Southend Farm 28-8-14

I’ve fished Southend Farm only once before, this was earlier in the year when things had not warmed up properly. I managed a nice double figure carp on the pole and a couple of smaller fish on the pellet waggler to add to a few skimmers. However armed with only 4 and 6mm pellets had made it difficult to fish. The neighbouring angler who was properly set up was bagging. I hate being outfished in this way, but I put it down to lack of 8mm pellets and duff information. This return visit was an attempt to exorcise these ghosts.

Arriving at 7am ish, I had a quick chat with the owner. It was still dull, but due to brighten up later on. The advice was fish the pole for skimmers and go out on the tip - don’t bother with the pellet waggler.

My peg for the day

I set up the on peg 20 on the main lake near the car park and decided to fish pole at 11m while pinging 8mm pellet at distance. The skimmers soon responded to some cupped in pellets and bites slowly appeared on 8mm banded pellet, small expanders worked too, but there was lots of time wasted from liners and lost soft pellets. A few fish in and I hit something more solid, after a brief but solid fight and 11lb mirror appeared in the landing net –a nice start and a pleasant change from the small carp of the previous day which set off like lunatics when hooked.

More skimmers followed up to about 2lb, but the majority of fish were 4-8oz and I continued to ping out the 8mm pellets. Eventually there were some signs of life and I took the decision to set up the pellet waggler. (I’ve been dying to give my new Drennan puddle chucker a good work out).  

A few casts later, the float disappeared, the lined tightened and I was in. 6lb of mirror in the landing net. Result. 

I should explain at this point that I am not an experienced user of the pellet waggler. This has got something to do with my love of pole fishing and the lack of suitable venues for that method nearby. I’ve given it a blast at Boddingtons a few times, but results have been pretty poor, so this session was very much aligned to catching a few fish and trying to work a few wrinkles out.

More bites followed, but try as I might I was losing fish at an embarrassing rate – at one point losing 2 fish for everyone landed, and there was a moment at 2 rods lengths out when the hook seemed to pull regularly. I was using B911 in a size 14 as the hook, and to be honest despite all the good press about them I don’t have a great deal of confidence in them. Then when one of the fish did me around the water pump and the main line seemed to have lost all of its strength (it snapped whilst I adjusted the float), I decided enough was enough and whipped off the match reel. And put on one of my trusty 6010 baitrunners with stronger line, and a larger hook in a stronger pattern.

This had a small negative effect on bites, but I was landing a lot more fish. And then it went a bit quiet.

It was hard work, I could get the odd bite and twitching worked too – but every now and again it would go dead. And so it was, a little run of fish (including a 1lb goldfish and a 3lb skimmer) and the odd carp. Every so often the weather would brighten and I’d get a few bites, then a lull. If it had been a match I’d have done something else, but this was a pellet waggler session, so the idea setting up a tip rod didn’t really appeal to me.   

By 1 o’clock I’d caught about 60lb of fish and it went very quiet, so I gave the pole and the inside line a look. A few small skimmer showed up, but that didn’t really work, so I went back on the waggler. I gave myself 30 minutes  - If I couldn’t get them going then I’d set up a tip rod for the last 2 hours.

Well, slowly they turned on. I lost a few fish, caught a few bream and for a magic 15 minutes caught three doubles on the bounce – a 15lb common (that fought like a demon and looked a lot bigger in the net),  a 10lb common that came in like a sack of potatoes and a 12lb mirror. I topped that off with a couple of smaller fish and that, was that.   116lb was my final tally, but I probably lost a similar amount due to hook pulls etc. As a proper introduction to pellet waggler fishing I think I did quite well, now I need to get it working on a different venue – maybe another trip to Boddingtons would be a good idea.

