Weight –8lb 15oz
Catch – 13 Roach, 5 Perch, 2 Bream, 1 Gudgeon
Weather – Warm & sunny. Easterly wind.
Match – Match Fishing Scene – 8th (out of 16)
Following Monday’s practice session both Mark & I were confident of doing well, although we were concerned the weather forecast of sun and an easterly wind, was hardly classic bream weather.
The pegs we wanted to avoid were p1 because it was in the corner and between p4 & 10, because they were set back in a bay and the wind was blowing away from these pegs. With the wind, I felt the pegs in the 20s would be best with peg 27 being the end peg.
Today there were 16 fishing, with 2 sections. I found myself on 16, whilst Mark was on 8, which was exactly were he didn’t want to be. I wasn’t too disappointed with 16, although I felt that I was at the wrong end of section, which started on peg 15 to my right.
Decided on 4 swims, 5m with caster, 13m cupping in some groundbait, with chopped worm, micros and 4mm pellet, 11m at an angle to my left was chopped worm & caster, looking for the bigger roach and perch, and finally the feeder, which I was hoping I wont need to use.
I started at 5m to let my lines settle, but it was slow and bites weren’t coming quickly enough, I even tried fishing half depth, which produced 2 quick fish then nothing. After an hour, I only had 15 fish, but I wanted to give my other swims the best possible chance to settle. What was noticeable was the tow on the lake as the wind picked up, it was almost like trotting on the river.
Unfortunately I could only see 3 anglers, so didn’t know how everyone else was doing, but the grapevine suggested most were struggling with the end pegs of 25 & 27 catching. Throughout the match I kept the 13m line topped with a catapulted 4mm every 10mins and the same again on the feeder line with a small of groundbait.
Going into the 2nd hour the 11m line was topped up with some more CW&C and switched to 13m line. What I learned from Monday was the need to be patient for those the bream, but with nearly half of the match gone, I was beginning to question whether my tactic of regularly feeding pellet and whether I should have started on chopped worm. However a near 4lb bream on double maggot was very welcome and I hoped vindicated my decision to keep the pellet going in.
With no further bites I returned to my 5m line, but other than an 8oz perch I had nothing. I had hoped the short line would give me a few extra pounds whilst waiting for the bream to turn up, but the bright conditions was having a negative effect on the fishing.
Phil Powell on peg 13 had 4 skimmers, whilst Nicky the Bricky (NTB) had yet to catch and was spending more time on the feeder, and then out of the blue NTB had 2 bream in 2 casts. Bugger, I had to at least try the feeder now, but other than a couple of plucks from small fish, I had nothing. Neither did NTB, so I switched back to concentrating on my 11m and 13m line.
With just under 2hrs to go, I had another bream at 13m on worm, but again it seemed to be a loaner. With the match drawing to a close, I kept rotating the swims and with 30mins left another small pot of cw&c went in at 11m and with 7mins till the end, I hooked a bream, but as I shipped back the bream popped up to the surface and then the hooked pulled. At the time I thought it would cost me, however looking at the results, I would have come 6th and still out of the money, so I didn’t feel quite as bad.
I knew NTB had 2 decent bream and together with a single roach, beat me by 8oz. His biggest fish was about 6lb.
A tough match and on reflection felt I got my tactics right, it was just a shame about the weather. The 3 pegs to my left didn’t weigh and that included a blank. 1st and 3rd came from the 2 end pegs to my left in the wind, whilst 2nd place came from the other end of the match length from a noted skimmer peg.
As for Mark, he packed up early. It was obviously a difficult area, because Ian Didcote pegged next to him only had a few fish, which brought a smile to a few people faces, because he was very confident going into the match, but he didn’t seem so chipper at the end.
1st 38-7 Bevan Boy peg 27
2nd 31-13 Withybagger peg 2
3rd 21-13 Mattyg peg 25
Showing posts with label Peatmoor Lagoon. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Peatmoor Lagoon. Show all posts
Sunday, 10 April 2011
Tuesday, 5 April 2011
04/04/11 - Peatmoor Lagoon
Weight –18lb 4oz
Catch – 52 Roach, 6 Bream, 3 Perch, 1 Rudd
Weather – Mild, mostly cloudy and windy
The penultimate weekend of revision, meant no fishing, however with a match at Peatmoor Lagoon, Mark & I decided we needed a practice session to at least get an idea of the venue, since neither of us had seen the place.
