Gold Valley - Open Match, 21st March 2012
Taking a day off work due to the great weather I decided to fish a Wednesday Open Match at Gold Valley in Aldershot. There was 11 anglers taking part and we would be fishing on the Canal Bank of Gold. With so few anglers it was an pleasant start to the day chatting to the lads, many local's so my hopes for any wins looked in doubt from the start, but it's all experience.The Draw
I pulled out Peg 14 which was to open water thus giving me no islands to target.
The Set-Up
As the weather had been reasonably warm the previous night, there were plenty of options and as such I set up quite a bit of tackle, having the rods made up already saved a lot of time!
- 13' Waggler Rod, 4lb Mainline with a Drennan Puddlechucker to fish banded pellet at depth
- 10' Bomb Rod, 4lb Mainline with a 2/3 oz bomb to fish banded pellet
- 10' Bomb Rod, 6lb Mainline to fish the Method
- 13 metre pole line
- 4 metre pole line for the margin
The All-In
I started by cupping in a sized ball of micro's, some dampeded down 6mm pellets and dead reds on the 10 o'clock and 2 o'clock 13 metre line, this line would be topped up every hour until I fished it. I then went out on the method short of the centre rope with a hair rigged peice of sweetcorn.
Stef, the lad on peg 12 was soon into a carp and I only had to wait another 10 minutes before the first carp was in the net. It was a fighting fit 5lb fish. After the first 90minutes I had 2 skimmers and 3 carp for around 18lb.
It was time to try the 13 metre pole line that I'd hoped the skimmers had settled on. Using a 6mm expander and lifting and dropping the rig, the first bite was a positive pull under of the float and the first skimmer was in the net.
I was taking a couple of skimmers from the 10 o'clock line, then moving across to the 2 o'clock line, topping up each swim with a small amount of micro pellets before moving and this tactic was working well. That was until 2 hours of the match remained and both lines went dead.
Noticing that my two neighbours were cupping in 6mm pellets, I followed suite and left the swims to rest, staying out on the method in the meantime. I hooked and lost a carp at the net from the method feeder and in the last 30 minutes of the match went back over my pole lines and picked up a lovely Bream of about 4lb and right on the whistle hooked my final carp.
The Result
I weight in 47lb 14oz of fish, 16lb were carp and the rest silvers. The match was won with 140lb of carp from Peg 2. My neighbours for the day had 70lb and 68lb, with the 68lb weight being entirely of silvers, so I took a good battering from them both.
Conclusion
Feeding micropellets wasn't the way to proceed on the day, both my neighbouring anglers mentioned they were potting in 6mm dampeded pellets which brought a better quality of skimmer.
Rotating the two pole lines definately helped and I'll be doing this more often, although I'm unsure why they both died with two hours of the match remaining.
Targetting the carp in the first and final hour helped my result, but for the area I had drawn in, it was silver fish time. Still an enjoyable day out and I've learnt a couple of things about Gold Valley.
Comments
JB