Wednesday 28th August 2013 - Cob House Fisheries, Laurel Pool.
(282lb - new lake record)
Out of all of the lakes at Cob House Laurel pool has always been a favourite of mine. 5 years ago when I first started match fishing I had a pb of 93lb on the pool and then a year later had my pb haul of silver fish when I had 42lb of skimmers, rudd, crucians and tench from peg 20 including a rudd of 2lb. I have also enjoyed taking students from school here to fish as part of their fish husbandry course as they always caught whatever time of the year it was.
I wanted to give the sloppy groundbait shallow approach a go on here as a couple of anglers had made work on wyatts on the drennan knockout cup. I thought it would work especially well on laurel as it is quite deep short in in places. I mixed up a really sloppy concoction of marukyu efg130 and miracle baits red pellet crumb. A squirt of predator plus and 3 pints of dead maggots also went into the mix. It was amazing how much water it took to get it into the perfect messy slop. I wanted to take pictures with my phone but everything was somehow covered in the slop even before I started the match!!
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| What a float: Strong, Durable and Sexy... |
I set up 4 rigs for 2 lines... all of them were the wonderful SconeZone V6 (fast becoming my favourite float). My shallow used a 0.2g pattern on 0.17 powerline straight through to a 14 B911X. I matched this to 12-20 maver retro dual core. My edge rig was a 0.3g V6 on 0.19 straight through to a 12 B911X and the elastic of choice was orange bazooooooooocarp. The other 2 rigs... easy they were duplicates!!
I started at top kit plus 2 feeding sloppy balls regularly, the fish were boshing into the mix and seemed comfortable coming close in. I had 4 rudd in the first minute and thought I may not have thought this through very well due to the big head of silver fish present in the pool. However the carp soon arrived on this line. Not much to say than I was feeding slop, slapping the rig, landing fish!
Half way into the match I had noticed fish in the edge and I hadn't fed a thing. The shallow line was slowing and getting funny so a switch to the edge saw me connect with fish. I pulled the rig right up the slope and fished it 8" over depth. I had my shot just resting above the bottom and pulled my float towards the bank. Most of the bites were ripping the elastic out of the pole using this method. Had I tried to fish the margin with a 'normal' rig I would have suffered foul hookers.
With 90 mins to go I had to go get 2 more nets to take my tally to 6 keepnets. I thought that 300lb was on the cards. However with about 40 mins left although I was getting lots of bites the fish went really small on me and were all around the 1lb-2lb mark. I tried to go deeper/further out on my margin and tried shallow again but had to stay with the smaller fish until the end. I thought I had 270lb by my net calculations so was chuffed to see 282lb go on the scales and set a new lake record!!
Monday 26th August 2013 - Hillview Lakes, Tewkesbury.
1st...Nev Groves................186-8...........25 heron.....all pellet short and edge.
2nd.. M Barnes .................162-4.......... 15 moorhen..... pellet long shallow/corn and paste edge
3rd.. Justin (king ?)............162-0..........27 heron
4th...Terry King..................161-6.........35 heron
5th...Billy Hill.....................158-8.........19 moorhen
6th...Howard Green.............125-8.........32 heron
Well after my last visit being quite infuriating, seeing me catch really well shallow the first part of the match then not being able to make it work down the edge, I had to make amends. The match was a pegged match on the 2 pools and not the canals (thank god, although they do throw up big weights). This suits me for 2 reasons, 1 I prefer open water than snake lakes and 2 I am usually quite good at drawing.
The draw was OK on 15 up at the top end of Moorhen with anglers to my right and also on the end bank to my left although I had the corner free to my left. It looked a good peg and I went about setting up to fish long shallow to start the match at 13m and hopefully come a bit closer and then eventually plunder the margins.
The blue arrow is my long shallow line which I fished at 13m all of the time and was catching F1's quickly on this line. I ended up with 83lb of F1's which were between 12oz and 2lb 8oz in size. I caught a few a bit deeper to start with, this was on a sconezone nigaz 0.1g set on 0.15 to a 4" hooklength of 0.13 to a 18 B911 hair rigged with a micro band, I started having a few at 2 1/2ft before getting liners. I quickly changed over to a slapping rig and set the depth to 18". I was catching well and by constantly raining in 4/5 6mm fishery pellets and alternating between a 6mm fishery pellet and a white pellet on the hook.
Eventually I had to come right 'up in the air' ad was fishing at around 8" deep. At this point I found the most affective pattern was to feed a pouch when I hooked a fish. Break down to top 4 and feed a pouch. Break down to top kit and net fish or feed again and feed again when re baiting then again when about to ship out. I then didn't feed when float was in water and instead slapped the water to entice a bite. It really didn't take long at times to see white hydro spilling out of my pole tip.
At 13:30 I put 2 big potfulls of corn down the left long margin towards the next platform. I then starting feeding top kit + 1 lines with pinches of corn. When shipping back I had a look and saw swirls and all sorts of commotion down my long margin line. I didn't want to go over that as it would lead to potential foul hooked fish and spook them all away. I decided to leave the line alone for a while as I was catching on the pellet shallow line.
I went onto my margin line at 14:00 with 2 hours to go and was straight away rewarded with a vicious bite in my 20" deep margin. However a roach touching a pound in weight, although a lovely fish, was not what I wanted. It was clear the fish had eaten the full 2 pot fulls of corn. I went back out with half a pot and then put the rig over the top. The rig I was using was the brilliant SconeZone V6 float in 0.3g on 0.19 to a 0.17 hooklength with a 14 B911X at the business end. The rig was shotted with a bulk 8" from the hook. As I was fishing to a platform you quite often find a slope as opposed to any flat spots, therefore the rig was pulled up the slope or if bites were iffy or slow was lifted and dropped 2ft away from the bank.
I soon got into the fish and a 5lb carp followed by one a little bigger started off the pattern of catching. They responded well to a big kinder pot full of corn over the top after every fish. After 4 carp and 2 F1s I was seeing swirls on my short margin line. I started feeding 6mm pellet here and swung in some paste. I could see the bottom was being churned up but could not get a bite on the paste. I wasted a good 40mins for 1 carp and 2 foul hookers.
After wasting my time I filled in my long margin line with corn again and went back over and started getting regular bites. I had 6 more carp from this line and hooked a real plodder on the whistle. The fish came to the surface about 7m out with purple hydro being yanked out, it was easily 15lb a real fat mirror. I managed to get the fish closer only for a hook pull!! I thought I was close to winning the lake but after that I thought I might get piped to it!
Turns out I put 83lb of F1s and a couple of skimmers on the scales and 79lb odd from 11 margin carp. This gave me the lake win 163lb 4oz and 2nd overall with 180lb beating me. I rued my decision to come of my long margin line and mess around with paste short as I could have easily got to that!
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