27/4/16 to 02/5/16, Various Wanderings......

A busy last few days for me, after my win over at Apex last weekend I was keen to get out and catch some more fish, I had the Makins Fishomania qualifier on the Wednesday, then I had right the way through to today (Bank Holiday Monday) off and fancied doing something different for my fishing on a few of these days.

So first up was the Makins match, I would love to say how I sacked up and qualified, or at least was in with a chance......it didn't happen.
A 2hr 15min drive took 4hrs thanks to M42 and M6 accidents......luckily I had the ultra keen wife with me, otherwise I would have turned around and fished elsewhere, but she insisted I carry on!! Around 20 peeps never bothered and a few reserves got on.
I got to the fishery 15 minutes after the draw had began and I waited in line to draw, there wasn't any sort of pegs I wanted, the weather was awful and we were predicted to get cold rain, snow, winds....nice!! Geoff Ringer was in front of me in the queue and was generally asked about various pegs by anglers as they passed.
I got to the draw, the missus had gotten herself a bacon and hashbrown sarnie and I plucked Thames peg 15........means nothing but got told 4lb-10lb fish is the norm and that it was not a good draw.
I toddled up the road to phase 3 and found my peg. I had Somerton and newly sponsored Dan Squire just behind me and along on Outer Avon.....he done worse than me and left before me, it was dire.

Thames peg 15, front and left (note Dan Squire in the bottom pic)

I set up half a dozen rigs, edges, middle and across and shallow.
All I caught, apart from a chill, was a handful of gudgeon, so had an early bath. The snow and rain was freezing....

The next day, Thursday, I had a late start for a pleasure session on a club water, a bit of long range feeder fishing and deep water pole fishing at Combwich.
After 2 hrs I had 2 roach on the feeder at 65 turns. Nothing on the pole in top 5 depth of water.

Combwich Pond

So I then made my way to another club lake, Dunwear, where I managed to get drenched in the heavy rain, and struggled at times to hold a pole.
I did manage around 15lb of rudd, roach and skimmers, plus I hooked a couple carp. I really enjoyed that couple or so hours on light gear.

Dunwear South Pond

Friday was a day spent with the wife, so Saturday I went back to Dunwear armed with just a feeder rod, some caster, maggot and corn plus groundbait.
I fished the Senior Lake, the largest on the complex, it holds plenty of bream and roach that don't get fished for much and can be patchy at times, though there has been some really big 100lb+ nets of bream over the last few years.
I fished for 4 hours at 48 turns and managed one solitary 6lb bream and around 15lb of roach, but I was totally roached out as my maggots came back ragged more than I care to mention. An enjoyable day though and I will have another bash soon.

Dunwear Senior Pit

So, onto Sunday, a PSV match at Viaduct on Campbell Lake, we had 19 fishing and I waited until peg 130 had been drawn before plucking peg 125 for myself.

Peg 125 Campbell, Viaduct

The match the day before showed peg 123 had 200lb to win and the pegs 124 to 129 were ok with 119, 118, 116 not brilliant.
To cut a short story shorter, I set up a meat short rig for carp and went trying to catch silvers, so had a 13m groundbait line and an edge caster rig. I also had a lead rod assembled for a carp or two.
The day went slowly for myself, Lee Waller on peg 123 who dnw'd and Brian Shanks on peg 126 who caught 3 of hos 4 lumpy carp in the last 45 mins or so, he also had 16lb of accidental silvers. Though Degsy Williams on peg 124 did well to catch 90lb or so.
I managed 6 carp (5 on the lead) and 10lb of silvers, mostly nice perch. And was again sat opposite the framers...!!

Results:
1. Steve Sewell (116) .... 139-1
2. Alan Healey (119) ..... 106-14
3. Ross Sewell (111) ..... 104-6...
4. Matt Williams (130) .... 99-2
5. Ron Hardiman (114) ... 94-14
6. Steve Burgess (128) .. 92-0
7. Degsy Williams (124) .. 91-9
8. Adam Caswell (118) ... 87-2
9. Mark Radford (136) .... 68-11
10. Will Dearlove (132) ... 68-8
11. Keith Ray (129) ....... 62-15
12. Mike Wilson (113) .... 58-1
13. Brian Shanks (126) ... 51-11
14. Lee Williams (125) .... 48-10
15. John Bradford (127) ... 33-9
16. Simon Belcham (112) .. 19-3
and 2 dnw's.

