I fished the open at Carp Vader Redhill Fishery last Saturday 16th May, I haven’t been there for a while and with the news that a lot of new fish had gone into the top pond called Tillys thought it was time for a re visit.
The weather on arrival was mixed, it was quite mild but windy and with a forcast of the wind increasing as the day went on it looked as if conditions would be against us.
I have a knack at Redhills of drawing peg 18, it doesnt matter what lake I fish, Sophies and Mollys has seen me draw peg 18 several times. In one month last year I drew 18 on Sophies 4 times on the trot!
You can guess what I’m going to say now!! After an awesome breakfast, the draw was made and I pulled out peg 18! I havent fished this lake before as it was always kept for pleasure anglers, but it has recently been stocked and now is going to be used as the match lake. I found out when I go to my peg that I was on the deep end. It is a deep end too!! Plumbing up found over 6ft of water in the margins with it dropping off to around 10ft at 8 meters.
I had planned 3 lines of attack for this, a margin line, 4 meter line and a 8 meter line. The 8 meter line was really just a back up incase the fish moved out as with the strong winds that were forcast I didnt see us able to go out any longer.
My plan was simple feeding and fishing 6mm pineapple pellets, the reasoning behind this was that due to the amount of fresh stockies that were in there all they will know is pellets as that is what they will have been fed on at the farms. Paste was out of the question due to the wind as I would have been pulling out all the time and it would have been too frustrating.
I plumbed up the 3 rigs all with the same float and shotting patterns, the floats were 1g mosella rugby ball shaped with thick carbon stems. I had a bulk of no 8 stotz then about 4 inches above the hooklength as didnt want any messing about and wanted the bait down there in the zone! Line was 0.16 Matchteam main line to a 0.14 hook length with a fox series 2 size 18 eyed hook with lassoo hair rig.
I’ve used the lassoo hair rig on the pole for a while now after being put onto it by my best mate Andy Neal. He’s used it to devestating effect and it really does work with better presentation than a hair rigged pellet band.
At the start I put a pot full of approx 20 pellets on the 4m line and a handfull in the margin to my right. First drop on the lassooed pellet on the 4m line, the float settled as the bulk registered and the float sailed away, I gave the gentle but firm lift and my no 12 latex went screaming out! What a start! After a lively scrap a 6lb Common was in the keepnet! The feeding plan was to feed 8 pellets every put in and to increase or decrease it as I got a feel for hte match. So 8 pellets in the pot went out with the rig and was lowered into the swim. One trick I like to do with this is to lift and drop the rig as the pellets are falling. So in theory the pellet on the hair rig should be landing on the deck in sync with the feed. As an example of how to do this in 6 foot of water which I had I was counting to 5 then lifting and dropping the rig as pellets fall quite quicky at about a foot a second (the last foot is in sync with the falling pellets)
Second put out doing this and the float buried again, lifting into another fish this time a little smaller at around 2lb. All good stuff though and in the first hour I had estimated about 20lb in the net. This is when it went a bit down hill, not from my point of view however but good old mother nature! The winds indeed picked up to near gale force making presentation very difficult even at short lengths. Along with the winds we also had driving rain and even a bit of hail! It was far to windy for brolleys so it was hoods up, heads down and bear it as it was driving head on into me!!
The second and third hour was quiet, with only a few fish to show for it, everyone was struggling though at this point except for a couple at the top end of the lake who had a cover and were relatively sheltered.
I lost a few fish too with the wind gusting resulting in me pulling out of fish. It was the same for everyone however so I wasn’t on my own! The margin swim hadn’t produced anything and the 8 meter line was now blown out!
It did calm down a little in the later stages of the match so I decided to take a gamble and up the feed. Instead of putting 8 pellets in through the toss pot every put in I started to cup in approx 25 pellets through the cupping kit in the hope that that it would improve my catch rate. Thankfully it did and I enjoyed a good last hour with some better quality fish ending up in the net.
As the scales came round at the end I knew I hadn’t won it as the guys at the top who had a bit of shelter had caught consistantly all day. Quite a few didnt even weigh in (Giles Cochrane being one of them!), but I put a respectable 49lb on the scales which supprisingly took the lead!! It didnt last long though but I finished a 4th with 80lb winning it by my good friend Brian King (kingbee on this very forum) who fished a blinder given the conditions! I had a brown envelope though with a few beer tokens as I won my section comfortably so I was happy with that.
In reflection on the match, on a different day I think I could have won it off that peg but conditions were against us and it made getting the bait presented as they wanted it very difficult. I did learn though that they are capable of taking a bit of feed without it causing foul hookers or liners. So I will bear that in mind for next time. Its a great lake though and will be back there soon for another crack at it.
If I get 18 again on there I will run to it!!
Iain
I couldnt take photos sorry as it was far too wet, but this one I took before the heavens opened and just shows the view of my peg.
