Raygill Fisheries, Lothersdale, Keighley - MD War of the Roses 2011 - 15/05/2011

 

Other commitments had kept me off the bank for a few weeks but here was day that would turn out to be one to remember!!! I will be honest and say on Saturday I wished I wasn't fishing this match. After learning we would be fishing for small roach, never fished a Roses match before and the fact I would be out till 1am on Saturday at a Charity bash and would need to be up at 5am for this one to pick up the Big Dipper I could have stayed in bed - how glad I am that I wasn't! A fantastic day from start to finish that showed what social match fishing is all about - a top laugh.

I picked up Martin at 5:40am (yes sub 6am on a Sunday!!!) with a distinct taste of Guinness in my mouth and we set off for the rendezvous at Blackburn services on the M65 at 6:15 before heading onto Samsons Café and Delicatessen in Nelson for a hardy breakfast!!!

The plan for the day was to fish as a team at 8m with maggot on the deck and feeding small amounts of wet groundbait and 1 or 2 maggots every other fish or so. We arrived at Raygill at around 8:30 ready for the banter to begin. There is a great rivalry between Lancashire and Yorkshire (and as everyone knows - they lost the war!!!) and I honestly think nobody was bothered about catching fish...just beating the opposition! Batman scaled a cliff (or rather a large lump of concrete) to hang a Lancashire flag for all to see - we had arrived. 

Flag of Champions?

Whilst Methodgob had a poxy blue flag with a white rose on it hung from a telescopic pole - nice to see them flying a white flag of surrender even before the result!!!

Flag of Surrender

  The venue is lovely looking and has the potential I'm sure for a great day fishing - however Sunday 15th May 2011 was not going to be a great day for fishing!!! With gale force winds, driving rain at times (a typical Yorkshire Summer) and waves like tidal surges I did not fancy a peg facing the wind. As we draw I didn't want 17 - 21 so in typical fashion was ecstatic to draw out peg 20!!!! Oh well, tool myself up with waterproofs and get gooing wit yed down! The match was to be fished 10:15 till 3:15 with the Yorkies seemingly very confident  of regaining the trophy they haven't held since 2008 - although we had prepared and had some great lads in our team...they never stood a chance :-).

From my peg I only had open water with 6' depth at 8m and 7' at 14m. Our team plan was to have 2 lines, one at 8m as previously mentioned and a long line with pellet that we could try for bonus fish (preferably not carp as these only weigh 1lb regardless of size so a bonus bream or tench would be better). I setup 2 rigs, a 4x14 diamond bodies hand made float for swim 1 (8m) and the same float in a 4x16 with thicker tip for swim 2 (14m). Rig 1 had a strung out shot pattern to hopefully get roach on the way down in the groundbait cloud (with hindsight I should have bulked this rig close to the hook for better presentation in the conditions) and a size 20 B7111 hook to 0.09 line. Rig 2 had said bulk and a Tubertini 808 to 0.12 line.

On my peg

  At the all in I cupped in a medium pot of 4mm pellet at 14m at 2 o'clock (fighting the gale!!!) and a small ball of groundbait with a dozen red maggots at 8m at 10 o'clock. A single red maggot on swim 1 brought me a 1oz roach after 10 minutes, followed immediately by another. It was hard to spot bites at times as the waves were so high the float was disappearing under them regularly without the assistance of a fish. Then I had a small lull of 15 minutes before I had another fish - this time a small perch. So far I had only seen one fish come out and that was Dave to my right - I was feeling quite good. However - that perch was my last bite until 1pm!!! I tried the pellet line after half an hour and gave it 15 minutes before reverting back to my maggot line. Nothing. I worked the rig left and right. I tried 7m then 9m before deciding to give 14m at 10 o'clock a go. I potted in a little groundbait and red maggot and got an immediate response - another 1oz roach. I could see all round the lake that everybody seemed to be struggling - although discouragingly to my right, Dave had had a good number of quality roach and was way ahead of me. Also on the far bank Methodgob had hooked a few card an lost them (what a shame!!!) before landing a decent fish. By this time, the poor weather and even worse fishing was causing dissent in the Yorkshire ranks as Cleggy was bombarded with banter regarding the choice of venue (hehe!!!). I continued to get bites from small fish but somehow managed to lose 6 on the run after hooking them. This was so frustrating for me. After losing 2 I changed to a brand new hook and still lost 4 all around the 1oz mark. I was only fishing a number 4 latex so really should have got these fish to the net. I kept going though and at 3pm was beginning to think I would be weighing less than 5oz form the 5 fish in my net. At ten past 3 I hooked a better fish and brought to the net a skimmer that would boost my total to 1lb 1oz after 5 hours toiling!!!

