Another match of two halves

Open on Westwood Lakes, Falcon Pool, peg 1

This was only my second visit to Westwood near Boston, Lincs – the first was five years ago in a match on Skylark. I like the arrangements – 9 am draw, which was good for me as it’s almost an hour-and-a-half drive there for me. There’s a good shop (Westwood’s feed pellets only, which I don’t mind) and a great restaurant. Then the match doesn’t start until 10.30, by which time even I can be ready to go. My regular club matches give only an hour or less, and I am rarely ready to start when the whistle goes.

It was good to see several old mates at Westwood, and then there was the bonus of being able to park the car behind my peg – a bonus which gets bigger as you get older! A cold wind was blowing, but at least it was over my right shoulder. Falcon is a little over 13 metres wide, and I found it was very shallow right over, which was out of the equation quickly, as the wind got up. The main species here are F1s, with some barbel.

There was a small hole at three sections out, about a float-length deeper than the surrounding area. It was about four feet here. So I set up a 0.5 gm Tuff Eye – my favourite float – with another similar rig a little shallower to fish down the centre track. Tuff Eyes have four interchangeable tips, and I put a black tip in the three-section rig and a red one in the slightly-shallower rig – this stops me picking up the wrong one…which I have been known to do in the past! For far-bank fishing the yellow is always my choice, against the reflection of the bank. Then I chose a light rig for the side – an old Browning float whose name I have forgotten - though I didn’t expect to see anything feed there because of how cold it was.

I got bite after bite on expander pellet in the three-section swim, all of which were liners, as the pellet was untouched. I also briefly hooked several fish, which were obviously foulhooked as again the pellet came back intact. I tried putting the micro and 4 mm feed pellets in with a bait dropper to get the fish down, but nothing changed. They were obviously cruising around but not feeding. A change to the other shallower rig to fish off bottom brought no bites at all!

Then I saw clouds of mud coming up right in the side – in less than a foot of water – and tried there with maggot, but got not a single touch. So I tried a grain of sweetcorn down the side – at about 20 inches deep – and got a small F1 first drop-in. But nothing followed.

Frequent changes of swim and bait saw me with just three small F1s at 1 o’clock, halfway through the match. Annoyingly I could see the next man, Ron, three swims to my left, steadily taking fish four sections out, where I couldn’t even get a liner! Then suddenly I took a 12 oz fish out in front, then two or three more, followed by a lull, and I turned to the inside, where I started catching F1s up to 1 lb. As Victor would say: “I don’t believe it!”

This pattern followed to the end of the match – three or four fish out on pellet then three or four more on maggot down the side in about two feet of water. I found out later that Ron had been catching with his float almost against the reeds, on pellet, in about 12 inches! I tried that briefly, but had to revert to the deeper side swim, just down the shelf, to get a bite. Most came on a single maggot as I just teased the bait sideways. Right at the end a 2 lb bream came in – foulhooked on two maggots. But they all count.

Anyway, I weighed 32 lb, almost all F1s, with all but three taken in the last two-and-a-half hours. Ron had 64 lb for fourth (I think). The match was won to his left with 101 lb, fishing the inside, with several weights in the 50s. And I was reasonably happy at the end, as I wasn’t last, and had I caught as well in the first half as I did the second half, I could have framed.

I still don’t know what went wrong at the start, as I didn’t overfeed. But I wonder if a larger 1 gm rig would have allowed me to control it better – even at just three sections – in the difficult wind. And next time I will also have a tiny really thin-tipped float for the side as an alternative, in case it makes a difference. Until you try it you never know.

The other possibility is that I could have used a sloppy groundbait with hardly any feed as most fish were F1s and I have read that this can be productive for them. I’ve had good catches of F1s from Tunnel Barn Farm fishing as I did here, fishing with very sensitive rigs, but at Decoy, the venue I visit most often, the majority of fish are mirrors and commons, and groundbait is allowed only in a feeder.

Fishing is a never-ending learning process and I am happy, next time, to try something else. A small piece of worm used to catch me crucians in matches when most others were struggling, and that’s another option.

So a nice venue, not too deep, with good banks that enable you to get a full 16 metres behind you. There are Opens on Sundays and Tuesdays, and an Over 50s on Thursday, and I look forward to going back there.