Well, I see after moaning about the cold mother nature decided to turn up the heating! I bet next week will be cool and damp mind (continuing the theme) especially as it's a bank holiday weekend.
Walking around the lake it was evident that pretty much every carp in the lake had decided to spawn, which given the warm weather isn't surprising but I'd hoped that they may have decided to on Friday and Saturday and would hopefully have been finished - no chance! It looked as though it would be a tough day then.
At the draw I went in the bag at my customary late place in the queue and out came peg 40. Despite this being an end peg I didn't want it - it's a full 17m to the island, but it's also very snaggy across meaning that getting tight is hard work. There is also a big tree behind that gets in the way, plus the bay that peg 1 is in is directly behind you meaning that I had to have the pole at an awkward angle to ship out. The plus side is that if 40 is in peg 1 isn't so you can fish the bay behind you.
The rig for the bay was the first up, and it took 14.5m to fish the margin tight because the tree behind means you have to go long because the angle. On a clock face from my box, with twelve being in front, I was fishing at five! Added to the fact that I had to have my pole rollers at four o'clock then I'd be swinging the pole around a lot! Rig for this was a .2gr NG Floats XTM, all nice and shiny from my new batch of floats! As you'll know I love the original XTM's bet they were too small for a lot of the margins I fish. These look spot on and I imagine they'll replace the old DC5's I used to use (and break regularly) in the margins. Standard margin fayre for the terminal gear - mainline of .19 to .17 and a size 16 Fox Series 2 hook were matched to Preston 17h lakky. This rig also doubled for the margin at 5m to my right, tight to some overhanging marginal grass. Depth was just over 2ft on both. The only other rig up was for the far bank, with an original NG XTM on .17 to .15 and and 18 Fox Series 2, matched to Preston 15h lakky. I eventually found a gap in the far side root's, perhaps only a foot wide, but enough to get tight to the bank in about 16in of water.
At the start I decided not to feed any of the lines, imagining that eating was the last thing on their minds. It also meant that I could leave the bay behind me as a safe haven for any non-spawning fish to keep well out of the way, given that it has a lot of tree cover. With an air-show on at the nearby Duxford airfield I hoped that the noise would push fish in that wanted away from the commotion, both in and out of the water!
The first drop was met with many liners, even though I was fishing away from the bush where they were spawning - I don't want to be foul hooking fish, and spawning fish are best let be in my opinion. I didn't get any proper bites, trying both meat and worm so I fed a palm full of pellet across. The first drop over that the lakky pulled out and the fish sluggishly nodded for a second before charging off... foul-hooked! After a few seconds it came off. It was on the forty-five minute mark when I had my first proper bite which gave me a small mirror of about 12oz, unusual in the new lake. The next drop in and another small carp came off - having to swing the pole around a lot before shipping back is never ideal, but worse for small fish.
In the next half hour I went on to lose two more what felt like small carp, so I changed the hook in case the point had dulled, and worked out that if I swung the pole high over head height I could ship back over a branch of the tree, before guiding the pole round to rollers. Hopefully the momentum of movement towards me earlier would keep them on the hook a bit better! The first drop worked as I put a crucian of about 10oz in the net, followed by a smaller pasty carp, but then the bites went. It was hard work swinging such a long pole around rather than just shipping back, and the sun had came round the tree meaning I was no longer in the shade too.
As the bites had died I chanced a bit more feed, and my first drop on that give me a very lean and spawned out common of about three pound. My hopes of having it worked out were scuppered by the sun on the far bank, as the fish decided to spawn there too. Fishing across started to become a nightmare, with the liners constantly dragging the rig out of place, and quite often in to the roots. Sometimes I could flick the rig free, but often I'd have to pull for a break. I'd sat by the pond during the week one afternoon and tied up loads of rigs and filled the hook-length box up, but I was rapidly depleting them! Not something I want as Fox no longer do the hooks and I'm struggling to find a suitable replacement, as the fishery rules are for barbed hooks. I'm hoping they'll re-appear under their new Matrix banner, but my enquiry's to them have been met with a big fat zilch...
