No, not a review of the excellent Yul Brynner western but with Xmas fast approaching and bites getting fewer and fewer over the past few weeks, I thought I'd look back on the earlier part of the year when bites and fish were a plenty and pick out 7 of my favourite matches. I had a brilliant series of matches in the summer / Autumn fishing with my club Leatherhead and District Angling Society, the venues were ones that suited the way I like to fish and a number of decent draws kept fishing coming match after match.
Report number one comes from the second club match of the season, not suprisingly at Willinghurst but on New lake instead of the more regularly match fished Top Lake. Whilst the lake has 20 pegs on it, for it to fish well, you really only want 13 0r 14 fishing it. I was therefore a bit concerned as we had 17 fishing and although I drew Peg 19 which isn't usually pegged, we had left out Peg 18 to give pegs 17, 19 and the two pegs opposite a bit of room.
Most of my fishing at Willinghurst in the summer is done with paste and today was no exception, although this was to be catfood paste as opposed to my usual green swim stim paste. To make it, the night before a match, I just take a couple of tins of beef in gravy catfood, push it all through a maggott riddle a couple of times, add a bit of betaine and pour it into a plastic milk bottle. I do this in the kitchen sink at home as it means I can rinse my hands off as I go along and I don't get too messy.
When I reach my peg in the morning I just pour some of the mix into a bowl add a few micro pellets and stir it about with a winder. The micros just dry the mix out a bit so it stays on the hook. It was then just a question of picking two lines to fish and nicking a fish or two off one line before switching to the other. The match went brilliantly for me, by just using the paste to feed the peg, I caught on a off for most of the match whilst nearly everyone else struggled and I weighed in 131lb with the next weight being 46lb.
Match number 2 was also back at Willinghurst but this time on my favourite Lake, Pittance Lake. THE pegs to draw on the lake are usually Pegs 5 and 12 , opposite each other on one end of the island. With 3 numbers still in the hat, I got Bryan Hawkins to draw for me and he did me proud with Peg 12 ! The match started slowly for most and although I caught a few fish on the lead with double corn or the conker and a couple on a pellet waggler I wasn't exactly setting the world on fire. With a couple of hours to go Phil Starkey was probably well clear of the rest of the field as he was catching regularly on the method feeder to the middle of the island on Peg 13 and I think he was getting quite excited as this was likely to be his first ever club match win. However, I had dumped a load of my cat food paste mix, along with some hemp at about 10 metres and whilst I had looked over it every now and then during the match I'd so far had no indications. With about 90 minutes to go, I tried a lump of green paste over the 10 metre line and the float immediately buried. With 0.18 line and red hydro in my Maver H10 pole I soon had a fish of about 5lb in the net and when I had another straight away, I thought I might just nick this if I could keep them coming. Sure enough, as Phil's peg slowed, my paste line kept producing and I finished the match with 87lb to Phil's 72lb.
Match number 3 was one of two club matches at one of my favourite venues, Willow Park, Small lake. I've always liked Willow Park especially when Ken Collings ran it and you could always rely on being insulted within 20 seconds of entering the shop ! A couple of seasons ago I discovered that the carp and F1's there loved paste and now that is the only bait I ever fish there. For this match, I think we only had about 16 anglers fishing and with the lake having at least 20 pegs that I wouldn't have minded drawing, I was quite happy to draw Peg 16 on the car park bank. I set up my usual Willow Park paste rigs, 0.16 G line with a 4x14 maver margin paste float and a size 12 B911 hook - one rig to fish at 5 metres at about 11 o'clock and one to fish at 2 o'clock at about 11 metres just incase the fish wouldn't come in close.
On the whistle I fed two big pots of hemp on the longer line and a couple of rock hard balls of GB on the short line. The smaller lakes at Willow Park are both lakes that respond to "Noise" and I always feed small hard balls of GB to attract the fish into the peg. Me and Hathers christened this "Plopping" as if the GB is hard enough (you don't want it breaking up until it reaches the bottom or the fish will come up in the water) then "Plop" is the noise it makes when you throw it in. I continue to plop every cast until the fish turn up and then stop and only start again if the fish disappear. I started to catch a few F1's and a couple of bigger carp on the short line but it wasn't as quick as normal and when I switched to the longer line there seemed to be a lot more fish there. I continued to catch but tried the shorter line (which I'd continued "Plopping) every now and then as I could catch them much faster there. However, it wasn't until the last half hour that they returned on the shorter line when I had 4 proper carp and 2 F1's in the last 30 minutes. I finished the match with 77lb and a comfortable win with 40lb I think being the next weight. Although some people think that paste is paste and it doesn't matter what you use, I have found that green swim stim paste with some Garam Masala spice in it works very well at Willow Park.
