Get me outta here!

Wednesday 29 October 2014

Better late than never....

Charity match weekend at The Alps in Cornwall! These ones are always good fun just because nobody involved takes it the slightest bit seriously. 

With clocks going back on the Saturday night there was always the potential for some fool to cock things up and for the rest of us to have a laugh. I wasn't expecting that fool to be me though! 

All set up the night before, with two Drennan Acolyte waggler rods rigged with big loaded floats by the door, I got my head down early. Taking an hour off the clock, I was really looking forward to catching a few roach and skimmers, and leaving the pole at home. 

Come morning, all I had to do was load the car and drive a mile or so down to the fishery. I've just moved house. Sea views and a coarse fishery just down the road. Perfect! 

I was a bit slow getting loaded but rocking up 10 minutes late wasn't going to be a problem while fishing with this bunch. My concern was heightened a bit when I jumped in the car and started her up though. 10:08am?! The draw was at 8. You can take an hour off 10am but will never get anywhere near the 8 o'clock I thought it was!

The genius of technology. It might be obvious by now but it soon became apparent that my very clever (not!) phone had assumed that I was a complete div and wouldn't be capable of remembering the time change (anybody who sides with the phone can bugger off!! ;-). The bloody thing had taken an extra hour off for me! Lovely! Since I had everybodies maggots with me, the realisation that they'll have had the "all-in" nearly 10 minutes ago prompted me to put my foot down. 

There's nothing like turning up after everybody else has started. The fishing seemed to be hard to be honest. I was 1/3 of the way down the left hand bank, on the big lake. It was a lovely day for the waggler actually. The wind was mostly off my back. It was just going to be a case of enjoying myself and trying a few things that if not done here before. It's been a long time since I've even fished the waggler. The rods and reels were borrowed from Dave! 

My "all-in" came at 11am. Two hours behind. I normally catch really well in these matches and do ok. The venue suits the pole perfectly. Apart from a Polish friend called Jacek, I'm usually the only one fishing it though. There were a couple on the bank this week though so didn't exactly fancy my chances on the wag. By this point I hardly had a care in the world though.

I wanted to catch skimmers really. There are quite a few in here but it's not really a commercial fishery as such, so your real target weight on here is 20lb at the moment (silver fish). To do that you'll need skimmers. 10lb would be a normal roach weight to go at. More would be achievable if you can get it right on the whip and pole though. 

With those skimmers in mind I mixed up 1.5kg of 50/50 Sensas Super Bremes and Crazy Bait Green and packed it with chopped worm, dead maggots and micro pellets. This was for the main line at what must have only been at around 18m. 

There's a bar that runs up the centre of this lake and since I've only ever fished the pole here, it was interesting to find it. It shallows up very quickly to about 4' deep on top of it, down to about 7' at the bottom of the drop off where I planned to fish. I had the end of an island in front of me to use as a target and a reflection from the hills beyond to judge distance. I put three balls of bait on this line at the start and sat back to try and pick off a few roach on a closer line while it settled. I topped up with another small ball of bait every 15 minutes or so. 

For the roach line I mixed up a separate half kilo of left over Dynamite Roach with a sprinkling of caster. I started on this line at about 6m since I'd usually have the whip with me and catch a few here before going long. 

Almost an hour in and I was still biteless! Very strange. I couldn't really see anybody else properly but I knew that Steve and Jacek had caught fish before I even got to my peg!

Anyway, obviously I was twitchy to catch some skimmers on the longer line so it had to be done earlier than expected!...

Long day and story short, I had a whale of a time - but not because I was catching lots of fish. It was just a really pleasant day. Eventually I got in to a better pattern of catching small roach to 4oz, mostly on caster, and mostly in the last hour. I'd been putting a bit of loosefeed over the top of the groundbait for the previous couple of hours, but bites were tricky and irregular. There were fish cruising but not settling. With 90 minutes to go (it was actually a 7 hour match!) I looked down and realised just how much groundbait I still had left, despite feeding what I felt were quite regular, small balls. With that it became a ball a chuck through the catapult. Soon it was making a big difference and I was sometimes catching roach relatively quickly. The Acolytes were absolutely perfect for it I must admit. 

I had a lot of fun playing around with floats throughout the day as well. I eventually settled on a loaded 2+1g insert peacock, with Cralusso waggler attachment, a small bulk of no.8s at half depth and a few no.9s below. A 0.10mm hooklength and 18 hook topped it off. 

It sounds heavy but I did fish some very long, super sensitive floats up to 8g as well. I didn't need the weight, or that much stability, but I did catch a few fish on them and their weight made them so easy to cast and fish accurately! I wouldn't be at all worried about putting one on in a stiff breeze, even if they do look a bit mad!

I ended up weighing 6lb 9oz. A tiny weight for the venue on a weirdly hard day. I didn't have a single bonus fish. 


Friz and Anna's combined weight (fisher & non-fisher) won the silvers trophy with 8lb something. Jacek was 2nd with 6lb 12oz (including a lovely 2lb+ perch), which meant I finished 3rd! Jacek also landed the biggest carp so grabbed the trophy and an Art of Fishing voucher for that too! (Below)


It was an interesting day as far as learning more about the venue went. The feeding, presentation and the problematic snags that litter the bar! I lost a stack of hooks to whatever lurks down there. If I cast 12" too far I was on it! 

We ended the day in the pub. As usual! Overall the group raised £200 to go towards the St Merryn Christmas lights this year. Well done all!



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