I decided to take a day off work as it was Friday and have a few hours at Candy Corner in preparation for our match on Sunday.

My old man decided he was going to come along for the day out, so we stopped off for a breakfast on the way out there and make a full day of it. My dad doesn’t fish and judging by the weather in the morning; overcast with a bit of rain and quite cold, I though he might end up sat in the car all day.

I managed to get on a peg (12) with the wind over our backs to try and keep a bit warm.

I had a couple of pints of casters with me but wasn’t too bothered about using these as I know you can usually catch on them. I was going to try paste for the first time this year, see if I could snare any of the resident lumps. I was also hoping to catch shallow with the pellet on the pole. With this I only set up two rigs, a 4×10 Big H for paste close in and a 4×10 KC Carpa Shelf for up in the water.

I started off on paste just fishing it on the hook and striking it off after a minute or so, whilst I kept feeding a few pellets at 13 metres on the pole line. Indications came straight away with the float moving around all over the place, after a couple goes I finally got a proper bite and a Crucian of around 2lb soon hit the net. A few more followed but Crucians being as they are the bites were very finicky and it was hard to tell liners for proper bites.

After about an hour I decided to have a try up in the water with pellet. Luckily the fishery has a 13 metre pole limit as you can only use their pellets and with 4mm being the only feed pellets they sell, I would be struggling to get them much further out with any sort of control. I’d been advised by the owner to use the 6mm hookers as these were what everyone used. I’m not sure about this, I’m sure he’s right but I prefer the hookbait to be as close to what I’m feeding as possible. Indications were there straight away and it wasn’t long before I was in. Again these were only small Crucians & stockies in the 1-2lb bracket but I was catching them faster than I was on the paste. I fished like this for another hour or so and managed to snare a couple of bigger carp of around 5lb amongst the smaller fish that seemed to be resident in my swim.

For the last hour I decided to come back over the paste line to see if any bigger fish had moved in. I wasn’t getting as many indications as before which I was hoping was down to there being less smaller fish in the swim. This theory was right as the stamp of fish had increased to between 4 and 5lb. Not wanting to get stuck in the rush hour traffic I decided to have one more chuck. The float buried almost straight away and after a struggle I managed to net the beauty above. A beautiful common with a right fat belly on it.

Roll on Sunday.

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)

I thought I’d put a quick update on the blog regarding my recent fishing activities. I was enrolled on the R&R sports spring league at Lakeside, Ranskill. I was hoping to do a blog entry for each of the 8 rounds but I had to miss a few because of family commitments. That couple with the fact I wasn’t doing particularly well didn’t inspire me to write much about them.

The 1st match brought me 4th place from not a particularly good draw but it all went downhill from there. I suffered from a few more bad draws and with the matches I missed I put that one down as experience. We got our club league starting in a week so I need to get my head down, focus and try and get a result this year.

After being kept awake for most of the night with the gales battering the bedroom window with rain, I wasn’t particularly looking forward to this match. Especially coupled with the fact that my information gathering exercise last week had suggested this was going to be a feeder match, chucking tight to the island, not my most favoured method. I was half expecting a phone call off Roger my travelling partner telling me he wasn’t going, especially after he’d been out on a bender Saturday night.

After getting a good soaking loading the car I went to pick Roger up, and after ringing his mobile several times he finally appeared. I think his first words were, "Am I not looking forward to this". Luckily the rain had started to subside and by the time we arrived for breakfast, it had stopped altogether. We had booked for breakfast at 7:30 on site ready in time for the draw at 7:45, which we all thought was early as we weren’t due to start the match until 9:30. Turns out that the draw was at 8:15 but Roger got it wrong. DOH!!! Could have had an extra half hour in bed.

Having never fished this lake before I didn’t really know what a decent draw would be, although in some respects this can be a good thing. I think too many people get affected by the outcome of the draw and their confidence takes a hit before they’ve even got to the bank. The last time we fished here, on field pond, I’d drawn a ‘duff peg’ allegedly and went to win the match. Remember kids, fish swim.