Match 4 saw me back on home territory on the Top Lake at Willinghurst. The place to draw for much of the summer had been the back spit - an offshoot of the main lake that is about 20 metres wide and 3 foot deep. I'd won two club matches on it earlier in the season with 185lb and 141lb but this time drew Peg 10 on the main part of the lake. Peg 10 is quite a long peg and even more so when they leave out the pegs either side like they had for this match so I wasn't too upset about not drawing the back spit as I thought I could do some damage from here. Whilst my main attack at Willinghurst is nearly always paste, I seem to do better in the margins by fishing particle baits like corn, hemp and luncheon meat, I therefore set up a paste rig to fish at 8 metres and a couple of edge rigs to fish just infront of the rushes to my right and in the edge against the bare bank to my left. I'm always experimenting with different baits in matches and had caught a few fish using spam but the garlic flavoured one called "Spam with Stinky french garlic" I'd put two tins of this through my 6mm meat cutter and mixed it with 4 pints of hemp to use as feed with two cubes of meat on the hook. I fed a big pot of hemp / meat in the edge both sides and started on the paste line but it was very slow with only a couple of fish in the first few hours. The good thing about feeding hemp for carp is that because it is so oily you can usually tell when there are fish over your feed as they release a lot of oils as they grub around and give you the sign to fish over it. I noticed signs of fish on the rushes line after a few hours and as I'm not a great believer in leaving the margin pegs until the fish are settled - as you spook them as soon as you hook one anyway - then I went straight over it with 2 pieces of smelly luncheon meat. The float hardly settled before it disappeared and I soon had my first margin fish in the net. I found the best way to catch was to use a small pole cup loaded with feed and just to cup it in a lower the baited rig in amongst the feed. I'd not seen a sign in the left hand side but eventually some fish turned up and I just switched between the to edge lines nicking a fish or two of each. I finished the match with 126lb for a comfortable victory over Tony Plumbridge who was on Peg 18 and had 78lb. Having found the "Secret" bait that I had been looking for I then hunted around the area to find more tins of Stinky Garlic Luncheon meat as there seemed to be a world shortage of it. I finally tracked down 15 tins in 4 or 5 different shops and bought them all - Since then I've not had a fish on it !!!!!!!
A week later it was back to Willow Park Small Lake and with my brother down from Scotland for a few days, we sneaked out for a little practice on the Friday. Despite paste being THE bait at Willow, my brother is very stubborn and decided he'd catch on corn - which he didn't. After I'd had about 10 carp I then convinced him to try some paste and he then started catching. We both caught a few fish and although the weather then turned a lot cooler, I was still looking forward to sunday.
At the draw I ended up with Peg 14 just to the right of the big Willow tree. It's a peg I've fished before and didn't really fancy it that much, only because I've never caught close in on it. For company I had big bruv one side (on peg 16) and Smiffy (Mark Smith) the other side of the Willow tree on Peg 13. This was likely to be a good tussle as Smiffy is a quality angler and very good at fishing up in the water, so it was also likely to be a battle of methods as well. This for me was one of the most interesting matches of the year for me as Smiffy abandoned his up in the water tactics to fish paste and we traded fish for fish most of the match, although there were odd times when one of us had two or three fish in a row whilst the other struggled for a bite. I hate to think what the pressure is like in the World Champs when the angler at the next peg is catching and you can't get a bite as this was pressure enough for me and it was only a 16 peg club match ! We both had to go long to catch and both agreed at the end that we hadn't fed enough as when we did it seemed to pull the fish from the other peg. Both of us thought the other had won at the end and the result when the scales finally settled the score was.........Smiffy 66lb....Pikey 74lb.
Monk Lake Number 1 was the scene for report number 7 and having only fished it once before I listened to lots of different people who told me how to fish it......and ignored them all.
We were fishing Pegs 23 -48 and I drew Peg 24 with Northern Bloke (Howard Corner) on the flier end peg 23. I'd decided to ignore all the "Fish pellet and maggot" advice I'd had and chose (not suprisingly) to fish paste at 5 metres. I was confident I could catch enough on it to win by "Plopping" a la Willow Park and catching more bigger carp than those catching smaller fish on pellet and maggot. My match started slowly whilst everyone else shot out of the traps and were catching a fish a chuck, however, I soon managed to peg them back and whilst a lot of the others struggled in the second half of the match, I was cooking on gas ! Howard caught a few bigger fish down the edge and whilst I expected him to batter me off that peg, I was very suprised to find that when the weights were added up at the end, we had actually tied for top spot with 109-4-0.
