An inch was golden

Kingsland Large Reservoir, Coates, Cambs

The three irrigation reservoirs at Kingsland are not permanently pegged and, as usual, our match (13 entries) were put on the Eastern bank of the large lake. I was peg 6, in the middle, in the peg against the lifebuoy. The wind was from the west, a little over the end bank to my left, and the first two swims (and the one on the end bank itself) were very calm, with hardly a ripple, but from peg 4 the water became quite rough after a short while.

Even before the draw I had resigned myself to fishing for third place, as Trevor and Peter always try to surface fish, and nearly always end up first and second. And when Trevor drew peg 2, in the calm water, I made him hot favourite to win. He didn’t disappoint!

I didn’t take my Browning Z12, preferring to give my old Browning Sting an airing – slim, light and strong - as the fish here run very big and there are lots of bankside reeds. I also rigged up my old margin pole.

Bad start/good start

The water was well up and the lake was surprisingly deep close in – a good six feet by the reeds and seven feet further out.  I didn’t hear the all-in and was several minutes late starting and, having put some cat meat and pellet by the side of the reeds I put out a rig on the Sting at about seven metres with 6mm banded pellet over a pot of pellets. Within a minute I hit a fish which, in two seconds flat, tore off parallel with the reeds and weeded me before I could stick another section on the pole.

 

My swim. If a fish gets in those reeds it never comes out! This was before the start, but the wind soon increased in strength.

I had to get off my box and walk halfway towards Peter, on my left, and, using my special hook I managed to reach through the thick reeds, hook the rig line and pull the rig free minus the hook. I then realised I had almost certainly foulhooked the fish so determined not to use banded pellet for the moment. A bad start.

So it was onto the cat meat line, and the margin pole, where I hooked and landed three fish around 5 lb each in the next half hour. I played them well out because of the reed beds, and did not break down to my top two until I had seen the fish so I wasn’t caught out by bringing a really big one in too quickly. A good start! But try as I might no more fish came from that line.

Steady sport

On to the long line with sweetcorn just touching bottom and this brought me another six fish on corn in the next two hours. At that point Trevor came for his third net (!) I got up and had a word with him, and Peter and Mick, either side of me, who admitted to four and three fish respectively, so I realised I wasn’t doing too badly.

The Sting doesn’t have pullers, and it made me realise how useful these are when landing fish. Actually I didn’t need one as the top I used had 20 elastic through three sections and this was just about right for this size of fish. I must use this pole more often, as it is a delight to use, though the tips are slim and the 20 elastic was fine playing the fish, when under pressure, but didn’t retract properly when the fish had been landed. I will have to chop some off the tip and fit a larger bush.

Good old Ivan

I had the feeling that fish were on my line all the time, and moved two small shot down towards the hook – the nearest just four inches away  - which brought a fish or two, but it was hard work as the wind was getting stronger. Then I thought about Ivan Marks – as I often do. I knew him reasonably well – well enough to be on first-name terms – and remembered a line he wrote about roach fishing on the Welland: ‘An inch can be golden!’

With nothing to lose I pulled the float down an inch to see what would happen. I dropped it back, and I immediately got the feeling there was a tow against the wind, which I hadn’t seen before. By this time I had changed to a small piece of luncheon meat, which was a little lighter than the corn, and it seemed to be skipping along the bottom very very slightly.

So I pulled the float against the wind, in the direction  of the possible tow, and then realised there was a very slight incline, about an inch shallower than the rest of the swim, and the bait was definitely touching bottom again in places, despite being an inch shallower.

A beautiful, scale-perfect three-pounder.

I find the fish

Just the other side of where I had been potting bait in (ie the upwind side) I started to get occasional  bites more quickly and hit every one. In the next couple of hours I had about ten, from 3 lb to 8 lb. The luncheon meat on the hook had been dunked in a Creamy Bream additive (or something similar) I had never bothered to use before, and coloured red with food dye, and it really worked. As usual recently I found I got a bite only after I’d potted in some loosefeed, with hemp added as this seemed to bring the fish on.

I kept trying the inside line with cat meat but never had another bite, which was surprising as big fish were swiming around there and tasting leaves from the surface, as they tend to do on this lake. You can often catch up in the water here on even the coldest days.

A good last half-hour brought another three or four fish, and apart from the first foulhooked fish I lost only one all day, which happened just before the end when the fish dived under my landing net and  caught the hook on the mesh! Really annoying. Anyway I was playing a fish when the shout went up to end the match – I heard that shout!

Winner Trevor with double-figure friend.

The weigh-in

The end three pegs were all still in calm water and, as I had expected, Trevor had carried on catching on the surface with his expander pellets and weighed in 132 lb 9 oz  of fish to double-figures. In fact most of his fish were  7 lb-plus, unlike mine. This was obviously going to be the winning weight. Before Trevor there were two weights of 40 lb-plus, and I was admitting to 70 lb-plus so guessed I had a chance of third, always assuming Peter Parlett had got a big catch from the surface, as he usually has here.

Peter Parlett with a big common.

Big fish

As the weigh-in went on I saw even bigger fish – Peter Spriggs, next to me had one we weighed at 15 lb 7 oz, a beautiful common, and he had obviously started to catch me up as he totalled 74 lb 6 oz, which made me think he might have ‘done’ me. But most of his fish were quite a bit bigger than mine and as usual he caught most on paste.

Peter Spriggs with his 15 lb 7 oz mirror.

My first net went 40 lb 1 oz (I had 36 lb on the clicker), but the second net, which I hadn’t bothered to click towards the end, being more intent on catching fish, surprised me with 50 lb 8 oz – knocked back to 50 lb as per our own rule. So 90 lb for me, with more to weigh, and no-one beat me down to Peter, on peg 11 or thereabouts who then told me had hadn’t been able to surface fish because of the conditions. As I had seen myself, any floating baits were taken downwind in 30 seconds or less. He still managed 73 lb 11 oz on traditional tactics. So I ended second, which I was exremely satisfied with –                                                                   thanks to Ivan Marks.

The result - not in peg order.

Another cracker, from John.