The lake is rectangle but has an island which stretches pretty much the entire length of the pond, hence the name Long Island I guess. I would have thought the end pegs would produce, having the chuck to the end of the island but we’d see. Anyway the draw gave me peg 83, which was bang in the middle of the left had bank.
As previously mentioned the plan of attack was to be the feeder, groundbait feeder to be more precise. I’d mixed a bag of Black Swimstim and to this I added some dead maggots and a few softened pellets. I had a maggot feeder handy and by the magic of a snap-swivel I could changeover if I was struggling. Hookbait was to be maggot, dead, alive or whatever combination it took to catch on. And if that didn’t work, plan B was back at the pub as I’d got nothing else to try. As I’d decided to leave the pole in the holdall as I didn’t fancy breaking it on it’s first outing I also set up a waggler rod just in case the wind dropped and as a backup. The weather had picked up by this point and we were now basking in glorious sunshine, well, nearly.

The all in came and I had a couple of casts with a feeder full of groundbait before attaching my hooklength and recasting as tight to the island as I dare. Two minutes later the rod wrapped round and an F1 about 3lb was soon in the net, shortly followed by another next cast. By the end of the first hour and a half I had about 20lb in the net. Not many fish had been caught on my bank so unless anyone was pulling up any trees on the opposite, I was sitting in a decent position. Things went downhill for the next couple of hours as bites slowed and peg 82 managed to get a lump well into double figures, he continued to catch and pulled into the lead.
While we were sat biteless Roger decided to entertain us by seeing if he could drag the island closer to the bank. This didn’t just happen a couple of times, he was relentless in his pursuit losing at least 6 feeders, not to mention the times he managed to get it back. By this time his headache had kicked in and he was wishing he’d stayed in bed.
Things picked up in the afternoon and I managed to claw my way back into contention and kept picking up the odd fish to put me back in the lead slightly. I kept switching between groundbait and maggot feeder, the hook length and hookbait to try and induce bites and I had some success dropping the feeder a little short, although it was still on top of the shelf just in front of the island. A few had tried the waggler but with no results, which made me think it was worth while persevering with the feeder and picking up the odd fish until the F1′s moved back down again.
All was going well until Roy on peg 82, decided he was going to get another lump, the lucky b*@***d, which although not as big as the first was enough to put him back in front. I had one more fish about 3lb and was pushing to try and get one more which I thought might have put me back in the lead but it was too late and the whistle blew.

The biggest weight from the far bank was about 20lb, so it was down to me and peg82. I was first to weigh and registered at 43lb 9oz. As Roy pulled out his net we knew it was going to be tight. 46lb 10oz was his weight confirming my suspicions that his last lump had just pushed him out of reach.

Results:
1st Roy Nicholls (46.10)
2nd Matt Williams (43.09)
3rd Bob Peck (20.odd)

Not having any matches on this week, my fishing partner Roger and I decided to do something different for a change. Hopefully we will start to fish rivers more frequently next year so what better time to start.
After making some enquiries we decided on the Hudsons Bay stretch of the Newark Dyke, which had been fishing quite well by all accounts. Neither of us relish sitting all day on the feeder so hearing that the stretch had been feeding well on waggler and stick left us raring to go.

Hopefully the frost on Friday night would not make matters take a turn for the worst, and after a good hearty venue we made the short journey down the A1 to the stretch. Arriving in the car park around 10 am, we were greeted by, well no one. Not one person on the whole stretch, which is in stark contrast to days gone by when we’d have been lucky to get a peg turning up at that time.
A quick hop over the style and we settled on pegs 71 & 72, with me taking the latter.

The sun was out and making it feel rather warm, although there was a stiff breeze, blowing slightly over our backs and downstream. We both intended to fish the stick and maybe waggler if the mood took us. I had some maggots and a bit of hemp, with Roger opting for caster and hemp.

The rig consisted of a 7 x no. 4 domed alloy stick set with a bulk of no. 6 shot and a few 10′s as droppers. After a few runs without any bait to gauge the depth, I noticed there was a patch of weed about 3 rod lengths down which stretched a good couple of rod lengths into the river. I was later to find out by a local that there was a good patch of lilies there during the warmer months.
Luckily my feed was ending up further downstream and I was catching towards the end of the swim.

