditch.

A bit of history, Arrow Valley is where my grandad took me fishing for the very first time and got me the bug, and i've visited it ever since. its where i made the transition from pleasure fishing to match fishing as its where the Redditch Kingfishers practised as a group every week.

Its a council run venue and is very rarely match fished. its a big piece of water at 30 acres but has a couple of islands at one with depths from 5 to 10ft in places and is stuffed with fish, with roach to 2lb, bream to 8lb and carp to 20lb. it really is a place where you could practise pretty much any method you like, from punch on the pole to meat on the method. and its fished its nuts off this year so far!

So a friday afternoon session it was to be. With a weekend in London planned, i didnt want to spent much money, so i emptied all my bits of groundbait from the cupboard into a bowl (about 2kg, perfect) soaked a couple of pints of Cob House micros and bought a pint of red maggots, total bait cost, £2.40! also any clubs affiliated to the Redditch federation of anglers can fish Arrowvalley for free and my works club is affiliated so a free ticket, brilliant!

11am rolled round and itchy feet saw me taking a little flyer from work and i was parked up and trolley loaded by 20 past!! i was purley going to target carp and more specifically bream so i packed a couple of tip rods and my landing net handle in my ready rod bag and took my pole bits out of my net bag and was off. i'd parked by the sailing club and had a stroll along the long straight Shakespeare bank (which has been recently re-pegged with some excellent staging) and settled on a flyer at the end of the island. a decent 70 yard chuck got to a small bay on the end of the island with deeper water 5-10 meters off the island. i fancied the deeper water as the temperatures had dropped recently.

Tackle for the day was simple: -

Rod 1 - Middy X-Flex medium feeder, Daiwa Capricorn 3500XTC, 0.22 maver genesis mainline with a 25g Kobra method feeder clipped on the end.

Rod 2 - maver powerlite feeder system @12ft, Daiwa Excellet Plus, 6lb Sensor with a rocket feeder paternoster to 0.16 hooklength.

Both rods were clipped up in the deeper water off the island. The Powerlite Feeder System rods never fail to amaze me as i was chucking the rocket the 70 yards accurately every time but the playing action is superb and i never pulled out of a fish all day with it! It was prob near the maximum range the 12ft rod would give me, but the 13ft section would put another 20 yards on the chuck! the Middy rod is fairly new in my bag, and has more backbone on the cast and the 70 yards was easy for it, even with the softest tip in. it has great big rings which help the cast and big spool diameter on the reel made the session really easy!

By 12.30 i was ready to go, groundbait was good, rods clipped and i was comfortable. I swapped the method for a big rocket and put 10 chucks of gb over my line with just a few reds in to kick start the session. i was intending to chuck the method very regularly and by the time i'd got the spare method feeder loaded and ready i'd reel in and re-chuck. with triple dead red on the hook, 4th cast and a nice pull round saw bream number 1 in the sack and at 3lb was a nice start even though i know they go a lot bigger as they've packed weight on over the last couple of seasons! a few more chucks with only a few signs gave me the feeling they wern't massively confident and the drop in temperature had calmed them down so i swapped over to the feeder set up.

I used a new set-up for me this time after reading Darren cox's recent article on long range feeder fishing. i started by tying a long 12" twisted loop and attaching a snap link to the end. then, slight variation to Darrens setup, tied a second 1/2" loop above the main loop. i then tied a 5" twisted loop in the end of my 3ft hooklength and then looped the hooklength inside the smaller loop in the mainline! (i hope that made sense). this set up gave me a nice paternoster with the twisted loop in the hooklength keeping the hooklength away from the mainline and tangle free! (i would like to incorporate a swivel somehow to remove any possiblility of line twist, but top and tailing my double maggot hookbait didnt actually cause any problems)

First cast o nthe feeder and bream number 2 was in the net and i was becoming a very happy man. by introducing just a few reds in my mix i was keeping things interesting and by 2 o'clock had 5 bream in the net along with a sole perch.

I was having trouble with Grebe's diving in my peg which would disturb the feeding shoal for 20 minutes or more, but a few well placed casts when they were on the surface got rid if them pretty quickly (no grebes were harmed during the writing of this blog)

My mate John watson turned up for a look and with him on my box for half an hour the peg was screwed and he didnt have a bite (cheers mate) but he did kindly take a photo of my net when he left with 8 bream for 30lb in it.

By now it was 3pm and with an hour left on the clock i got my head down on the feeder and started chcucking every 3-4 minutes to get some more feed in after the last Grebe attack and get the bream back. it worked nicely and 5 more bream in the last hour brought the session to a nice end. i reckon i had around 45lb in total with a couple of the bream easily 5lb and they're all in perfect condition with no damage at all.

While my Friday afternoons are free i'll be putting a few more free sessions in and its always good to keep practising a method you dont use very often like the feeder and even just casting practise!!