Manor Farm Winter League/Arrowvalley

Manor Farm

Well finally the last round of the Manor Farm Winter League made its way round and i was glas this league has come to an end. its been a grueller for me with 2 shocking matches on Boundary pool. Luckily team mate John Watson was feeling my pain and kindly offered to swap with me for the last match which puts me on the Windmill pool, my personal favourite on the complex

The weather leading up to the match had seen the cold continue but in a slightly less severe manor but with the early morning frosts continuing.

At the 9.30 the usual draw took place (and to be honest i'd been drawing pretty well) and my drawing arm didnt let me down when peg 26 stuck to my hand. This put me behind the smaller island wit the island in easy reach. i've drawn this peg before and have a blog entry on it from 2009.

I virtually ran to my peg and it looked lovely when i got there. there was very little fish activity on the surface but i knew the peg would hold fish. the island had obviously been cut back fairly recently as a lot of the over hanging branches i experienced last time were now missing. This helps the angler as you can get closer to the island but i was a bit worried that some of the fish holding features had dissappeared.

I set up the following rigs:-

1 - Pellet short - 0.14 Power Silk Mainline, 0.10 Power Silk hooklength, 20 G Point Pellet, 0.15 SP slim pellet with 1.5mm tip - This was plumbed to the front of the island at about 12m. even with the branches cut back i still found a good 4ft tight to the roots and stumps. this was shotted with a spread bulk over the last 2ft of the rig for a natural fall of the hookbait.

2 - Pellet long (positive) - 0.14 Power Silk Mainline, 0.12 Power Silk hooklength, 18 G point Pellet, 0.25 SP slim pellet with 2mm stumpy tip. This was plumbed at 14.5m up the side of the island next to some stumps. approximately 10" shallower than the front line. this was shotted with a bulk and single dropper for a very positive setup.

3 - Pellet long - 0.14 Power Silk mainline, 0.10 Power Silk hooklength, 20 g-point pellet, 0.25 SP slim Pellet with 2mm tip - plumbed for the same longer line but with a more natural presentation with a spread bulk and droppers of the last 18" of the rig.

4 - Deep Pellet - 0.14 Power Silk, Mainline, 0.10 Power Silk hooklength, 0.7 SP slim Pellet with 1.5mm tip. this was plumbed at 13m off the side of the island where the island slop flattened out in approximately 9ft of water. this was definatley an out and out back up line if the fish werent on the island (i was definatley hoping not to have use this rig at all).

I've said a many times before i'm a massive fan of doubled latex and have been using it exclusively for well over a year now, but as a sanity check i put some hollow in a couple of kits just to check i wasnt missing out as i hadnt used hollows in such a long time. So the positive rig had doubled 6 slip attached and the lighter rigs had some 11 preston hollow attached.

Bait for the day was 1/2 pint of red maggots, 1 pint of softened 4mm feed pellets, 1 pint of softened micros, small tin of corn, and some 4mm expanders. All lines would recieve some feed at the start, with the island lines getting a small preston cad pot of 4mm's and the deep line a golf ball of micros.

On the whistle each line got its feed, with the front line getting its feed first so it had a moment to settle while i carried on with the others. Putting a rig out i was expecting a bite straight away, but it seems everyone around me got a fish first, which put me slightly on edge!!! eventually 15 minutes in i got a touch and a small mirror was in the net followed next chuck by a small chub. Even in this small amount of time i was 2 fish behind peg 24 in the open water.

No worries though as i was happy there were fish on the island. Peg 26 to my right isnt on the same island as me, but with peg 25 empty, 16m of pole got peg 26 to the edge and he was getting fish regularly. It was definatley harder than the last time i fished the peg and i felt the front of the island wasnt as productive and bites a lot harder to come by. after the first hour i had 1 chub, 1 F1 and 3 carp in the net.

NOTE - Hollow Vs Double Latex - i'd now had a few fish on the hollow and absolutely made my mind up that i wont be going back to hollows in a hurry. they are good on the lift and easing fish back to the top kit, but the difference between control of the fish under the tip is remarkable. the double latex gives much more control as the hollow just stretches and stretches and i ended up with my short 4 to land most of the fish with the hollow elastic.

With the front of the island not really producing i moved out to the side of the island at 14.5 metres. by now the wind a had got up which isnt really a massive problem, but it was blustery today so rig control was difficult. the wind was chopping up the water to making the dark and light water mix up and visibility was a nightmare. (NOTE TO SELF - make more floats with yellow tips!!!!!!)