With two hours gone I needed to feed one of the margin lines. With signs in the bay I gave them a reasonable helping of corn, hemp and meat - I'd keep the other margin line until later. I also put on a slightly heavier rig for across, hoping that the increased weight in the rig would allow me to hold it better against the liners and stop me getting dragged in to the roots. I had a new pattern to try for this, an NG Floats Ghandi - designed to fish the far bank of snake lakes it's a short dumpy pattern, and the .2gr size I put on was shorter than the .1gr XTm I usually use. The change worked and while the float swirled around from the fish, it stayed in place much better and I cut the hook-up's across by about 80%! No bites though.
Half an hour after feeding the bay I had a drop in there on meat. The float went as soon as it settled and I missed it! The next drop I didn't, and a decent carp that looked about 5-6lb plodded away (hooked in the mouth) as I slowly guided the pole round to where I could ship back. I got to that point and it came off. With the fish not feeding properly (obviously!) and the fact that I had to swing the pole around so much I'd feared that may be a problem. No more bites followed so I topped it up and went back across. Half a worm got me a proper bite strait away and a carp of about 4lb, before the spawning fish returned and it just became daft to even try to fish there.
The middle of the match passed with little to say - I'd get an odd liner in the bay, and when the spawning fish moved along the bank I'd try across but with no joy. The air display was in full swing now so at least I had something to watch! I couldn't see it all because of the tree's, but I did see a Eurofighter Typhoon, a formation of Spitfire's and Hurricane - the latter two were based at Duxford during the WWII as it was a fighter base. History lesson over!
With about an hour and forty to go the spawning seemed to ease off a bit, and with a few fish seeming to move in the edges I decided to feed my other margin too. I had about three quarters of a kilo of Sonubaits Tigerfish groundbait mixed up that had been in my freezer, so I dumped in four big pots of that along the edge, with just an odd grain of corn and cubes of meat in. Had to be worth a try!
Leaving the groundbait alone I went in to the bay on double corn, havin given that half a pot before I'd dumped the crumb the other way, along the normal bank where it was comfortable to fish! I hadn't been in there that long before the float was away and this time the fish stayed on and a 5lb mirror was soon panned. Like the other two carp I'd had it was barely hooked and quite sluggish - no wonder the other fish had came off. They were fish that had just finished spawning and weren't really interested.
I couldn't get any more knocks there, although I'm sure the bay was hampered by people keep walking along who weren't catching. They mightn't have walked right along the edge of the bank, but they could have also walked a lot further away from it!
I decided to have a drop on the groundbait fed margin about twenty minutes after I'd fed it, and was surprised when the float shot away the instant the double corn hookbait had settled - not from a carp, but a bonus bream of about 2.5lb!
That was pretty much the end of the action though, as people started to pack away and trundle past the bay with barrows any fish that were there melted away, some tw@t of a bank-walker (not anyone fishing the match), who shouldn't even have been there didn't help too, I didn't see him walk up, but looked round to see him standing about 4ft away from where I'd fed in a Daz-white t-shirt! He got look and then walked off, but the damage was done. I'd carried on pinging odd pellets across but nothing was doing there, and busting the hook-link on that rig pulling for a break led me to chuck that rig up the bank.
About ten minutes before the end, once the bay had got a few minutes peace I decided to plug away on a whole worm in there - at the very least it might catch a perch or two. I missed a bite, before catching a perch smaller than the worm, then just two minutes before the all-out had a bite that saw me attached to something that felt not only sluggish, but big. I guided the pole round slowly, but after perhaps a minute the hook pulled. It may have been foul-hooked - I don't think it was, but I'll never know! I didn't bother to drop in after, and I hadn't even got the rig back on the winder before the whistle went.
It was evident from the amount of walkers that it had fished hard - there were a few DNW's and even some who'd blanked. Peg 11 put an excellent weight for the day of 31lb on the scales, taking the win by a decent margin. Peg 17 had five carp caught in the edge under a scum-raft for 18lb odd. I was last to weigh and while I knew I didn't have 18lb, I thought I could just pip the 16lb 1oz that was third. My bit's went 4lb 1oz, and the three proper carp 12lb 10oz, just scraping me in to the frame.
I knew it was going to be a hard and frustrating day with the fish spawning, so third off a peg I didn't really want perhaps wasn't too bad in the end! The lost fish were frustrating, but it's down to the fact they were spawning (or just finished in the case of those that did eat) and that's just nature taking it's course and is out of the way now. Hopefully the fish will be eating next week - the bank holiday weekend see's the blind pairs match on the Monday, so next weeks blog wont be up until Monday night at the earliest, but probably Tuesday.
Tight lines if you're out before then!
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