What little information we managed to glean, skimmers, roach and a few tench would be the target, the lake is on the west side of Swindon and controlled by Peatmoor AC.
Mark & I had arranged to meet at Cotswold Angling for 8.30, but my sat nav sent me down a dead end road, whilst Marks sat nav sent him to another area of town on the other side of the dead end. After much swearing, about crap sat navs and never wanted to come to Swindon again, Mark finally arrived at the tackle shop.
Having spoken to Cotswold Angling last week, Mark was told we could get tickets there. On arrival it transpired they only sold season tickets and Hinders sold the day tickets, because the controlling club only allow 5 day tickets a day to be sold. Great another trip around Swindon. Cotswold gave us the postcode, which resulted in another dead end! A call to Hinders got the correct postcode, which was ½ mile away. Fortunately getting to the lake happened without further incident.
Our match on Saturday would be between pegs 1 & 27, which would put us on the south bank of the lake. I settled on peg 19, whilst Mark was on peg 22. The one thing we did notice was how tight the pegs where, fortunately there are only 16 booked in for Saturday, so at least we would have some room. The lake itself offered plenty of water and was about 4-5ft deep.
Mark & I had traded many e-mails (mostly when we were supposed to be working!) about how to approach the venue. Mark was in favour of the pellet approach, whilst I was felt that worm & caster would be better, purely because at this time of year the fishing can be a bit iffy, as the fish prepare to spawn, so I just felt we needed to cover all options. The other thing that we wanted to establish was whether we could catch on the pole, since most recent weights had come on the feeder, which I would prefer not to use.
Groundbait, chopped worm, caster and micros were deposited at 13m. I also started to catapult small balls of groundbait over the “feeder line” and I started at 5m feeding caster. After 30mins I had 20 small roach, mostly caught on red maggot. Mark had caught a 1½lb skimmer on the feeder.
I had set up a big waggler to fish over the feeder line, although I caught a roach 1st cast, the wind was proving a bit troublesome, creating quite a bit of tow and since I hadn’t set up a feeder decided to concentrate on the pole.
After letting the 13m line settle for an hour, I started toss potting a caster, chopped worm & micro mix every put in, after a few roach, I decided to use a bigger toss pot every other put in. This definitely helped and I caught my first bream, at nearly 4lb on double red maggot. My rig was a jean François 0.4g, but with the increasing wind the tow was getting worse and my presentation was suffering.
At times like this I always remember a fishing lesson I got from Nicky Collins at Viaduct, fishing a cold winter league match on Lodge Lake. The first half of the match I was ahead with a few skimmers, but the wind got stronger, Nicky switched to a heavier rig and in the 2nd half of the match he doubled my weight, simply because I persisted with the same rig, which was now rendered useless by the wind.
So a new rig was soon set up with a polar ice 1g. The difference was very noticeable, the float sat better in the water and another big toss pot of food, resulted in another bream. For about 45mins I caught regularly, including a big perch. Worm was the best bait. When the swim died, I switched back to the inside line and caught more roach.
We were about 3hrs into our session and Mark was struggling. His pellet line hadn’t produced, the feeder only resulted in 1 skimmer and the only fish he could catch over his chopped worm were roach, although he had some quality specimens. Having seen my success with the heavier rig, he finally relented, after must moaning, about “this aint very good” and “not sure I want to fish on Saturday”. Anyway the next 2hrs on his heavy rig, he couldn’t stop catching over his pellet line, including quality bream and a 3-4lb tench. Funnily enough he was now interested!
My pole line had pretty much died, so decided on a pellet dump at 15m, before switching back to the inside line when I had a really good run of fish on caster. Back out on at 15m I did catch a big bream on pellet, but no other fish.
Mark finished with 38lb, so those last 2 hours were very productive and in many ways threw the ideas we were beginning to formulate out the window. All in all it was very useful practice and we have both came to the same conclusion in the way we plan to attack the match.
So we will see on Saturday whether we got it right.
