Hartleton 19-20/6/15

This was my second trip to the Hartleton fish-in organized through Maggotdrowning.com. Following the sad events of 2014 this was something I was looking forward to with mixed feelings, but whatever the mood I was hoping for a couple of relaxed day's fishing and a few drinks in good company.

Day 1:

I arrived on the Friday morning at about 8am following a good drive and set about getting the tent up and running with the reward of a few sausages for breakfast in mind. By about 9:30am things were really starting to come together I could think about fishing properly.

 

The initial information was that Sunday would be the match (which I would miss) but I set about getting into the swing of the peg just in case there was a change of plan. I baited a line at 11m where I had nearly 4ft of water with pellet and groundbait (but no maggot) and tried to rigs, a lighter maggot rig and a heavier rig for soft pellet/corn.

The maggot rig produced small silver fish every put in, whereas the heavier rig produced slightly larger skimmers but only after a very long wait. Corn produced roach - again after a long wait and a variety of baits failed to really do any good.

Asking around it was apparent that the bream were not showing generally - only the odd fish - and this suggested that sitting it out for the bigger fish might not pay off. In the previous year the problem was that the bream were clearly feeding with real jacuzzi style bubbles rising over the feed, although catching was a problem, this year I rarely saw any evidence of bream on the feed on the 11m line.

One decent skimmer finally showed up on the far line on maggot, but this proved to be a one-off and I went away to rethink my strategy for the next day.

Day 2:

Over a beer or two it was decided that Saturday was to be the match and not Sunday. I cant say I was that bothered either way, but was glad I'd brought the keepnet with me.

My plan of attack was:

11m line - light and heavy rigs as day 1
5m line - fishing line to hand on a lightish rig on top 4

I started by feeding heavy at 11m and maggot at 5m with the aim of catching to hand and trying the far line for a bonus fish for 15min or so each hour. If I could keep the fish coming I reckoned I could manage about 20lb of fish, which, providing no one else found any bream, could be a good performance.

Fishing to hand produced bites from the off, and I started to put a fish in the net about once a minute. The rate would have been a bit better, but I missed a lot of bites and lost a fair few skimmers swinging them in. I had about 25 fish in the net at the 30 minute point. That was probably about 2lb in weight and on course for the 20lb target.

I had a look at the 11m line for 15 mins or so. This produced next to nothing so I went back to 5m after feeding 11m heavily again. The small fish were there again in abundance but it was clear that the presentation was not ideal.

After a bit of trial and error at 5m and 11m I took my light rig from 11m added two sections and tried that over my line to hand line. The difference was instant - not quite so many bites, but almost everyone was hittable. It took a few more seconds to unship each time but it was definitely a more productive approach - especially given the float was more sensitive.

So as the 11m line failed to shine, or produce any bubbling I concentrated on the 5m line.

Just as I was getting into a rhythm a few things happened:

1) I caught a 2lb bream at 5m. That was a great boost and led me to start cupping loose groundbait over the near line.

2) Godber arrived and starting fishing to my left. (There goes the neighborhood). But that might be a serious bream threat if he got them going on paste.

3) I caught a personal best eel or 3 ounces. Believe it or not, in 30 years or course fishing I'd never caught an eel. So for me this was a great result - however unhooking it was a complete pain (new hooklength please!)

And that became the pattern of the next few hours. Work hard at 5m - feed, strike, unhook, repeat.

One more decent bream showed up, two more eels (two more hooklengths gone) and lots of small perch, skimmers and roach.

Five hours down and I knew I'd worked really hard. I was reasonably confident of hitting 20lb, but being unable to see any other anglers it was hard to know how well I'd done.

Finally the scales and the inevitable entourage arrived at my peg. At this point I was told 11lb-odd was in the lead and I knew I was well set.

The scales went down to 21.51lbs and that bar Trevor on the last peg was that. It was clear that Trevor was not going to challenge that and it became clear that I'd won.

The final match results

The Sean Kelley-Patterson Memorial Trophy - RIP Sean.