Manor Farm 24-10-09
I managed to get myself on a club Match with Matchbox A.C. to be fished at manor Farm Fisheries in Harvington. this is a great place with plenty of water and fish although its seems to have had a harder year this year but i suppose its justone of those things.
The match was supposed to be on Ash pool, but with the numbers that turned up it was split onto Ash and Windmill. Now Windmill is my favourite at Manor (as i like winter fishing) as its got nice deep water and plenty of features to islands and margins.
I managed to draw windmill pool and cracking a peg in the form of peg 24. this is behind the second island away from the cafe
Bait for the day was micros and 4mm pellets, softened for feed with 4&6mm expanders for the hook and 1/2 pint of red maggots if it got hard.
I set up rigs for the front of the island 1 meter off, front of the island tight (using my own fat pencils with 2mm tips) round the side of the island tight (slim pencil with 1.5mm tip), a shallow rig and a margin rig(fat pencil with 2mm tip). the front island rigs and margin rig used double 8 latex, with the shallow and side island rigs connected to double 6 latex. I'm still completely sold on double latex for pretty much all my commercial work! even with big proper fish i'm completely in control and i believe this is down to using half lengths of elastic rather than a full top kits worth!!!
A quick note on the float front. iIve now made a good few different patterns with variations on a theme so i've scrapped my SP numbering system for now and will review it when i've stoppped playing about!!! i will re-do my blog with the new floats soon!!
On the whistle i CAD potted some micros to the front 'off the island' line and 'round the side' island line and kicked off to the front of the island. Now i've never been very confident fishing on a slope but i just couldnt find any flat spots anywhere near the island in a decent depth (between 3 and 4ft) of water so this was going to be a real test of my own confidence in what i was doing!
Anyway after 5 minutes with lots of lifting and dropping i latched into my first fish, a nice F1. over the next 20 minutes i fot 5 more with no real problems. i had to really work the bait to keep the bites coming (probably because of my lack of confidence on the slope and fishing the bait to far over depth!!!!!)
Then it started to go wrong. the first line was really slowing off and i didnt want to pillage it totally so i went round the corner (which i had topped up twice) to try there. i was getting plenty of bites, not missing them, but bumping at least half of the fish i was connecting with. i could bump one fish within seconds, the next half way back and the next near the net and all the places inbetween! I was pulling my hair (well stubble) out! i tried to alter my rig as much as possible from shirt button over the whole rig to a bulk 6" from the hook.
Looking around me no one was really catching anything, although i couldnt see that many people and i was still putting fish in the net so i struggled on. when a line slowed i would go to another and caught fish from all 3 lines around the island. I didnt have a bite from the margin or shallow, but to be fair didnt give them that much time as the island was producing.
the last hour setteld a bit for me as i stuck to the side island line which had been the best all day (as its open ot the rest of the pool) and fished a positive rig with a spread bulk 12" from the hook feeding after every second fish, and put 10-12 fish in the net with only a couple of lost fish! I also managed a few decent skimmers around the 12oz-1lb mark. they have really put weight on in the last 12 months!
At the weight i didnt really know what i'd got in the net as i'd lost a hell of a lot of fish but put a fair in the net too! 79lb was winning the pool when the scales got to me and i knew i didnt have that much. i put 68lb in the bag and got 2nd on the pool. with the fish i lost i should have doubled that weight!!!!!!!!
The payout was split over the pools so i picked up £30, which i was happy with. In hindsight i'd fed micros all day in 4ftof water and the fish were all over the water column so i should have either dumped it and fished it out or swapped over to 4mm to try and keep them on the bottom, but i didnt see it when the blinkers were on during the match.
Solihull Summer League - Blythe Pools - 01-11-09
Finally the last round of the summer league was upon us and a day at Blythe was on the cards. Historically i've done well at Blythe with either section wins or seconds so was pretty confident. the league standings were tight wit hthe top 4 having only 4 points between them with my team in 3rd!
Unfortunately this is going to be really brief as i had a shocking day.
The wind was gail force with driving rain and pretty much in my face. drew peg 10 on bridge with a lovely method chuck to the island so was pretty happy. i did set up a pole at 11m for the pellet and a margin line as it had been very mild coming into the match, but i didnt expect to use them. the method set up was Maver powerlite feeder system at 11ft, with 3012 TD-R, 6lb sensor, small garbo elasticated feeder, 0.20 hooklength to drennan carp feeder for either meat corn or dead red.
On the whistle i just about managed feed some corn and pellet on the pole and a maggot line then chucked the method tight and settle for a wait! an hour and a few chucks later not even liner was had. other chcking ot the island had had fish so iwas confident of getting wrap. another hour passed with 1 liner so i tried the maggot line to get a fish in the net and was immediately rewarded with a 2oz roach.
With a fish in the net i went back to the method as 3-4 fish had been caught off the island. still no wraps and after nearly being blown off my box a good few times, and various bits of other peoples luggage blowing across the pool i was thoroughly bored and annoyed going into the last 45 minutes.
So to make time pass and get warm i re-fed some maggots on the pole and gave it a try. the floats didnt stay still and small roach came steadily for the last 20 minutes.
I managed to weigh 1lb 2oz and beat 1 in my section. the rest of the team did pretty average and we lost out on third place by 2 points.
Again mr hindsight had a very important lesson to learn because if i wasnt so lazy and set up a close whip type line and fished for silvers i know i could have beaten another 2 anglers in my section and got those points the team needed. but with the occasional fish coming off the island i sat there waiting for the wrap that never came!! GUTTED!
Anyway roll on to next years league, more teams and i should be able to fish all the matches as the wedding is done and dusted!!
Tight lines!
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