Catch – 52 Roach, 6 Bream, 3 Perch, 1 Rudd
Weather – Mild, mostly cloudy and windy
The penultimate weekend of revision, meant no fishing, however with a match at Peatmoor Lagoon, Mark & I decided we needed a practice session to at least get an idea of the venue, since neither of us had seen the place.
What little information we managed to glean, skimmers, roach and a few tench would be the target, the lake is on the west side of Swindon and controlled by Peatmoor AC.
Mark & I had arranged to meet at Cotswold Angling for 8.30, but my sat nav sent me down a dead end road, whilst Marks sat nav sent him to another area of town on the other side of the dead end. After much swearing, about crap sat navs and never wanted to come to Swindon again, Mark finally arrived at the tackle shop.
Having spoken to Cotswold Angling last week, Mark was told we could get tickets there. On arrival it transpired they only sold season tickets and Hinders sold the day tickets, because the controlling club only allow 5 day tickets a day to be sold. Great another trip around Swindon. Cotswold gave us the postcode, which resulted in another dead end! A call to Hinders got the correct postcode, which was ½ mile away. Fortunately getting to the lake happened without further incident.
Our match on Saturday would be between pegs 1 & 27, which would put us on the south bank of the lake. I settled on peg 19, whilst Mark was on peg 22. The one thing we did notice was how tight the pegs where, fortunately there are only 16 booked in for Saturday, so at least we would have some room. The lake itself offered plenty of water and was about 4-5ft deep.
Mark & I had traded many e-mails (mostly when we were supposed to be working!) about how to approach the venue. Mark was in favour of the pellet approach, whilst I was felt that worm & caster would be better, purely because at this time of year the fishing can be a bit iffy, as the fish prepare to spawn, so I just felt we needed to cover all options. The other thing that we wanted to establish was whether we could catch on the pole, since most recent weights had come on the feeder, which I would prefer not to use.
Groundbait, chopped worm, caster and micros were deposited at 13m. I also started to catapult small balls of groundbait over the “feeder line” and I started at 5m feeding caster. After 30mins I had 20 small roach, mostly caught on red maggot. Mark had caught a 1½lb skimmer on the feeder.
I had set up a big waggler to fish over the feeder line, although I caught a roach 1st cast, the wind was proving a bit troublesome, creating quite a bit of tow and since I hadn’t set up a feeder decided to concentrate on the pole.
After letting the 13m line settle for an hour, I started toss potting a caster, chopped worm & micro mix every put in, after a few roach, I decided to use a bigger toss pot every other put in. This definitely helped and I caught my first bream, at nearly 4lb on double red maggot. My rig was a jean François 0.4g, but with the increasing wind the tow was getting worse and my presentation was suffering.
At times like this I always remember a fishing lesson I got from Nicky Collins at Viaduct, fishing a cold winter league match on Lodge Lake. The first half of the match I was ahead with a few skimmers, but the wind got stronger, Nicky switched to a heavier rig and in the 2nd half of the match he doubled my weight, simply because I persisted with the same rig, which was now rendered useless by the wind.
So a new rig was soon set up with a polar ice 1g. The difference was very noticeable, the float sat better in the water and another big toss pot of food, resulted in another bream. For about 45mins I caught regularly, including a big perch. Worm was the best bait. When the swim died, I switched back to the inside line and caught more roach.
We were about 3hrs into our session and Mark was struggling. His pellet line hadn’t produced, the feeder only resulted in 1 skimmer and the only fish he could catch over his chopped worm were roach, although he had some quality specimens. Having seen my success with the heavier rig, he finally relented, after must moaning, about “this aint very good” and “not sure I want to fish on Saturday”. Anyway the next 2hrs on his heavy rig, he couldn’t stop catching over his pellet line, including quality bream and a 3-4lb tench. Funnily enough he was now interested!
My pole line had pretty much died, so decided on a pellet dump at 15m, before switching back to the inside line when I had a really good run of fish on caster. Back out on at 15m I did catch a big bream on pellet, but no other fish.
Mark finished with 38lb, so those last 2 hours were very productive and in many ways threw the ideas we were beginning to formulate out the window. All in all it was very useful practice and we have both came to the same conclusion in the way we plan to attack the match.
So we will see on Saturday whether we got it right.
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