Lewy's Lines

The motley crew gather! Munkees vs Shandies 2016 and it was an early start from London to get to the 9:15am draw.  2015 saw the Shandies victorious so the Munkees pride was at stake to regain the crown! It was great to see everyone, including the usual abuse from everyone! Today would be the team event, 4 vs 4.  The team I was in consisted of Scone, Andy T and Andy Kinder. The Draw The board that was chosen consisted of pegs on Pool 5.  My placement was Peg 84 which was a long feeder chuck and also next to Pikey. We would be fishing 11am while 5pm, so plenty of set-up time with the draw being at 9:15am. Set-up I set-up the 11 foot extreme feeder rod with a 30gram gripper mesh feeder.  I also set-up a 5m and margin pole line. Bait for the 3 days consisted of worms, casters, 6mm, 8mm and micro pellets, sweetcorn and dead reds. All-In Immediately out on the feeder for a number of reasons.  To get used to the bigger cast and to try to dominate the line as I knew Pike

A pleasure session today at Gold Valley with Nathan before he went back to college.  Today my aim was to fish for the skimmers and large slabs while I Nathan was going for the carp. The Pegs Gold Lake on the canal side was our chosen area.  Permanent pegs 6 and 7. Nathan had a chuck to the island point and also in front of the island.  My peg next door had some open water to aim for. It's great to see the plant life around Gold Valley coming back after it's major hair cut some years back. Set-Up Nathan set up a 10 foot bomb rod with a hybrid method feeder on it and later he would use the pellet waggler rod. I set up the pole at 12 metres, using Nick Gilbert white amber core to a 0.6g Drennan AS2 float on 0.18 line to a size 16 pellet hook to 0.13. Baits were Gold Valley 6mm and micro pellets together with some sweetcorn.  I also decided to try some bream specific groundbait (i.e. non fishmeal). Comfortable and smiling! The Session Before I'd even set-

Day 3 for Mark and I and we had chosen to visit Kingsland Reservoir.  Large carp would be the quarry and after the previous day of lazy carping today would be a bit different. Kingsland provides their own nets so we would have an opportunity to weigh our catch to determine the winner. We picked swims on the first bank of the large lake near where we had fished back in 2014. Set-Up The fish were milling around so line would be quite simple. 6 metre line shallow Top Two margin line Bait list, casters, maggots, worms and pellets, plenty of pellets. All-In The fish were cruising around, so it made perfect sense to start shallow with a banded 6mm pellet.  Mark's tactics were the same.  The first fish came after 15 minutes of pinging pellets and slapping the float.  After an few hours I had a few fish in the net but the shallow approach wasn't consistent. The weather was very warm and the fish were cruising however they weren't taking bait from the top which

Getting back into fishing with Mark we had decided that a few days of match fishing and a day of big carp fishing.  We decided to try Blue Bell Lakes again, mainly due to the shop on-site and it's locality to Mark. I'd packed the Carp gear, but to be honest, not checked everything as I was confident it was all in the rod bag and haversack. We picked Blue Bell Lake and swims close to where we fished it before with the willow trees opposite. Set-Up I thought I'd packed well, but the first thing I couldn't find was the rod pod!  With the weather I opted for a zig rig on one carp rod and seeing the large shoal of bream I broke out the pellet waggler rod. All-In Well, before the all-in we could not find the landing net handle, so off to the shop and Mark purchased a new net and handle... more about this later. I cast the zig rig to the centre of the lake and the plan was to leave it for an hour.  Meantime I was pinging 8mm pellets to the large shoal of bream

It had been some time since Mark and I picked up our "annual" competition and some time since Mark had fished too so we decided to head down to see Phil and Tarnya at How End Fisheries. Once we arrived the sun was shining and we fancied a float only match so picked Dani's Lake and pegs 5 and 6.  Mark chose Peg 6 which had the corner of the island Set-up Float only and it was clear that the fish were mostly on the island, being on Dani's Lake it was time to break out the waggler rod.  My other line was my right hand margin on top two plus two. Bait was casters, maggots, worm and 6mm pellets. All-In Phil had kindly allowed us to use nets for out mini competition and we decided to fish for 5 hours.  The lake had quite a few anglers on it today and the weather was beautiful although a lack of ripple on the water. Straight on the waggler to the island with a banded 6mm pellet.  I was getting plenty of indications and was feeding caster.  After striking at p

Final day...  If I would have a good result today I could make it to the top 5!  I think I piled a bit too much pressure on myself to be honest and today would test me. The Draw Peg 2, Bonsai.  Not an area I had ever fished before and I had some good anglers in my section so it was all to play for.  Neighbours for the day where Stuart and Bradley 'Steady' Smith Set-Up Pole only, initially although I would break the rod out later in the day.  Another day fishing longer as it was 16 metres to the far bank and 15 metres to my right margin line. All-In I figured that the bread working the other day it would also work on Bonsai so I prepared some discs before the all in.  With that and the whistle I started across on the far bank working the bread along the margins.  The action wasn't instant in fact it took some time before the first fish was in the net infact the first fish went to Brad who was fishing short. Before long Brad followed me over and we had a race for