Southern Intersite, Willow Park 4th August 2007

For the 2nd year running I had volunteered to captain the Maggotdrowning.com team for the Southern Intersite match at Willow Park. We had assembled a motley crew of anglers all keen to do well, although the usual way to do things with the Maggotdrowners is to come last in section and finish last overall.

The match was held over Small, Middle and Big lakes meaning there were a number of options to tackling the fish. I had opted for Big lake as this involved a lot of feeder flinging which suited me. Drawing peg 59 I was quite pleased as the area had been throwing up some decent catches of bream in the weeks previous. For company on peg 57 I had something of a venue expert, Perry Stone, although he wasn't admitting to being very happy about his peg as he said it was just out the the area he wanted to be.

There was a light breeze blowing across the lake so feeder rods were set up for a thirty yard chuck to a gravel bar and a margin pole for any lumps that may be hiding under the bush to my right later in the match.

The all in sounded and everything went well with a bream of around 2lbs coming to the net first cast. 2nd cast and another fish was on it's way in , a little smaller this around 1lb. Then it went dead, no bites, no liners nothing. I fired out a a few balls of groundbait and fished under the bush with the margin pole for 3o minutes to let the feeder line settle. A few 4 oz perch took my maggot hookbait before I went back on the feeder. Unfortuantely it still seemed dead on this line but I decided to stick at it. After about an hour I had managed another couple of reasonable bream but not much else. Things continued like this till the end apart from the huge carp I hooked and lost under the bush with 10 minutes to go. It just didn't want to stop. At the weigh in I put 6lbs on the scales only just beaten by Perry on peg 57 with 87lbs !!!!!! No wonder I coudn't catch anything he'd got them all in front of him. (so much for a peg he didn't fancy)

Back at the clubhouse things were looking like they normally do with most team members finishing low down in their sections, a couple managing less than a pound. The results were announced and at least we'd kept up the tradition of coming last in these events.

Thanks to Dave Pearson for organising the day, can we go somewhere else next year ?

MD Pairs Weekend - Rolfs Lake 28th/29th July 2007

This was a fishing outing I'd been looking forward since last year and it proved to be another fabulous weekend in wonderful company. The fishing Saturday was a little difficult to say the least but if it was always easy we wouldn't enjoy it would we. 6 bites and 5 fish from peg 28 was not much of a return for 5 hours fishing but I still enjoyed the day. The evening proved to be even better with a superb BBQ and copius amounts of alcohol consumed by some, well mainly by Simon (me) who kept us all amused by falling over his chair, staggering around and generally making a complete arse of himself. It was good to see Rolf turn up to watch the proceedings and also great that he felt up to staying around into the evening. I finally clambered into the car to sleep around 1am, tired but reasonably sober.

Sunday morning came and I drew peg 25, just along from where I was the day before. this time I was deternmined to do better so set up 3 rigs, 1 margin rig, 1 for 7 metres and a shallow rig for fishing long. I also decided to put a feeder rod together for the first hour. As with Saturday things started slowly although I did manage 1 carp of around 3lbs from the 7 metre line. Next peg along was Gemma who was clearly not happy and just couldn't seem to get in the mood for fishing. (too tired from the day before catching all those fish I guess ) Bites were slow to come by but I did catch a few more small carp on the feeder before even that line dried up. Desperate times called for desperate measures and with an hout to go I threw the pole up the bank and set up a pellet waggler. With 11 mm banded hard pellet on the hook out went the float and almost immediately I was into something substantially bigger. At the scales it went 15lbs 8ozs, a lovely common in fabulous condition. Back to my peg and out went the waggler again, 10 seconds later and I was in again. This was another common which took the scales around to 10lbs. Third cast and another carp was on, this time 12lbs 8ozs. I started to wonder what was going on. Then everyting went quiet. The fish had disappeared. 30 minutes later and carp no.s 5 and 6 finally arived which took my total on the board to 50lb+. Soon the all out sounded and I was left wondering what might I have caught if I'd fished the pellet wag all day.The weigh in went with it's usual precision and Dave finally announced that Peter and Tony had won the pairs trophy. Well done guys. A bigger shock was to come though when he said Chin and I were runners up !!!!!!!!!! I really thought my day 1 performance had confined us to mid table mediocrity.

A few final thank you's, Dave for all his hard work organising the whole thing, John and John at the fishery for looking after us so well,Gemma for letting me win my pound back on day two, Simon (Me) for making me laugh so much Saturday evening, and finally to everyone who came along and made the weekend what it was, thanks guys, it would be difficult to find a nicer bunch of people to spend time with.