Silvers:
1. John Bradford .... 33-9
2. Simon Belcham .... 19-3
3. Brian Shanks ....... 16-9
4. Lee Williams ....... 10-8
5. Ross Sewell ..... 8-0
Ron Hardiman ... 8-0
Mike Wilson ...... 8-0

So last up is todays match on Trinity Woodlands, with 8 or 9 of us pegged along the far bank, the weather was due to get a bit pants later in the day with a good helping of rain to go with the already brisk wind.
Misha had 2 golden pegs, they were 17 and 6, with 17 the current in form peg and peg 6 always worth a good few fish. The Golden Peg was worth 100 quid and venue regular Mark Hanham drew it and would be the odds on favourite to win.
I picked peg 15, so again it looked like I could watch the winner all day....ho hum. For company on my right, well I could not see him, was Polish angler Ziggy Slowinski. He said Him, Me and Mark should fill the top 3 spaces, with Mark winning....!!

Trinity Woodlands p15 lhs

Trinity Woodlands p15

I set up a method feeder, only cast 3 times, so no more on that.
A rig for 11m down to my left, not too close to the margin as it was snaggy as hell....1 carp and a few skimmers from here along with a 2lb perch. This rig was also used by the bush to my right and here I had a small carp and 2 small silvers.
A silvers rig for 11m in front, 3 skimmers from here and a roach, plus 3 foul hooked carp lost.
A rig for shallow pellet, no fish on this, though if i could have fished it long then I reckon that I may well have caught on it.
Lastly a rig for 2+2 for meat over pellet, this gave me 1 tench and a couple skimmers (one I tried to swing in and it fell off....costly).
It wasn't an eventful match for me, in hindsight, once Mark started catching, after 1hr he was on around 8 carp, I should have just fished for the silvers.
It was a struggle for most as the wind was tricky.
I finished with 3 carp and 10lb 14oz of silvers, I was pipped to the silvers payout by Ziggy who weighed in 11lb 8oz, so that skimmer I should have netted cost me, ho hum
Mark won the match and the extra £100, he had 104lb, second was Phil on peg 6, he bagged up in the last hour or so once the wind had changed direction a little.

So a few nice days pleasure fishing away from the commercial type venues was really enjoyable.
The bream look to be spawning soon as everywhere I have caught them this week they have been all spotted up and rough skinned. But with the weather warming, swallows and swifts in the skies, things may well be picking up.....lets bloody hope so....oh and less wind would be awesome.

No idea where I am fishing next weekend, the following week I am at Shiplate with Pawlett.

Until then, take care.
Lee


P.S. I still have one or 2 spaces left on my Saturday series and I have started taking the £60 entry/pegs/payout fees, a good few have paid and I expect it to be a good series and laugh.

Makins Fishery, Fishomania Qualifier. 29-04-15

My last attempt at fisho for 2015 was today, up at the multi-laked, multi-phased Makins fishery in Wolvey (nr Coventry/Nuneaton). It would be a 2.5hr drive so an early start again for me, but the journey wasn't too bad for the first 90 minutes, but once on the M42 it rained, and rained, and rained a bit more. Visibility was shocking, coupled with the 7:30 traffic around the area, it was a bit tricky in the conditions. But I got there in plenty of time for the 9am draw.
It was my 1st visit to the lakes and finding info wasn't easy, although they have opens several times a week, they tend to rotate the lakes used.

What I first noticed about the lakes in phase 1, was that they looked extremely well kept and pegging wasn't as tight as a lot of other place. With only Lake 5 in on the 1st phase and all the lakes on phases 2 and 3 in the draw we expected plenty of space and this proved true. I figured a weight near 100lb would be pushing a spot at Cudmore in July.

After a chat with a couple of guys, one from Yeovil, it was down to the draw. I managed to squeeze in around 40th in the line of 130, just pushing in front of Warren Martin I plucked peg 14 on Crater......I was told it was ok, I didn't have a clue.!!
A quick look at where it was and I headed off to phase 2, which is only a few hundred yards up the road.
I parked the car and had a quick look for my peg, I found it easy enough, it was literally 40yrds from the car park and there seemed to be a good few carp roaming up in the water in the vicinity of my peg. I didn't expect them to stay there as 40 or so guys were expected to pass the area on their way to the lakes further along, true to form, the fish vanished 10 minutes after I plonked myself on my peg.