Luckily my perfect feeding routine (well absolute flyer of a peg stuffed with fish) had the fish going well. so with most of the floats tip out of the water the bites were unmissable and some even pulling the elastic out for me and the next hour i put a good run of fish together, mainly chunky mirrors with a couple of 4lb fish. again the hollow elastic was causing me problems with it taking an age to net the mirrors. i'd kept the front island line topped up so when bites slowed to the side of the island i decided to come back to the front and see if anything had settled. i did manage a couple of fish but knew it wasnt as good as the side of the island.

i was happy to set a pattern of do the best i could from the side of the island and keep the weight ticking over from the front when bites slowed to the side. i'd also swapped from the hollows to double latex on all my rigs as i just wasnt happy with it.

with 2 hours to go the 14.5m line was dieing off, even after a rest so the 16m section came out and a new line started. this gave me a boost and regular fish for the final part of the match meant i didnt need to use the front line again. one moan (if i may) about this peg is the high bank behind me. coupled with me being left handed and having to ship out with my upper body twisted to keep the pole away from the island and the pole up by my chest because of the high bank, i was glad of the big bottle of Lucozade i had with me. the 16m line was producing some nice mirrors with 1 fish pushing 8lb.

peg 26 had caught fish steadily with a few breaks in sport because he didnt have a second island line to retreat to. the open water peg to my left caught fish regularly for the first 2 hours but a big lull in action in the middle of the match meant he'd dropped away. 4mm expanders had caught me the majority of my fish but a change to double maggot brought a few quick extra fish when the line slowed. over the whole match i'd fed around a pint of pellets on all my island lines in total.

i was glad of the final whistle as i was pretty exhausted but confident i'd done well on the pool with peg 26 my closest rival from what i could see. i had lost 7-8 fish over the match including a couple of fish at the net bacuse of a lack of control with the hollow elastic which gratted me, but not a lot i could do about that now.

When the scales arrived peg 26 was winning with 59lb, i thought i'd pretty easily beat that, but my nets went to 63lb, a bit to close for comfort, but enough never the less. the lost fish nearly cost me!!! peg 4 at the opposite end of the pool in the shallower water put 61lb on the scales and that was it. i'd won my section (most importantly) and the pool overall.

Coming away from this match i will not be going back to hollows again, and felt the peg was worth a lot more than i'd extracted and doubled latex would have put another 20lb in the net purely through putting fish in the net quicker.

Arrowvalley

The weather since the winter league had picked up considerably with the morning frosts disappearing the temperature reaching double figures during the day, so i planned a Friday afternoon Arrow Valley Lake session for a bit of fun.

I chose my favourite peg in the world, chucking to the point of the island from the Shakespeare bank. i mixed up some groundbait (50/50 Sensas IM5 grren and sensas lake) and set up my middy 3G X-Flex medium feeder rod coupled to a Daiwa Capricorn 3500XTC reel. this reel really is the business for range chucking with a large daimeter spool and excellent cranking power and rod has a stronger back bone than my usual maver powerlite feeder system set-up making this 70 yard chuck a bit easier for pleasure session.

10 big feeder fulls at the start of the session with a few maggots in each got the peg going. i was casting 10 yards off the island into about 6ft of water and 3rd chuck with a medium feeder a nice pull put my first bream of the day in the net and at around 4lb was a great start.

I wont go on too much but a short 3 hour session produced 7 Bream averaging 4lb a piece and 1 carp around 9lb. i swapped my feeder for a method for a few chucks and snared the carp on that, but the all the bream came to the feeder.

Catch Up & Tunnel Barn Farm

Well apologies its been some time in coming, but i finally have something to write about.

The last few weeks have seen me visit manor farm leisure on 2 occasions fishing 2 rounds of the winter league on Boundary pool. 10 hours fishing resulted in 5lb of fish. 1 F1 and about 100 blips!

Regular readers will know i'm not one to not write about the bad times and if i've messed a match up, but on these occasions i just couldnt find anything interesting to write about! It just didnt happen on these matches, although my own work rate has been lacking as per previous occasions.

A few weeks off due to lots of work and not actually feeling like i wanted to go fishing has done me some good, and some 'enforced' holiday from work (cost saving exercises) gave me the opportunity to have a go on the Monday open at tunnel barn farm.

