H&C

31
Aug
2010

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Keeping busy bagging carp

“I have had so much going on since my last blog. I have had very little time to sit down and write the next one, but with a few days off to catch up on myself, here goes. My last two matches have been very active with 111lbs of carp, barbel, chub and bream from an average peg on lake two at Monks where I finished fourth overall last Wednesday, but the match before that was much better when I finished second with 154lbs 4oz of carp on my very first visit to Hawkhurst Fishery in Kent.

A good old soaking

At Hawkhurst I decided to fish with 6mm RS Elite soft expander pellets and they worked a real treat, as I kept the fish coming most of the day. However, it was in the last hour where I pulled out of a couple of good carp at the net which cost me the match as I was only 4lbs off the winner. All the same, I enjoyed every minute of the match despite it raining quite hard for about three hours soaking all my gear in the process, but that’s fishing as they say. All of my fish came on the short pole and not once did I need to use the fifth section of my pole all match. I fished just two lines, right out in front of me using a carp top two plus one section and my other line was to my left using just the carp top two. Of course, I had some good number 16’s elastic set up in both set slightly loose to cushion the blow of hooking any real lumps. I guess the smallest fish I had was 8ozs but they were far and few between but I did have a few around the 5lbs mark which always bumps up the fish. I counted 83 fish in my nets at the end and with 154lbs 4oz they averaged out to be a decent stamp.

Hungry perch get in the way

Before those two matches, I had the MatchFishing feature to do on the Rother at Newbridge and it tuned out to be a good feature with the target weight reached to score a match win or frame plus of course a good section result. The only disappointment was the lack off eels, which I was targeting on my close in line, but I have a good reason why. With no other anglers around me and therefore no other feed going into the river, my feed was going to attract everything that swam anywhere near me so when I introduced my eely soup mix, every perch around was straight on top chomping away on my worm and maggot mix. Every time I went over to try and catch an eel, I was greeted with a perch from an ounce up to 10 ounces. Although frustrating, I was adding to my target weight all the time and with some nice skimmers over the pound mark I had a good double figure weight at the end. With all that said, at 12.35pm I did manage to snare one eel so I was relieved to catch at least one of the species for the camera. In hindsight it would have been much better if the feature had been done actually during a match as I know I would have had much more success with the eels as they were blowing in my peg but were no match to grab my bait with the hungry perch present.

No time for Bury Hill matches

With my attentions elsewhere, I have not had any chances to fish the open matches at Bury Hill where I work five days a week. But looking at the results, the matches have been very close but it has been obvious with the much cooler weather and rain that the bream and skimmer plus tench have started to shoal up in certain areas of the lake so if you have not managed to draw sock then it can lead to a very frustrating match watching someone on the next peg bag up.

The next time I will be wetting a line at Bury Hill will be on the Old Lake open match on the 15th September which will be the last chance to grab some practice before the two day festival the week after.

Tight lines,
Russ Evans.”