So, that was it, some of my favourite matches of the summer / Autumn, it certainly brings back some good memories which is always nice when you are struggling to catch in the winter.
Report number one comes from the second club match of the season, not suprisingly at Willinghurst but on New lake instead of the more regularly match fished Top Lake. Whilst the lake has 20 pegs on it, for it to fish well, you really only want 13 0r 14 fishing it. I was therefore a bit concerned as we had 17 fishing and although I drew Peg 19 which isn't usually pegged, we had left out Peg 18 to give pegs 17, 19 and the two pegs opposite a bit of room.
Most of my fishing at Willinghurst in the summer is done with paste and today was no exception, although this was to be catfood paste as opposed to my usual green swim stim paste. To make it, the night before a match, I just take a couple of tins of beef in gravy catfood, push it all through a maggott riddle a couple of times, add a bit of betaine and pour it into a plastic milk bottle. I do this in the kitchen sink at home as it means I can rinse my hands off as I go along and I don't get too messy.
When I reach my peg in the morning I just pour some of the mix into a bowl add a few micro pellets and stir it about with a winder. The micros just dry the mix out a bit so it stays on the hook. It was then just a question of picking two lines to fish and nicking a fish or two off one line before switching to the other. The match went brilliantly for me, by just using the paste to feed the peg, I caught on a off for most of the match whilst nearly everyone else struggled and I weighed in 131lb with the next weight being 46lb.
Match number 2 was also back at Willinghurst but this time on my favourite Lake, Pittance Lake. THE pegs to draw on the lake are usually Pegs 5 and 12 , opposite each other on one end of the island. With 3 numbers still in the hat, I got Bryan Hawkins to draw for me and he did me proud with Peg 12 ! The match started slowly for most and although I caught a few fish on the lead with double corn or the conker and a couple on a pellet waggler I wasn't exactly setting the world on fire. With a couple of hours to go Phil Starkey was probably well clear of the rest of the field as he was catching regularly on the method feeder to the middle of the island on Peg 13 and I think he was getting quite excited as this was likely to be his first ever club match win. However, I had dumped a load of my cat food paste mix, along with some hemp at about 10 metres and whilst I had looked over it every now and then during the match I'd so far had no indications. With about 90 minutes to go, I tried a lump of green paste over the 10 metre line and the float immediately buried. With 0.18 line and red hydro in my Maver H10 pole I soon had a fish of about 5lb in the net and when I had another straight away, I thought I might just nick this if I could keep them coming. Sure enough, as Phil's peg slowed, my paste line kept producing and I finished the match with 87lb to Phil's 72lb.
Match number 3 was one of two club matches at one of my favourite venues, Willow Park, Small lake. I've always liked Willow Park especially when Ken Collings ran it and you could always rely on being insulted within 20 seconds of entering the shop ! A couple of seasons ago I discovered that the carp and F1's there loved paste and now that is the only bait I ever fish there. For this match, I think we only had about 16 anglers fishing and with the lake having at least 20 pegs that I wouldn't have minded drawing, I was quite happy to draw Peg 16 on the car park bank. I set up my usual Willow Park paste rigs, 0.16 G line with a 4x14 maver margin paste float and a size 12 B911 hook - one rig to fish at 5 metres at about 11 o'clock and one to fish at 2 o'clock at about 11 metres just incase the fish wouldn't come in close.
On the whistle I fed two big pots of hemp on the longer line and a couple of rock hard balls of GB on the short line. The smaller lakes at Willow Park are both lakes that respond to "Noise" and I always feed small hard balls of GB to attract the fish into the peg. Me and Hathers christened this "Plopping" as if the GB is hard enough (you don't want it breaking up until it reaches the bottom or the fish will come up in the water) then "Plop" is the noise it makes when you throw it in. I continue to plop every cast until the fish turn up and then stop and only start again if the fish disappear. I started to catch a few F1's and a couple of bigger carp on the short line but it wasn't as quick as normal and when I switched to the longer line there seemed to be a lot more fish there. I continued to catch but tried the shorter line (which I'd continued "Plopping) every now and then as I could catch them much faster there. However, it wasn't until the last half hour that they returned on the shorter line when I had 4 proper carp and 2 F1's in the last 30 minutes. I finished the match with 77lb and a comfortable win with 40lb I think being the next weight. Although some people think that paste is paste and it doesn't matter what you use, I have found that green swim stim paste with some Garam Masala spice in it works very well at Willow Park.
