Cob House Bank Holiday Monday

Back to Cob House this week for the May Day bank holiday open. this match was run by one of the lads from Talk Angling (Bob Baker) and usually attracts a very good crowd. Bob runs a great match and with 35 anglers turnng up, everyone was to be spread around Oak, Laugherne and Wyatts. With 2 section on each pool and overall prizes the money was well spread and certainly worth the effort.


The weather was forcast to be the best day of the weekend, but Mr weather man got it totally wrong and it was wet, very windy and very cold!!!! cold enough for a couple of proper hail storms during the day!! what happened to a nice fresh warm spring period! (and i really really hate wind! it really does my nut in! hot, cold and wet i can handle, but i just cant cope with wind!)


Anyway the draw bag looked after me and put me on Oak 15, nicely out of the wind in a bay, with lots of margin to attack! Happy Days!


Then the dream shatters. Somehow someone had managed to turn up, loiter, chat, mingle and actually forget to pay his entries! that left the draw bag a peg short, so a re-draw was called! i was not a happy bunny, and initially thought that the silly individual who forgot the most basic of requirments to enter a match should not be included in the match at all!


but this is a sociable event amongst friends, so it wasnt an option to plonk the extra peg on an end somewhere or all of a sudden include a peg in the bag for the last few people who hadnt drawn yet to chose from, so the only option left was to call a re-draw!


So second time round my drawing arm put me on Laugherne 26, an area i fished last time. not a bad draw as laugherne is my favourite pool, but it put me right in the grips of the wind! Great! after a few minutes mumbling, grumbling and whining i got to my peg and started to gear up.

as you can see from the picture above, i had an earator in front of me at 14.5 meters and a couple of short margin lines left and right (i managed to take the picture during a short calm spell, but it was blowing through for the majority of the day)

so i set the following gear up: -

Pole

1 - Light Pellet - 0.15 Ultima Power Silk mainline to 0.14 Power Silk hooklength with an 18 G point pellet hook. 4x18 Garbolino DC13 with an olivette and number 10 droppers.

2 - Heavy Pellet - 0.18 PI Exceed mainline to 0.16 Exceed Hooklength with a 16 B911. 1g SP fat pencil with 2mm tip with an olivette and number 8 droppers.

3 - Shallow - 0.18 PI Exceed mainline to 0.16 Exceed Hooklength with a 16 B911. 4x12 preston tyson dibber shotted with a bulk at mid depth and the rig set at 2 foot deep.

4 - Paste - 0.18 Exceed mainline direct at a 12 B911. 4x14 KC Carpa Paste float with 5 number 10's spread over the last 4 foot.

5 - Margin - 0.18 Exceed Mainline, 0.18 Exceed hooklength to a 14 B911. 0.2g SP margin float with a 2mm tip and bulk of number 8's 10 inches for mthe hook.

Rods

1 - Maver powerlite feeder system @ 11ft, TD_R 3012, 6lb sensor wth a small PI inline method feeder

2 - Maver powerlite feeder system @11 ft, Daiwa Exceller plus 3000, 6lb sensor with a micro cage feeder.

3 - Daiwa SR3 12ft float rod, TD-R 3012, 0.20 maver genesis with a 6g middy popper and 0.18 hooklength.

i need to start playing with making myself some wire stemmed floats. i use the Garbolino's as they're great for windy conditiions, but they wont stand up to a days bagging session and i've got through quite a few of them over the last couple of years i've been using them.

the light and heavy pellet rigs were plumbed at 14.5 meters to the aerator and 6 meters to the right. the paste rig was at 11 meters at the bottom of the near shelf and the margin rigs 4m to my right and left in 3 foot of water. all the rods were clipped tight to the island.

Bait for the day was plenty of soaked 3mm feed pellets, a couple of pints of 6mm feed for pinging to the island, 4mm and 6mm expanders, a tin of corn and some Bait Tech Super G gold mixed into a very soft paste.

with the reliably unsettled weather still persisting (warm in the day, but with regular frosts in the morning) i didnt want to over do it at the start so the pellet lines got a 1/4 cup of pellets with some expanders mixed in, the paste line got 1/2 a pot of pellets with a couple of chunks of paste mixed in and the margins would get small amounts regularly fed by hand and the island would be pinged with pellets when the wind allowed.

I started on the aerator line and soon discovered the water was trolling through quicker than the river Severn, and i wasnt overly happy with my presentation, but i did get a couple of early bites and managed to lose a couple of early fish! Not a great start. The guy to my right managed 4 early fish on the method to point of the island so i was soon over to the island myself, but couldnt buy a wrap. with an hour gone i was losing 2-0 to the fish with nothing in the net and needed to make something happen.

i'd topped up my shorter paste line a couple of times and i decided anchoring some paste might get me a bite or two. it did the trick and put 3 fish in the net in the next half hour. this planted a seed in my head. i knew there were fish at the aerator but icouldnt present a decent bait to them with the pellet so decided a long paste attack might just turn the peg around. so i set up another paste rig with a 0.5g maver black ice paste float and plumbed it right next to the aerator. i then set the trap with a full pot of pellets and a couple of lumps of paste and left it for a couple of chucks on the shorter paste line.

A couple of touches but no bites made me move to the long paste line after a 15 minute rest and float shot under! decent carp number was on and i was a fairly happy man. the wind was still causing issues but a long line above the undershotted float meant it settled quite nicely in the tow and wind with a round an inch of bristle showing. I was showing my ametuerish paste skills off too as i was hooking a pellet and wrapping my paste around it so knew the paste would stay during shipping and setting the rig. but the fish didnt mind and i put some good fish in the net during the middle of the macth.

the long line did slow considerably going in to the last 90 minutes and i couldnt get a bite on the second long line. there were a few fish coming out of the margins but i couldnt get a bite there. i'd been pinging pellets to the island all match and had one wrap on the method but that was it.

the wind did calm slightly for the last hour and the tow slowed. i did run my light pellet rig through and it actually got me a couple of fish in the last hour amongst a final couple of paste fish before the whistle went. i ended up with around 20 fish, but the stamp wasnt amazing so i wasnt sure how i'd end up. i put 49lb on the scales and was actually quite suprised they went that heavy. i easily beaten those around me but the end pegs in the section did me so i walked away empty handed.

hindsight tells me to have some more heaveir rigs in my box, especially some wire stem patterns to give me some better stability and Laugherne will tow very easily! also i could have chucked the little cage feeder i had set up over the long line which might have got me a couple of extra fish.

But overall it was nice to catch some fish