The weigh in was quite a tense affair as Yorkshire seemed to dominate the far bank winning the first 3 sections and giving them hope that they were winning. This match is scored in a way I have never know a match score before. Although the match is a team event, it is scored by totalling up the individual points from finishing 1st to 34th (more like a singles match). Not only that, the allocation of points is backward (we were in Yorkshire after all) with the winner gaining 34 points and last gaining 1 point and the winning team gaining the highest number of points not the lowest. Walking round from the halfway point it seemed pretty close but Yorkshire had bigger weights and were looking strong, but then on the second half Lancashire fared much better getting consistently better weights than their Yorkshire counterparts. At the end of the weigh in the match was in the balance as we headed to the pub for the presentation not knowing who had won and with speculation rife. They had 4 of the top 5 (or so we thought) giving them a hatful of points but we thought we had more in the middle positions than them. Basically it would come down to whether or not we had more 20's than their 30's.

We were at the pub a good 20 minutes (seemed like AGES) before Tricky and Methodgob who had done the weigh in and subsequent totalling turned up with the result. Looking at their faces either Yorkshire had lost - or I don't want to play poker against these guys!!!! Then as debate ensued Captain Breamy looked at the results list and his face changed - I knew straight away the result!!! 

We've won! I'm not smug - honest

For the third year running we had beaten our Yorkshire rivals in a result that in the end wasn't as close as we thought as we won by 44 points. Yorkshire won the sections 3 to 2, and had more weight by 1lb but in overall points we had won prompting a sight to rival an African Sunset or the Taj Mahal, or even the Hanging Gardens of Babylon...Cleggy's face as he realised he'd lost and would have to hand the trophy once more to Breamy's team :-) 

Cleggy - Sick as the proverbial parrot!

Someone was confident

Well in lads, great day and bring on next year to make it four in a row!!!

Victory is SWEET!

Hordle Lakes, Hampshire

Hordle Lakes was somewhere I discovered whilst on holiday in the New Forest last year and had 2 really good days so when we decided to go back to the same caravan site this year, I was always going to go back. I chose quite a windy day to go and considering we had glorious weather for our 11 night stay, I chose the coldest and windiest day to go. Having wanted to fish Bob's Lake as I couldn't last year due to the Mrs not finding "a nice enough peg to sit at" I was put off by the number of carpers on the lake including one ignorant (insert insult here!) who had a bivvy on one peg and a rod on the peg to his left, in front of him and his right taking up the pegs and probably 5 pegs in terms of where his lines were!!! I decided on Long Lake as I had a good day there last year.

I picked a peg with an island at 13m to both the front on the right (2 different islands) and decided on a meat and pellet approach. I began by potting in a large cup of pellets on each line and began with a small cube of meat. It wasn't long before the float buried...and a 6oz roach was on the end, followed by another, then another - a change was needed. I changed hooklinks and fished a banded 8mm hard pellet and was immediately into a carp. So as not to waste the meat, I used this as feed as I alternated swims on pellet taking around 60lb between 8am and 1pm before packing up and heading back to the site. An eventless day really and also quite a cold one with only a T-Shirt on hence the early dart. The worst thing about it though was the quality of the fish. Everyone of them could have been straight out of a horror film. If it wasn't the twisted, deformed lipless mouths it was open wounds on the sides of the fish from birdlife or stunted tails. Not good quality and I think I'll give Orchard Lakes down the road a try next year.

Hayfield Lakes, Doncaster - Bob Nudd Masterclass - 18/04/2011

This was a day I had been waiting for since Christmas Day!!! The BEST present I have ever received - a days masterclass with Bob Nudd!!! As I am a little clumsy and the frailty of my pole, I decided to have the weekend off fishing as the last thing I wanted was to snap a section a day before a pole fishing masterclass. The day was arranged in February and was to be a general days pole fishing with me, my Granddad and Bob. I awoke to scorching conditions and had a trouble free drive to Hayfield and was greeted with a gorgeous water and somewhere I would love to visit again. Bob arrived 10 minutes after us and we were told that a whole bank had been reserved for us (felt like Royalty!!!) and it looked like the spot I would have chosen given the choice anyway. I rang up the day before to find out what I would be fishing for so I could balance my kit accordingly and decided I would try Hydro for the first time. I kitted 2 top 3's with Black hydro and setup rigs to 0.16 mainline and tied a load of Tubertini 808 size 16 and 14 hooks ready for a day of pellet bashing.