Crater, Makins Phase 2 (my peg top right)

My left hand area

P14 Crater, in front.

We only had 6 on this 15 peg lake and coupled with Little Reptile my section was spread over the 2 lakes.

I set up a small method feeder, just incase of emergencies, plus 4 topkits:
A rig for 4m in front using meat over dead maggots.
A rig for banded pellet along to my left hand edge in several spots right along to the tree, this rig was suitable for tight over to the left hand island at 15m, but I never fished there as the wind would make presentation tricky,
A rig was made to fish meat tight to the right hand island at 15m, again this didn't produce a fish and I only tried it a couple times.
Lastly a rig for 13m in front, again for banded pellet. I never picked up this rig,

I had my 2 bags of green swimstim pellets, a bag of 6mm and a bag of 3mm, I didn't use any 3mm!!
Some 6mm meat and a pint of dead maggots finished my bait tray, except 1/2kg of groundbait for the feeder and maybe down the edge.

I began at 11am by potting a few small amounts of bait into various spots and began on the short maggot/meat line.  After a while I remained biteless, though the guy off at the other end of the pool had landed a couple small carp.
A look across to the islands and then down my edge gave me nothing in the 1st 90minutes. It didn't look great!!
After just under 2hrs the fish started to venture down to me and I managed to hook and lose a fish from near the tree down to my left, a scale returned from my culprit. I landed my next couple of carp, both 2lb or so. A fish soon broke my hooklength on the legs of the empty peg to my left, that peg lost me 2 or 3 other fish over the day.
I missed a couple of bites and I thought they were liners so I shallowed up to around 2ft deep, this worked as a couple more fish came before 2pm. I found that feeding 4 or 5 pellets randomly in the area worked best at keeping the fish away from the margin, I would struggle to get too close to the edge over at that distance in the wind and these little carp were mental fighters.

It was now 2:30 and I had landed 8 or 9 carp up to 3lb, the guy on peg 1 was ahead of me as he seemed to be getting fish regularly from the end bank and his side of the island.
Then I had a mishap, my number 5 section broke and I had no spare. I telescoped the section and chucked a method feeder down to the same area and this gave me 3 or 4 carp of 2lb max!!
I gingerly shipped out the pole to the same area and managed several more fish over the next hour, it wasn't fast and furious though.
The lad on 1 was doing well and the man to my right on 12 was getting a good stamp of fish compared to mine, he also had a 4lb barbel and some nice skimmers. The other 3 were struggling.

As we approached the last hour my clicker showed 43lb as I had 16 carp and 1 roach at this point.
A look down my margin never gave me a fish, just crap and snags, the fish were there but catching them was tricky,
I tried my short meat line as the chap on 12 was doing all his fish on meat short, but I only had 2 small carp from here in the last 60 mins.
20 minutes from the end came and the guy on peg 1 landed 3 lumpier carp for around 16lb+ in the last period, which I was sure pushed him ahead of me. I couldn't get any stamp fish from any of my lines.
A couple more fish shallow from my left hand side were netted before the all out. My clicker stoped at 53lb. 20 carp and 1 roach was my tally for the day, losing 4 or 5 for various reasons.

I packed my gear away happy enough, bar the broke section, and I knew that I'd probably done ok really. The scales took a while to arrive, but when they did the board showed the section was being won with 39lb. The chap on 12 landed 42lb or so before I plonked 65lb 12oz on the scales.
Peg 1 weighed next and those last 3 fish proved decisive as he weighed 70lb 4oz to take the section money, unless he finished in the top 6 I wouldn't win a penny.
It proved that way with him just falling short of the overall frame.

I think I finished 10th (or higher) on the day, a decent result overall, I could have done some things different and I made some mistakes, but I am happy enough with how I did.

Results:
1st, Simon Colclough, 93lb 8oz. Lizard peg 16.
2nd, Wayne Ibbotson, 93lb 40z. Lagoon peg 2.
3rd=, Rob Wootten, 91lb, Lagoon peg 3.
3rd=, Andrew David, 91lb, Lizard peg 10.
5th, Andy Geldart, 89lb 4oz, Lizard peg 32.

So a few things I learned a few things today and enjoyed the day, it pretty much stayed dry too, which was a bonus.

Next up for me is Cary on Sunday, whether I have a pole or not remains to be seen.

Until then, Take Care.

Lee