15lb Common Carp that fought like an absolute demon

Catch List:

Mirror Carp: 9

Common Carp: 5

Goldfish: 1

Bream: 18

Roach: 1

Total weight: 116lb

Willows Farm 27-8-14

So the local tackle shop had advised me of some changes at Willows Farm. The Deep Lake had been drained, the big fish moved and it had been subsequently restocked as a match lake. A quick look on the web showed lots of photos of small carp and bream with match weights up to nearly 200lb for a six hour match. Clearly, this needed checking out. 

Match results: http://www.willowslakes.com/matches-groups/

I used to fish Willows a fair bit, but it tended to be a bit hit and miss on the main lake – you could bag up one day and struggle the next. So, it’s probably been two years since my last visit.

I arrived before 7am to await the gate to open, only to find 8 cars ahead of me, which is a lot for midweek. Six of those cars belonged to a group planning a knock up match on the lake – I was relieved it was just them and not a lake full. They headed for the near end so I headed to the far car park and based on the match results decided to look for the pegs in the lower thirties.

Peg 30 turned out to be the first peg on the high bank, so I settled for 31 which had options in the margins both sides. It looked deep with a sharp drop off and a high bank behind; it was going to be a long day of high shipping on the pole.

The right side of the peg - I never did get round to trying under the bush

The left hand view, that twig was just the tip of the iceberg - that snag extended out for a couple of yards and cost me two fish

I cupped in some 4mm pellets at 11m and started to set up for pole fishing an 8mm expander; a 0.8g float, 0.19mm line and a size 14 hook (B911). The depth was not as bad as I feared, about 6ft at 11m, a little longer than my top set, but not too bad. I set up just over depth to allow for a little tow.

After 10 mins I had seen no indications of anything (although there were the odd fish topping in the distance) which was a little concerning, when there was a sharp bite and the float sank. No 16 elastic kicked in, and soon an immaculate 3lb mirror carp was in the landing net. Next put in, another fish and so on and so on. It took a while for the bites to come, but it was very much a bite a chuck with a fish most put-ins, varying in size between 2lb and 4lb. All the fish were clean mirrors, with heavy scaling – only a few were fully scaled but most were heavily scaled.

A typical mirror carp from the new match lake

By an hour down I’d had 33lb of fish (all mirrors), but I knew I could do better – if only I could get the bites to come more quickly.

Hour two and the wheels fell off. The bites went iffy with the float dancing but not going fully under and I was striking the expander off the hook more often than not. I tried some other pellets (nothing), smaller soft pellets (striking off) and shallow (nothing). It was very frustrating – I could see bubbles in the swim, but when I did get a bite it was just the odd small carp. It didn’t make sense, I was getting concerned it might be crayfish.

Then after 45 minutes of messing about, in a moment of desperation I tried a banded 8mm hard pellet – this is not my usual weapon of choice, I find expanders get more bites – but it worked. Fished just on the bottom I started to get good solid, hittable bites. And, they were coming quickly. Bingo. Put in, bite, strike, land. You get the picture.

By just after noon, a little over 4 hours after I started fishing, I was up to 120lb. At this point the bailiff appeared and provided some good info on the water. 7500 carp had been stocked along with some bream, there were also a few (and just a few) bigger ones in there, but generally it was feeder that won the matches, but pole worked as well.

I persevered but at about 140lb it slowed up again and bites were harder to come by. As a quick experiment I shallowed up the rig to half depth and changed the feed pattern to a few pellets every 30 seconds or so. 3 quick fish followed to banded 8mm hard pellet, so I set up a dedicated shallow rig and went shallow.

Fishing shallow was productive as I started to put together another run of fish. Each fish needed to be worked for – they weren’t lined up, but they were a slightly better stamp on average (including a 7lber and a 5lb 8oz fish) and the weight climbed further. By 3pm I’d got up to 216lb and it was time to call it quits. Not bad for a first visit, if only I’d sussed it out earlier I think 250lb would have been possible. But still, averaging 30lb an hour with smaller match carp is not to be sniffed out.

Can’t wait to go back once these fish have grown on a bit.

Catch List:

Mirror Carp: 65

Common Carp: 1

Roach: 2

Bream: 2

Total weight: 216lb