Bites started to come after about 20 minutes with a small perch the first to come to the net, followed by a few small bits over the next hour or so. After a coffee break and a warming of the toes it was back to action and a few puts ins later the float dipped and the rod tip arced on the strike. I was hoping I hadn’t hooked the bottom and a seconds later the the fish slowly started moving out into the river. After a few minutes a pristine chub about two and a half pound was in the net.

By around 2pm bites had dried up and the wind was starting to get blustery so we decided to call it a day. Roger had built up a nice net of roach on hemp and caster on the next peg, all in perfect condition.

What a refreshing change the day had made from fishing the usual puddles, and we made an executive decision to get out on rivers more over the winter and continue through next year.
If you fancy a change, I would recommend a day out a Hudson Bays. They’ve even put in huge bolder steps at the pegs to make getting down into the river easier.

A drop in temperature over the past week made this match a little less inviting, but given the opportunity to put a few more faces to names would make it a worthwhile affair. Plus I’d already paid for my peg. After a superb brekkie in the Fuller Monty in Kiveton, we made our way to the venue for the draw. Good job my co-pilot knew where it was or I’d have probably still been driving round now.

Pegs 1 & 10 were the fliers according to the regulars and pulling peg 2 from the bag could mean that I’d spend most of the match watching someone else bag. Unless of course no one drew it, but alas Matt aka Final Whistle was already there!

Initial attack was going to be maggot feeder clipped tight to the far bank and two pole lines, one at 10 metres, the other at 13. As there was only 5 or 6 inches between the close and long pole lines one rig would suffice.

Hookbait was to be a mixture of 4mm & 6mm expanders, corn and maggot.
At the all in close line was fed with half a pot of hemp, corn and a few pellets and the long line just pellet. If the fish showed a preference, I could alter my feed on the other swim.
As a fair few previous matches had been won on maggot feeder, this was the first line of attack while the pole lines settled. Matt on peg 1 set off like a train while Corndawg’s brother, markm and myself all sat biteless. Things got worse as Marks tip went round, although he was cursing two minutes later when it shed the hook. I got my first indication after about 20 minutes in the form of a line bite. I dropped short the next couple of casts to see if I could find where the liners were coming from but got nothing.
After to close on an hour it was time for a change and out came the pole at 10 metres with pellet on the hook. My first bite came after about 10 minutes, resulting in the elastic streaming from the pole. I’d heard these fish put up a good fight and boy did they! Unfortunately he hook pulled and this one got away.
Next put in resulted in another bite and a fish of about 4lb came into the net and another the chuck after that. The fish were fighting hard but the pull bung I was using allowed me to tighten up the elastic to net the fish. Under normal summer circumstances I’d have probably used black but as the fish were coming infrequently I didn’t want to risk any hook pulls with heavier elastic.

Bites slowed so I tried the longer line which resulted a few fish. The wind was picking up making it more difficult to fish at 13 metres so when bites dried, I switched all my attention to the 10 metre line and fish this line only. I was fishing with a small pot on the end of the pole to introduce a small amount of feed after every fish.
The bites dried up with an hour and a half to go and even Matt’s bites had dried up on peg 1, although he did suffer the curse of the second net after finally realising he had been bagging all morning.
A couple more small tench came on the maggot feeder in the last 20 minutes but it was too little, too late.

My 33lb 7oz was only good enough for 8th overall beating Mark’s 22lb 14oz at one side but no where near Matt’s 66lb 3oz at the other side. Well done to Dan, who won the match with 89lb 10oz from peg 12.
It wasn’t a bad match if only the fish would have fed a bit more consistently through the day. Cheers again to Si for organising it and roll on the next meet.

Full results:
1st Dan Gavan 89.10
2nd Matt(final whistle) 66.03
3rd Dave Pellet 51.10
4th Kirsty 44.00
5th Glenn Archer 39.00
6th Rodger Pryor 38.12
7th Monster Crab 34.06
8th Maxwell Hung 33.07
9th Matts’ Mate 28.04
10th Corndawg 25.04
11th Mark M 22.14
12th Bingos’ mate 17.12
13th Killerkarp 13.10
14th Duzabit 10.08
15th Bingo wings DNW
15th Wayne Boulby DNW
15th Rhino DNW
15th James Charters DNW
15th Danny DNW

I’ve posted a new version of the shot calculator on my website. Added are bigger shot sizes from no.6 to SSG. This is for both the online and Pocket PC versions.