Match 4 saw me back on home territory on the Top Lake at Willinghurst. The place to draw for much of the summer had been the back spit - an offshoot of the main lake that is about 20 metres wide and 3 foot deep. I'd won two club matches on it earlier in the season with 185lb and 141lb but this time drew Peg 10 on the main part of the lake. Peg 10 is quite a long peg and even more so when they leave out the pegs either side like they had for this match so I wasn't too upset about not drawing the back spit as I thought I could do some damage from here. Whilst my main attack at Willinghurst is nearly always paste, I seem to do better in the margins by fishing particle baits like corn, hemp and luncheon meat, I therefore set up a paste rig to fish at 8 metres and a couple of edge rigs to fish just infront of the rushes to my right and in the edge against the bare bank to my left. I'm always experimenting with different baits in matches and had caught a few fish using spam but the garlic flavoured one called "Spam with Stinky french garlic" I'd put two tins of this through my 6mm meat cutter and mixed it with 4 pints of hemp to use as feed with two cubes of meat on the hook. I fed a big pot of hemp / meat in the edge both sides and started on the paste line but it was very slow with only a couple of fish in the first few hours. The good thing about feeding hemp for carp is that because it is so oily you can usually tell when there are fish over your feed as they release a lot of oils as they grub around and give you the sign to fish over it. I noticed signs of fish on the rushes line after a few hours and as I'm not a great believer in leaving the margin pegs until the fish are settled - as you spook them as soon as you hook one anyway - then I went straight over it with 2 pieces of smelly luncheon meat. The float hardly settled before it disappeared and I soon had my first margin fish in the net. I found the best way to catch was to use a small pole cup loaded with feed and just to cup it in a lower the baited rig in amongst the feed. I'd not seen a sign in the left hand side but eventually some fish turned up and I just switched between the to edge lines nicking a fish or two of each. I finished the match with 126lb for a comfortable victory over Tony Plumbridge who was on Peg 18 and had 78lb. Having found the "Secret" bait that I had been looking for I then hunted around the area to find more tins of Stinky Garlic Luncheon meat as there seemed to be a world shortage of it. I finally tracked down 15 tins in 4 or 5 different shops and bought them all - Since then I've not had a fish on it !!!!!!!
A week later it was back to Willow Park Small Lake and with my brother down from Scotland for a few days, we sneaked out for a little practice on the Friday. Despite paste being THE bait at Willow, my brother is very stubborn and decided he'd catch on corn - which he didn't. After I'd had about 10 carp I then convinced him to try some paste and he then started catching. We both caught a few fish and although the weather then turned a lot cooler, I was still looking forward to sunday.
At the draw I ended up with Peg 14 just to the right of the big Willow tree. It's a peg I've fished before and didn't really fancy it that much, only because I've never caught close in on it. For company I had big bruv one side (on peg 16) and Smiffy (Mark Smith) the other side of the Willow tree on Peg 13. This was likely to be a good tussle as Smiffy is a quality angler and very good at fishing up in the water, so it was also likely to be a battle of methods as well. This for me was one of the most interesting matches of the year for me as Smiffy abandoned his up in the water tactics to fish paste and we traded fish for fish most of the match, although there were odd times when one of us had two or three fish in a row whilst the other struggled for a bite. I hate to think what the pressure is like in the World Champs when the angler at the next peg is catching and you can't get a bite as this was pressure enough for me and it was only a 16 peg club match ! We both had to go long to catch and both agreed at the end that we hadn't fed enough as when we did it seemed to pull the fish from the other peg. Both of us thought the other had won at the end and the result when the scales finally settled the score was.........Smiffy 66lb....Pikey 74lb.
Monk Lake Number 1 was the scene for report number 7 and having only fished it once before I listened to lots of different people who told me how to fish it......and ignored them all.
We were fishing Pegs 23 -48 and I drew Peg 24 with Northern Bloke (Howard Corner) on the flier end peg 23. I'd decided to ignore all the "Fish pellet and maggot" advice I'd had and chose (not suprisingly) to fish paste at 5 metres. I was confident I could catch enough on it to win by "Plopping" a la Willow Park and catching more bigger carp than those catching smaller fish on pellet and maggot. My match started slowly whilst everyone else shot out of the traps and were catching a fish a chuck, however, I soon managed to peg them back and whilst a lot of the others struggled in the second half of the match, I was cooking on gas ! Howard caught a few bigger fish down the edge and whilst I expected him to batter me off that peg, I was very suprised to find that when the weights were added up at the end, we had actually tied for top spot with 109-4-0.
So, that was it, some of my favourite matches of the summer / Autumn, it certainly brings back some good memories which is always nice when you are struggling to catch in the winter.