Pellet Waggler versus Vitalin feeder

As a photo journalist and regional correspondent for Southern Angler magazine I had been looking for something different to write an article about. After chatting to a couple of local anglers the following challenge match was organised.

The Battle of Hartleylands Farm

Two anglers enjoying tremendous success recently on the Kent Match scene are Mike Jameson (BCUK Team Sport One) and Nick Gilbert (Maidstone Victory). The excellent run of results has been down to having total confidence in 2 completely contrasting methods, Mike likes to fish “the Vitalin Feeder” whilst Nick favours the Pellet Waggler approach. Both are regular contributors to a number of angling forums on the Internet and through this a challenge was set to see which of the methods would win in a head to head match at Hartleylands Farm Fishery in Kent. A date was set and the customary £1 side bet agreed on and so it was that we arrived at the fishery on a warm day with little wind. After looking around both anglers decided to fish Bramley Lake, a 22 peg water with a central island stocked with a good head of match sized carp as well as plenty of silver fish. Nick settled in to peg 20 while Mike chose peg 17.

Nicks plan of attack was to fish the pellet waggler tight to the island with a view to drawing the fish closer to him as the match wore on. 2 rods were used, the first a 4g puddle chucker to 0.18 mainline and a 0.14 hooklength, a size 14 Drennan carp hook with a hair rigged bait band set anywhere between 12-24 in deep. The 2nd a 3.5AAA pellet waggler with 0.18 mainline(4LB) and a 0.16 hooklength, a size 12 Drennan carp hook with a hair rigged bait band. Set at about 10-12in deep.Mike method is simplicity itself, a Drennan open end feeder with the weight removed and replaced with a piece of rig foam to make the feeder float even when filled with the Vitalin groundbait. The feeder is attached to a Korum quick change bead free running on 0.20mm Ultima Power Plus mainline with a 0.148mm Daiwa Super Shinobi hooklength. Hookbaits would be presented on a hair rigged size 12 Preston PR21.

The 5 hour match started at 1.30pm and Mike started by making 5 casts of a large feeder full of Vitalin groundbait before even attaching a hooklength. The response from the fish was instant with Carp climbing over each other to get to the free offerings, there were certainly a large number of fish in the swim.

Nick by contrast had fed just one catapult full of pellet before landing his first fish, a lovely Common Carp of around 12ozs in pristine condition, this was shortly followed by it’s twin brother. Nick had 4 fish in his net before Mike caught his first and by the end of the first hour Nick was admitting to around 30 fish to Mike’s 26. All the fish were of a similar size which meant things were very close. Mike told me that he was somewhat frustrated as he was having a little trouble getting the fish to take his hook bait, not something he suffered with before when using this method. He said he was already considering changing things around by shortening his hooklength to see if it made a difference. 2 hours had gone by when I next checked in to see how things were going. Nick was catching steadily now having to wait only 4-5 seconds before his float disappeared and a fish hooked itself. He felt he probably had around 60 Carp in his net for around 50lbs. Mike however was still suffering, even though he’d landed 52 Carp he wasn’t happy and was having real trouble getting the hundreds of fish in front of him interested in his hook bait. So far he’d tried a variety of different sized cat and dog biscuits as well as various sized banded pellets but felt he was only connecting with a fish on 25% of his casts. Things had to change soon or else Mike would be in trouble.

During the third hour Nick said he had landed 42 Carp although the size seemed to be somewhat smaller with most fish only around the 8-12oz. He was catching every cast though and was finding that if he cast a little away from his feed he caught slightly bigger specimens. Mike’s catch rate had improved by now to 84 fish but this was partly down to a change made to his feeder. He had removed the rig foam and not re-attached the weight which meant was allowing the feeder to sink very slowly. The change was also bringing a better stamp of fish with many around the pound mark.

Over the next two hours Nick’s catch rate seemed to be getting better, his bait barely hitting the water before another Carp was on it’s way in. It was interesting to watch Nick continuing to feed, sometimes two or three times whilst playing the fish to the net. Speaking to Mike confirmed my fears that he was continuing to suffer, unable to find a hookbait that would keep the fish coming. He would catch 2 or 3 and then nothing for 5 minutes before catching 2or 3 more. 10 minutes to go and Mike had conceded defeat already packing away his tackle, Nick in the meantime was perhaps catching even faster than before. Shortly after I called the “All Out” and it was time to weigh in. First to weigh was Nick, his 3 nets of carp totalling 135lbs 4ozs. Time now for Mike, 4 weighs later and he’d failed to make the “ton” but ended with a respectable 93lbs 10ozs, a good days fishing by anyone standards but not up to Mike’s expectations. Nick was delighted to have won and after handing over his £1 Mike was left to rack his brains as to what had gone wrong.