This was a midweek club match, which is always, now, on this venue, won by Peter or Trevor surface fishing. They like to try something different, not allowed on most commercial fisheries where matches are held. So I decided I would have a go myself as I’ve never fished a match on the surface. Nine of us fished, which is fewer than normal, probably because of holidays and the forecast!
But the day before this match I changed my mind because the forecast was for rain on and off all day, and I didn’t fancy trying a new method in those conditions. So I decided to enjoy myself fishing cat meat near the margins, and left my main Browning Z12 pole at home, and took a margin pole and my Browning Sting, which I love using. It’s a put-in pole (ie the Number Two goes inside the Number Three) so it’s light – much lighter than a conventional pole because the sections have a much smaller diameter - and strong.
I started five metres out, but never had a fish there, and I fed a margin line each side where I eventually started to pick up fish from 1 lb to 5 lb on cat meat. I had liners all day from fish off the bottom, but as usual they wouldn’t feed off the bottom. Neither would they take small cubes of luncheon meat. I could see Peter and Trevor catching fish from the surface, but I didn’t try that, although I saw lots of big fish cruising around my swim, and sucking the reeds stems.
To cut a long story short I had 95 lb of carp but I estimate I lost twice that amount either foulhooked or which just came off. Several times I got fish close enough to see they were hooked in the mouth, but they eventually pinged off. A couple broke me. At one time, when I had hooked about six fish in 15 minutes without landing one I felt like packing up! I was using my favourite Middy 20-22 and a Latex 18 in my margin pole tops, in an attempt to stop the fish getting up a head of steam. But I fancy I will have to go heavier.
One thing was that the Sting has such thin tops (that’s the diameter, not the walls) that I’ve never put pullers in. It may just be possible, so I will have to have a look at that. It would have helped, I am sure, when landing these big fish. When I first got the pole, over 20 years ago, pullers had hardly been thought of, so I never thought about it when elasticating the tops.
The result was as we had all guessed – Trevor, fishing expanders oon the surface and on the hook, weighed a magnificent 283 lb 5 oz (his sixth weight over 200 lb on this water) and Peter, fishing Chum Mixers, weighed 222 lb 8 oz. Martin was in the favoured swim which is on its own, on one end bank, and took 110 lb 2 oz while I was fourth. Trevor uses Red Hydro and Peter said he uses a Preston 25, which I will have to ask him about as I can’t find an elastic rated at 25.
No complaints – I had a relatively easy day, having known I was not likely to win fishing conventionally. And because there was not a lot of wind I managed to keep fairly dry under my umbrella, though some of my gear needed drying out when I got home. There's another club event at decoy on Cedar on Thursday, and then I have a two-day event on Decoy at the weekend. This weekend I've nothing on (at least no fishing) except a Golden Wedding celebration on Sunday. Not mine - mine's in four years time.
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