Slough House Fishery for our 12th match, we had the left bank as you look from the car park and for the first time out of my 3 visits to this fishery it was not strong winds forecast!
I drew peg 4 so not too far from the car park and a decent area apparently.
I had recently watched Des Ship's Think-Fishing video mag which was skimmer fishing on a commercial so I thought I would try a similar approach today as skimmers are the main target with a chance of the odd carp.
I fed 4 balls of groundbait/micros at 13 metres a little to my left and also at 13 metres one small ball of the same to the right.
With an expander pellet on the hook I started on the right hand swim and soon started to catch hand-sized skimmers, it was not hectic but steady. After an hour or so I was waiting longer for bites so I had a look over the left swim but no bites there so I topped up both swims with a small ball. I now had a try with the waggler where I had been firing out a few 6mm pellets occasionally. Set at full depth and with very little shot down the line I was hoping to get a few skimmers as the bait (6mm pellet) settled and of course if I was lucky perhaps an odd carp too.
The first time the insert waggler disappeared from view my strike was met with heavy resistance, after getting the fish fairly close only for it to charge back out to the middle of the lake a few times I knew this was a good sized carp which could make a huge difference to the result today judging by how hard it was fishing. Sure enough when I got the carp in the landing net I estimated it at 14lb.
I had a couple more casts on the waggler before returning to the pole to see if the skimmers were back, again I was catching a few steadily over the negatively fed right swim until about 40 minutes left of the match when bites had all but stopped. I went back on the waggler and at full depth foul hooked a couple briefly so I tried different depths and more frequent casting and with 25 minutes left I had a bite with the float set 3ft deep and in came a carp of around 6lb.
Word on the bank was that I had likely done enough to win the match, I weighed in 5-9 of skimmers and the 2 carp went 20-8 so a total of 26-1-0 which was enough for the win, second placed Mark had 1 carp and silvers for 16-6-0.
Full match results and club report can be seen HERE
I drew peg 4 so not too far from the car park and a decent area apparently.
I had recently watched Des Ship's Think-Fishing video mag which was skimmer fishing on a commercial so I thought I would try a similar approach today as skimmers are the main target with a chance of the odd carp.
I fed 4 balls of groundbait/micros at 13 metres a little to my left and also at 13 metres one small ball of the same to the right.
With an expander pellet on the hook I started on the right hand swim and soon started to catch hand-sized skimmers, it was not hectic but steady. After an hour or so I was waiting longer for bites so I had a look over the left swim but no bites there so I topped up both swims with a small ball. I now had a try with the waggler where I had been firing out a few 6mm pellets occasionally. Set at full depth and with very little shot down the line I was hoping to get a few skimmers as the bait (6mm pellet) settled and of course if I was lucky perhaps an odd carp too.
The first time the insert waggler disappeared from view my strike was met with heavy resistance, after getting the fish fairly close only for it to charge back out to the middle of the lake a few times I knew this was a good sized carp which could make a huge difference to the result today judging by how hard it was fishing. Sure enough when I got the carp in the landing net I estimated it at 14lb.
I had a couple more casts on the waggler before returning to the pole to see if the skimmers were back, again I was catching a few steadily over the negatively fed right swim until about 40 minutes left of the match when bites had all but stopped. I went back on the waggler and at full depth foul hooked a couple briefly so I tried different depths and more frequent casting and with 25 minutes left I had a bite with the float set 3ft deep and in came a carp of around 6lb.
Word on the bank was that I had likely done enough to win the match, I weighed in 5-9 of skimmers and the 2 carp went 20-8 so a total of 26-1-0 which was enough for the win, second placed Mark had 1 carp and silvers for 16-6-0.
Full match results and club report can be seen HERE
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