View the calculator

A drop in temperature over the past week made this match a little less inviting, but given the opportunity to put a few more faces to names would make it a worthwhile affair. Plus I’d already paid for my peg. After a superb brekkie in the Fuller Monty in Kiveton, we made our way to the venue for the draw. Good job my co-pilot knew where it was or I’d have probably still been driving round now.

Pegs 1 & 10 were the fliers according to the regulars and pulling peg 2 from the bag could mean that I’d spend most of the match watching someone else bag. Unless of course no one drew it, but alas Matt aka Final Whistle was already there!

Initial attack was going to be maggot feeder clipped tight to the far bank and two pole lines, one at 10 metres, the other at 13. As there was only 5 or 6 inches between the close and long pole lines one rig would suffice.

Hookbait was to be a mixture of 4mm & 6mm expanders, corn and maggot.
At the all in close line was fed with half a pot of hemp, corn and a few pellets and the long line just pellet. If the fish showed a preference, I could alter my feed on the other swim.
As a fair few previous matches had been won on maggot feeder, this was the first line of attack while the pole lines settled. Matt on peg 1 set off like a train while Corndawg’s brother, markm and myself all sat biteless. Things got worse as Marks tip went round, although he was cursing two minutes later when it shed the hook. I got my first indication after about 20 minutes in the form of a line bite. I dropped short the next couple of casts to see if I could find where the liners were coming from but got nothing.
After to close on an hour it was time for a change and out came the pole at 10 metres with pellet on the hook. My first bite came after about 10 minutes, resulting in the elastic streaming from the pole. I’d heard these fish put up a good fight and boy did they! Unfortunately he hook pulled and this one got away.
Next put in resulted in another bite and a fish of about 4lb came into the net and another the chuck after that. The fish were fighting hard but the pull bung I was using allowed me to tighten up the elastic to net the fish. Under normal summer circumstances I’d have probably used black but as the fish were coming infrequently I didn’t want to risk any hook pulls with heavier elastic.

Bites slowed so I tried the longer line which resulted a few fish. The wind was picking up making it more difficult to fish at 13 metres so when bites dried, I switched all my attention to the 10 metre line and fish this line only. I was fishing with a small pot on the end of the pole to introduce a small amount of feed after every fish.
The bites dried up with an hour and a half to go and even Matt’s bites had dried up on peg 1, although he did suffer the curse of the second net after finally realising he had been bagging all morning.
A couple more small tench came on the maggot feeder in the last 20 minutes but it was too little, too late.

My 33lb 7oz was only good enough for 8th overall beating Mark’s 22lb 14oz at one side but no where near Matt’s 66lb 3oz at the other side. Well done to Dan, who won the match with 89lb 10oz from peg 12.
It wasn’t a bad match if only the fish would have fed a bit more consistently through the day. Cheers again to Si for organising it and roll on the next meet.

Full results:
1st Dan Gavan 89.10
2nd Matt(final whistle) 66.03
3rd Dave Pellet 51.10
4th Kirsty 44.00
5th Glenn Archer 39.00
6th Rodger Pryor 38.12
7th Monster Crab 34.06
8th Maxwell Hung 33.07
9th Matts’ Mate 28.04
10th Corndawg 25.04
11th Mark M 22.14
12th Bingos’ mate 17.12
13th Killerkarp 13.10
14th Duzabit 10.08
15th Bingo wings DNW
15th Wayne Boulby DNW
15th Rhino DNW
15th James Charters DNW
15th Danny DNW

Spending most of the night up with the new born put paid to any form of mental preparation I might have wanted to do for this match. A 200+ turnout meant this was the biggest match I’d fished for a long time, probably since I was about 18.

Luckily due to the numbers there was a rolling draw allowing me to have a lie in and still turn up in good time and draw peg 70 on Bonsai, a decent peg from what I was told. I managed to grab a buttie and buy some raffle tickets all ready in time for the minutes silence at 10.