Bob provided all the bait (courtesy of VDE naturally) and it was decided we would start on the deck at 9m before looking at a long line shallow as the day heated up. Hayfield is a deep venue sloping down to around 10' and 9m and 12' at 14m where it was still sloping as I ran out of pole. I began by cupping in 2 large pots of 4mm and 6mm VDE hard feed pellets before going out with an 8mm Jellet on the hook. I waited 20 minutes for my first bite and in the meantime my Granddad had caught a roach in the margins on pellet. This bite proved to be the second largest fish of the day as a ghostie not far off double figures graced my net after a good 10 minute scrap. As I had never used Hydro before, I was over cautious playing the fish (plus didn't want to lose it and look an ar$e in front of Bob).

I waited 10 minutes without a bite before potting in another full pot of pellets and decided to try an expander on the hook. This led to 2 small skimmers so I reverted back to the Jellets. Meanwhile, Granddad was bagging up on the next peg with a diverse range of fish including roach, perch, skimmers, crucian and a lovely chub over 2lb!

Whilst I was fishing Bob sat at the back of me constantly firing in 4mm pellets over my swim and having a great chin wag about everything. What a top bloke!!! Nothing was too much trouble. He was frank and open and answered the list of questions I had which obviously will turn me into a matchman to be reckoned with (until the alarm clock goes off!!). Nothing was off topic and he went through a few things with his own kit showing me different ways to tweak my setup.

It wasn't long before I was into another fish a smaller carp of around 4lb - as the first the condition was superb. The fish looked like they had never been caught. The swim then went really quiet so we changed the depth and came 6" off bottom - this produced another fish. Then nothing. More feed went in before a large 12lb mirror took the bait. 

We then came up to around 6' to get bites before giving the long line a go. Never have I had to work a swim so much and I wouldn't have done so without Bob telling me too!! 

Every fish we caught almost was at a different depth and to keep bites coming we were constantly changing and varying from 6' to 12' as the fished moved up and down in the water. The first attempt shallow with a poly ball rig produced a lovely common around 6lb but again after this it went quiet and even on the long line shallow it was a case of varying the depth between 18" and 4' to keep the bites coming.

 We fished until 4pm at which point I had around 100lb in total (had to start putting fish back after 1:30 as the keepnet was quite full) and around 60lb in the net. 

My Granddad ended up with one of the best days fishing of his life. Never have I seen the worlds best exponent of how to miss bites catch so many fish - a very happy man indeed including a large mirror later on in the day. 

  

Great day with 2 top fishing companions - and if the Mrs reads this...same again next year please!!!

 

 

 

Raygill Fishery, Lothersdale - MD War of the Roses Practice - 10/04/2011

 

Sunday 10th April was a scorching day and I spent it at Raygill Fishery in Lothersdale, North Yorkshire with a bunch of Maggotdrowners as we got in a practice for the War of the Roses on 15th May. This year would be my first fishing the match and we were looking to retain our title on Yorkshire soil. As soon as we arrived on site we were rumbled by the Cleggy (Yorkshire team captain) clan who were also having a practice - no sneaky practice then!!!

A scorching day with flat calm conditions didn't bode well for a day of bagging up with numerous submarines cruising just under the surface not the least bit interested in feeding. We all decided to fish different parts of the lake to cover off all eventualities and try a variety of methods to see which worked well. Me and my travel partner Big Dipper fished the bottom end of the lake on the house side where we had depths of around 6' from 6m out to 13m before it shallowed up.

Due to the narrow width of the lake at this end, we decided to fish pole and I chose 2 swims initially. A long swim at 13m which would be my pellet line, and a closer in line at 8m to try maggot/caster. I began by dumping in a medium sized pot of 4mm pellet long and a few maggots short and went straight in on the pellet line. I spent over an hour on pellet trying different things but couldn't get a bite so switched to the maggot line. I caught steady here all day (and closer in) on maggot and got roach to 6oz with the average around 4oz. Walking round the lake showed the rest of the boys were doing similar with the occasional better fish coming out.

I finished with probably 5lb of silvers over 5 hours which while not a world beating catch showed that once it came to the big day (where carp only count as 1lb) if we all got 5lb of roach we may be onto a winner...watch this space!