Time for a change
As with previous years trying to find a decent match on the canals once the "season" finishes becomes a bit of a non starter, this usually coincides with the roach going missing for a couple of months whilst they have a bit of sex to start thinking about, with this in mind I was on the look out for some where else to play for a while and it was during a conversation with a mate, Pete Jones, that he mentioned a venue about 10 miles from my home that held matches every Sunday and more importantly the matches were being won with 30lb+ nets of SMALL carp, tench and skimmers with a 2lb fish being about as big as you are going to catch. The venue is a complex called Curborough, just North of Lichfield, and consists of 4 pools and a canal. The pool we would be fishing was to be the new match pool.
Saturday was spent changing elastics, number two's and fours were ripped out and replaced with 6's and 10's, and making rigs. The original plan was to follow Pete but after getting directions I was confident of finding the venue, having never seen the place before I decided to set off early and have a look round, that WAS the plan. Unfortunately after having a beer too many watching a dismal England performance against Israel I forgot to put my alarm clock a hour forward and only arrived at the venue with 3 minutes to spare. It was nice to see some old friends that I had not seen since a fair few good canal anglers decided to venture onto the commercials never to return to the towpaths including a couple of my old JTE wolves team mates Dave Berrows and Ian Chadwick.
Being late also meant I would not draw my peg but would have the last peg in the bag, the favoured pegs 16-21 in the bowl at the far end had all gone and I was left with peg 2, apparently its not a peg with much form, but with corner peg 1 to my right left out and with a strong easterly wind blowing into it I felt I might be able to catch a few stockies from in front of the pallet to add to the expected skimmers.
On this peg there is a plateau at 16metres but with the wind so strong this was not going to be a viable option so I set up a small open end feeder with a two foot .08 hook length to a size 20 Gama black hook. Pole wise I set up 4 rigs.
Rig 1. This was to fish at 11m in 4ft of water about 4m out in front of the pallet on peg 1 with pellet/corn and consisted of a 4x12 maver black ice float with a size 16 Gama pellet hook to .12 straight though. This was attached to number 10 Vespe elastic set soft.
Rig 2. This was the same rig as rig one but was to be fished into 6ft of water at 13m to my right.
Rig 3. This was to be my skimmer rig for fishing maggot at 9 and 13m and is basically a heavy canal rig with a 0.3 Dufils float with a long carbon tip shotted with an olivette 2ft away from the hook and 4 no.13 shot strung out with a size 20 Gama black hook to 0.08 straight though and attached to no.6 Vespe elastic.
Rig 4. This was a 4x12 maver black ice with a size 18 hook to 0.10 and would come into play if some stockies showed on my skimmer lines
Rig 5. Feeder
At the start I introduced a 100ml pot of micro's onto my pellet lines along with 3 balls of VDE Super lake at 9m and 2 balls of green swimstim with 50 red pinkies at 13m, I had been advised to start on the tip so put a red maggot on the hook and filled the feeder with swimstim and cast out....this method lasted two chucks for the total of about 10 minutes before I got bored, when I used to fish the Severn for barbel I had no problem with just fishing the "pig" for 5 hours but on a pool I find it really hard to get to grips with!
After 45 mins I had only seen 1 fish caught, the lad on peg 40, which is opposite peg 1, had caught a stockie of about 8oz, by this time I had tried my 9m line and both my pellet lines without any sign of a fish, it was around now that I had my 1st fish at 13m,a roach of 4oz, this was followed by 4 skimmers around 5-6 oz each so after 90 mins i was in front of everyone i could see.This trend continued for the next 2 hours with everyone catching occasional fish but i was still 5-6 fish in front of all the anglers on our end of the pool, In time i would like to think i can improve in situations like this because even though i had a few fish in front of me i felt as if there was something to be done to accelerate my catch rate, inexperience on this type of venue i suppose, i tried cupping in small balls of GB then i would cup in 20 pinkies with a few maggots then both then resting it for 20 mins but nothing seemed to get a better response,They all worked but none as well as i would have liked.
I ended up with a disappointing 17 skimmers, 3 goldfish, 2 roach and a gudgeon for 7lb and 2nd in the section beaten only by Barry Hall who had a run of 7 skimmers, and more importantly, 3 stockies between a pound and a pound and half in 10 chucks with an hour and half to go to take the section with 10lb 12oz and 3rd overall. On the whole it had fished hard with only 15lb+ needed to win and 13lb last in the main money.
Analysis.
With hindsight I feel that on the whole I fished a decent match considering that I went with my canal head still attached and wrong tactics, I think that if I had not confused myself, and the fish, by fishing too many lines and methods I could have put more fish in the net. Instead of trying to make the feeder work when Baz was catching on it, trying to get the pellet to work when I heard the eventual winner was catching on it I should have kept at fishing the maggot at 9 and 13m and kept putting something in the net, that way I could have won my section and possibly framed....still...there's always next week.