After finding out where my peg was it was time to get myself tackled up. My peg was at the corner of a point with an island (just) to my right and one a feeder throw away to my right. The wind was coming from the left, not too strong as I was setting up but would get a lot worse as the day wore on. I’d got Cleggy two pegs to my left with a spare peg in between, although the pegs are that close together you would hardly notice (sorry Neil).
A few or the regulars had informed me that fish were still to be caught up in the water, with that in mind and the fact I’d had an awful nights sleep I decided to make it my main line of attack but with an on the deck rig at 7 metres to the right available as a backup.

At the all in I potted in some pellets from a height at the 11 metres I’d decided to fish out into the main water and began firing approx 10 pellets every 40 seconds or so. I wanted to feed more pellets less frequently to slowly come up in the water following the feed that I’d initially put in and also to stop them coming too high in the water. I tend to use skinz as hookbait when fishing up in the water as they’re more robust especially when there’s a few smaller fish around. I tend to dye some red as a change of hookbait colour. The first fish came to the net after about 5 minutes, a nice size F1 probably just over a 1lb. I caught steadily until the wind picked up from the side and made it nigh on impossible to feed and hold the pole at the same time. Cleggy was also suffering from this and I noticed he’d switched to a rig about 5 meters fishing caster I think.
I fed a pot of pellets on the 6 metre line while I persevered to give the pellets time to settle. First put in the float dipped and a small F1 came to the net. The fish closer in on this line were noticeably smaller that those I caught further out shallow.
The smaller fish coming off this line meant that not a great deal of weight was being put in the net but at least I was catching. If the wind hadn’t picked up I think the shallow line would have produced, especially as the stamp of fish was better.

I ended up with 25lb odd which was good enough to get me the section by default, one of the regulars picked up 3rd place overall from a few pegs down.

Well done to Si and Juzzy for organising the match, and to Neil for allowing us to use the venue and to put his own cash up for the prize fund.
As a bonus I managed to win a raffle prize of some elastics, hooks and bits and bobs.

The last match in our club league saw us visiting one of my favourite waters. Having one a match here two weeks previously I was optimistic that I would be the business, especially with the title at stake. I came into this last match a couple of points behind the current leader and if I could get a half decent draw and see him blow out I could be in with a chance of retaining the title. My hopes seemed to be dashed at the draw when my closest rival drew peg 12, a flier by anyone’s standards.
I drew 28 so I knew I should be in a for a few.

I setup up two 17′ rods, one with a Drennan upside waggler and one with a stick float. Both had 6′ rigs attached which were made up of 0.12mm Trabucco Diamond Race to a 0.12 Reflo Precision hook length with a size 18 Middy 73-13. These would allow me to fish caster shallow.

I also setup up two pole rigs:

At the all in I put in a handful over casters over the stick line, put a few casters on the close line and went out on the stick. Here’s where it all started to go pear shaped. First cast saw me hook a small ide but as I was bringing it in the hook pulled as the rig ended up in the tree. Rig no 1 trashed! After attaching another rig I was back out. I was playing catch up to the next peg after only 10 minutes.

I was catching steady up until lunch time when my nearest rival on peg 30 had two decent size carp to put me even further behind. Knowing that there are some big carp down the edge and the had been feeding I decided to give it a go to see if I could claw my way back. A couple of foul hookers later and I’d lost another hour with no fish to show for it.
With nothing coming close in on caster it was back out on the stick line started catching again. I began to get bigger skimmers, up to about 1.5lb which meant I was able to start clawing back some of the deficit. I managed to hook a carp on this rig but pulled out of it, than managed to trash another rig with about 30 minutes to go. I finally managed to hook and land a carp with about 10 minutes to go which was probably close to double figures.

At the weigh in I weighed 53lb, not far behind the 64lb that won from peg 30. Looking back if I had stuck to my original plan instead of wasting an hour looking for a bonus fish, I reckon I could have won the match comfortably. Lesson learnt!

As it was I didn’t do enough to win the league again, the leader up to this point won his section and ended up second in the match with 56lb. My points were enough to put me in second overall which I was still reasonably happy with.