I've had some mixed results at tunnel, with section/match wins on supercup and Solihull League matches etc, but no real form on the open matches i've fished there. But my few weeks off, a Sundays worth of preperation getting all my 0.14 mainline winter rigs sorted and giving myself a good talking too got my head in the right place and i was actually looking forward to fishing.

The Saturday and day before were freezing with proper minus temperatures so my drive to tunnel after dropping Mrs P off was a bit nervous as i wasnt sure whether anybody would turn up on a freezing cold monday morning. but 20 other anglers had the same idea as me and there actually more people there today than on the opens over the weekend!

With a sandwich inside me the draw came around and peg 35 on new pool stuck to my hand. This is at the far end of the pool 'round the back' and is at the end of a straight no more than 10m wide.

With 10m to the island expanding to open water to my right i liked the look of it.

I also had a very good looking margin line to my right (anything to my right suits me fine as i'm left handed so i'm shipping across my body rather than away from myself)

One thing i have learned from past experience at tunnel barn during the colder times is to have plenty of options available during the match, so I spent plenty of time plumbing around to not only find features but find indenticle spots that i can move onto when a certain area has died off.

The plan for the day was to attack with pellet and maggot on various lines around my peg so i set the following rigs up: -

Rig 1 - 0.15 SP slim pellet pencil with 1.5mm tip. 0.14 Ultima Power Silk mainline, 0.10 Power silk hooklength to 20 G-Point Pellet. Shotted with No. 11 stotz that could be spread or bulked. Island Swim - Double 6-8 middy elastic

Rig 2 - 0.15 SP Slim pellet pencil with 1.5mm tip, 0.14 ultima power silk mainline, 0.12 Power silk hooklength to an 18 G-Point Pellet. Again shotted with No. 11 stotz that could be spread or bulked. Margin line - Double Middy 6-8 elastic

Rig 3 - 0.3 SP Silverfish, 0.14 Power silk mainline, 0.10 Power silk hooklength to a 18 B611. Bulk of number 10's with 3 Number 11 droppers. Deep water maggot rig - Double 3-4 Middy elastic

Rig 4 - 0.4 SP Slim Pellet Pencil with 1.5mm tip, 0.14 Power silk mainline, 0.10 Power silk hooklength to a 20 G-Point Pellet. Spread bulk of number 10's with 3 number 11 droppers. Deep water Pellet rig - Double middy 6-8 elastic.

Plumbing around i found a nice flat ledge at 2.5ft deep 1m off the island running all the way along the island so i could work my way along if necessary, with the same ledge going along to a bush on the point of the island.

The ledge dropped off to 5ft of water at the deepest and i found this consistantly around my peg at a 45 degree angle to right towards the open water, from 10 to 13m away.

The margin plumbed up slightly shallower than the island with just over 2ft of water, but there was plenty of colour in the water so i definately fancied 1 or 2 fish from it.

Bait for the day was very simple and kept (purposefully) very sparse, with 1/2 pint of red and white maggots, some 4mm expanders and some soaked TBF micros totalling no more than 1.5 pints of bait. This meant I had to make it last the whole 5 hours over a number of lines. It is so easy to overfeed a line a TBF so the lack of bait meant every bit of bait fed would have to count.

The starting plan was 3 lines: -

Number 1, up to the island under the bush fed with a few micros and 5-6 maggots.

Number 2 - Open water at 10m fed with a few micros and 5-6 maggots.

Number 3 - margin at 13m fed with 20-30 micos only.

The first 2 lines were going to be fished from the off but the margin line wouldnt be touched for at least 2 hours so this would be topped up with a maximum of 10 micros every so often.

First chuck to the island with a single red on and F1 number 1 was in the net. Great start which really got my hopes up. Next chuck, after topping up with 5 maggots and 10 micros i bumped a fish with my elastic not coming out very well.

QUICK NOTE - I've been using doubled elastic for at least 18 months and i'm totally sold on it. i've been using the middy stuff for around 6 months and find it performs (in my pole, maver 401) better than the usual preston original slip. But on this occasion the 6-8 elastic wasn't performing very well at all, with it being very juddery and sticky. It has been in my kits for maybe 2 months, with a 4 weeks off stored in my rod bag so i reckon its come the end of its life and got sticky or gooey in my kits. I've also never cleaned the inside of my kits, but at the same time never used any lubricants on elastics, always preffering lake water. the 3-4 elastic performed perfectly and was actually a lot more suitable for the size of fish i was catching. it has only been used on a couple of sessions so is well withins its life cycle.

