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.