Grange Park, Messingham. 22-04-2007

I’d heard a few stories about the size of these ponds before whilst trying to glean some information about how to fish them, but nothing could prepare me for how small they really were. Thirteen metres would get you more than half way, and with only 10 pegs on each bank we had to take two ponds to get all our anglers on.

After gleaning info from various sources it seems it would be better to try catch as close in as possible to build any sort of weight. I decided to set up 3 rigs, one to fish at 9 and 13 metres just in case I couldn’t catch close in, another to fish just on the top kit at 3m. I had a spare peg to my left so my final rig would be stepped up to fish in front of the platform.

Bait was 4mm feed and hookers that have to be bought on site. I bought the ready prepared hookers as the expanders they sell to do yourself are Omega’s and I’m not too fond of these. The spare peg swim was going to be fed with a few grains of corn and some cubed meat about 6mm.

At the all in I fed a ball of groundbait made up of ground carp pellets on each of the longer lines, while flicking a few pellets to my left and right for the top kit and went out at 9 metres. I began to catch almost immediately, small Crucians and stockies being the main pray. After about 10 minutes I decided to switch to the Hook in the Loop (HITL) to try and hit more of the finicky bites I was getting. It worked instantly, the bites were more visible and my catch rate increased. The size of the fish were very small and it was making it hard work for not a lot of gain in terms of weight in the net.

After about 30 minutes I decided to try the close in swims. I had a couple of fish from each swim but the fish seemed to back off after I had caught a couple. I decided to feed these swims a little further out at 4m to see if I could build up the confidence. A small ball of groundbait and a few pellets went to each side while I went back out on the 9m line for another 10 minutes.

While plumbing up I found that after 3-4 metres the bottom was pretty flat all the way out with about 4’ most of the way across, this allowed me to use the rig from the 9m swim at 4 meters without having to get out another rig. The fish seemed to feed far more confidently at this range and feeding little and often and rotating the swims kept the fish coming for pretty much the rest of the match. Towards the end of the match I decided to feed and rest both close lines and have a look over the spare peg at the side. I got a bite straight away within a couple of minutes a bonus Tench of about 3 pounds was in the net. With no more bites forthcoming I came back on the close lines and began catching straight away all the way through to end of the match.

Apart from the Tench, all the other fish were very small with biggest probably around 6 or 7 ounce but generally they were smaller that this, with some carp probably an ounce or two at the most.

The scales registered 33lb 8oz which I was quite pleased about given the stamp of the fish. As I was one of the first to weigh, I had to wait till the rest of our lake and the other lake to weigh before I knew if I had come anywhere. Peg 1 had managed to snare a carp around 10lb first chuck so I wasn’t hopeful of a match or lake win but I hadn’t seen many catch around me so maybe I would be ok for the section. Turns out the other lake had fished poorly and peg 1 only managed 25lb, which put me in first place and 1 point for the league.

Results:

1st Me (33.08)

2nd Mark Baldwin (TBC)

3rd Alan Larkin (TBC)