Alan Scotthorne reports back from an interesting couple of weeks at Lindholme Lakes, which culminated in last weekend’s Angling Trust Winter League Semi Final.
I have not regularly fished at Lindhome for the past 12 months, so it was nice to have the Semi Final there and really get stuck into some full-on practice. That would give myself and the team – now officially known as Drennan Barnsley Blacks – the best chance of qualifying for the Angling Trust Winter League Final later this summer.
Temperatures had started to lift and the carp and F1s had started to feed well, so the approach of catching silvers with casters was almost out of the equation with weights too high for this approach of a month ago when we first started practicing. Meat and pellets were now the number one baits, so I want to just have a look at the last two matches I fished before the Semi itself.
Midweek Lessons
Regular Tuesday and Thursday matches keep you in tune with what is happening and on the first of these matches I drew Peg 63 on Bonsai Lake, in the middle arm opposite the café. I was a little disappointed as I have drawn this area on four other occasions and only framed once with a 2nd place.
The wind was just a gentle breeze so I opted for a waggler cast to the gap in between the islands with pellets and a short 5m swim with meat at a 1 o’clock angle and Casters at 11 o’clock, just as a line for silvers if the fishing was difficult. I also set up a rig for the long pole but really didn’t want to fish this as I know the bottom is very silty and it’s difficult to catch well from this area.
Starting on the waggler and feeding both my short lines by hand I was disappointed to catch just two carp in the opening hour, fishing at full depth. A change to shallow didn’t improve things. I was next to Daz Taylor who was catching well with pellets on the long pole, both shallow and on the bottom, so I came in short to try the meat line.
Using a Drennan AS3 0.4g float with 6mm meat on a size 18 B911 F1 hook I started to catch quality fish, but having periods where the fish would just back of for a spell. I just wasn’t catching fast enough. The caster line was hopeless, with just one F1 and a couple of tench to show for my efforts, so I needed to change my approach…
Meat was working short so I decided to feed it long at 14.5 metres to try and up my catch rate with two lines to catch off. I did catch well on this line to start with but, as always on these soft bottoms, it all started to go wrong with missed bites and foul-hooked fish being a problem. Even moving to the side a metre away and starting a new swim didn’t help on this day.
I finished the match with 80lb and Daz had 92lb, but we were well short of the frame with Dale Shepard wining the match with a great 135lb from Peg 31 on the bottom bank. I felt I had made a lot of mistakes and was now looking forward to the next match on Thursday to correct what I felt I had done wrong!
A Great Improvement
Thursday’s match came around quickly and conditions were much the same, but a shade warmer. I was hoping for a draw in the same area and for a change I got one in the shape of Peg 65, just two down the arm from where I had been on Tuesday. This time for company I had Jamie Hughes from the Maver Midlands team on 63 so this would be a good indicator if I was off the pace, as Jamie is brilliant at catching F1s.
Once I had my gear on the peg I took a little time to work out how I was going to try to improve on my Tuesday result. The short meat line was good so I set up the same 0.4g AS3 rig with 0.16mm Supplex main line to a 0.129mm hooklength to the same 18 B911 F1 hook. This time I decided to have two lines at 11 o’clock and 1 o’clock angles, both fed with meat. The float may seem a little heavy but even in just a metre of water I have been using slightly bigger floats than normal as I feel the bites are more positive resulting in more fish hooked.
For my long line I was going to just use this as a shallow line with pellet, as I didn’t want to go near the soft silty bottom. I set up two prototype see-through Drennan dibbers that we have been working on, set just 18 inches deep on 0.18mm line to a 0.117mm Supplex hooklength and a B911 eyed 18 hook for banding 6mm pellets. This was to fish at 14.5 metres with my Acolyte pole.
My last rig was a 15g Drennan Method Feeder to start with pellets to the island. More importantly, this gave me chance to concentrate on feeding my other three spots with the rod on the rest. Throwing just four pieces of meat on both short lines every 90 seconds and catapulting 6mm pellets on the long line I settled down at the start of the match.
Incidentally, I have being using the new Drennan Series 7 BR 9-30 reels lately and setting the freespool system while concentrating on feeding other lines. This is brilliant for avoiding getting the rod dragged in by the positive biting F1s! For a £45 reel these little beauties feel and perform more like a much more expensive reel and I really like the clutch when playing bigger carp on them.
The first hour passed quickly with just two carp for 5lb in the net and all anglers in my eyesight having at least six or seven and Jamie on 10, fishing long on the bottom with pellets. I needed my short lines to be good or I was in trouble!
Picking up my five sections of pole I dropped in on the left-hand swim and within 15 minutes I had caught everyone up and was flying, catching big F1s and the odd carp off both short lines. For every fish I hooked I would feed both lines while playing the fish, but also kept feeding the longer shallow line with pellets, just in case the meat lines started to slow. Interestingly, I noticed that Jamie was also starting to have problems with missed bites and foul hooking fish on his long line, much the same as had happened to me on the Tuesday match. From this point on I had a brilliant match, just changing to the long shallow line for the last 30 minutes to add 12 fish to my total, as the short line was starting to fade.
When the scales arrived, my fish went 170lb for an easy win, only made possible from my experience from the mistakes I made on the earlier match. Jamie finished 4th with 113lb and 115lb was 2nd – but I am sure he will get his own back at some point when we draw together again in the future! One conclusion that you can draw from this is that if you can fish a venue regularly it certainly gives you a better chance of competing and getting the methods right for the day.
Hard Work Pays Off
Last Saturday we fished the Semi Final and I managed to win my section on Oasis Lake with 37kg in difficult conditions due to the bad cross wind.
The team also put in a strong performance and managed to qualify for the Final to be fished in July on the Gloucester Canal. Lessons learned in practice made all the difference. Job done!