The bumped fish seemed to kill off that line with no more proper bites for the next 10 minutes, so it was a quick change to the deep water line to see if anything was happening. I started on the maggot and managed an early fish but again the next 20 minutes i sat there for only a couple more indications and no more fish. After the first half hour the margin got a top up.

Back to the island line and another quick fish gave me some hope of a few arriving. Another fish 15 minutes later gave me 4 in the first 90 minutes.

Next door to my left was on 5 fish and he had no open water and the guy to my right was easily beating me with at least 10 fish. I was still feeling ok though and my head was still in it. I was working my peg, moving lines, not forcing it with feed and keeping my rigs working to provoke a response.

Maggot had definately got me the most bites and caught me all of my fish so far but i'd definately had indications on the pellet, and my margin line had had 2 top ups since the start with pellet only. Just before the second hour had elapsed i decided to give it try, earlier than i wanted, but if it didnt produce anything at least i could concentrate on my other lines.

I was also going to start flicking maggots straight in front of me 9m away to the shelf off the island. Last year i fished a match on the canal pool and had a great hour fishing a similar line with hand fed maggots just off the island. Every time i shipped in the new line would get 10-15 maggots, quite a lot of feed compared to everywhere else i'd fished so far today, but felt is was worth a try as it was a good 10 metres away from any other line started during the match.

First chuck down the margin and my unperfected rig for that line was sitting a bit high with 1/2" of bristle showing and a bit of a long line above the float, but 30 seconds later the float disappeared totally and fish number 5 was in the net. With the potential for things to improve i promply fine tuned my rig, and was back out in no time. 4 more fish in as many chucks and i was a lot happier and the guys around quickly started they're own margin lines!!

I was very conscious not to over do this line and the last fish took its time in coming, so 20 micros were fed and i spent 10 minutes on one of my deep water lines to give the margin a rest. I'd now been feeding the new maggot line for half an hour but didnt want to try it yet. I didnt have a touch in the deep water, and was now prepared to sack it off if the margin line kept producing and i could find somewhere else to keep something going in the net when the margin was being rested.

Back to the margin and the fish were still there and i put another 5 fish in the net in the next 20 minutes. We were now into the last 2 hours of the match. I'd easily caught up the guy to my right who had slowed considerably and pulled away from the guy ot my left. The guy on the end of my bank to my left was catching fairly consistantly and i was definately behind, but my head was in the right place and i was considering all the feed going into my peg to make sure i didnt over cook it.

The next rest period took me over to the island on the new maggot line. First chuck and the float shot under with a small F1 and i had a big smile on my face when it did. My 2 main rigs in the shallow water, maggot and margin, were now attached to the doubled 3-4 because it was definately the better set up with no bumped fish and plenty of elastic coming out but the fish still under complete control. I managed 3 fish from this line in 15 minutes with bites taking longer to come by after every fish.

This pretty much set the routine for the last hour and a half with a maximum of 3 fish coming off each line before it was rested. I did have to put another section on the margin line to follow them closer to the reed cover to keep bites coming but the gusty breeze was easily manageable. I had to finish on the maggot line as the margin was really slow even though there were fish present, and a fish just before the whistle meant i'd had a nice day.

I was happy with my performance, I'd caught more fish than my last few matches combined and knew i'd easily beaten those around me who i could see, so i just hoped the rest of the pool had fished as hard it did round by me.

When the scales arrived 31lb was winning and i didnt think i had that as i caught the smaller stamp of F1's present in new pool, but the scales went round to 33lb 4oz. I was chuffed but knew there were some very good locals left to weigh in so i didnt build my hopes up just yet.

I finished packing up in no rush and made my way round to the cafe and found out i'd won the match overall. 31lb second with 25lb third and the rest of the weights in the high teens. i was pleased with my performance because i'd thought about my actions and based my decisions on what was happening in the water rather than what i wanted to happen, consequently the peg repsonded in a psositive fashion and i kept some weight going into the net.

I'd lost 8 fish over the match (8 fish too many in winter) and i blame that on myself for not changing the old elastic in my kits, which wont happen again. it certainly hasnt put me off doubled elastic, and hasnt put me off the middy stuff, i just know now to change it regularly. i also need to think about cleaning my kits out, but not sure how to do that yet - any suggestions welcome!!!

Big test this weekend with the final round of the Manor winter league with another appearance on boundary. a good result there will get me right back on track and looking forward to a productive summer!!!!