HAINES ANGLING FESTIVAL – DAY TWO – 25/03/18
TUNNEL BARN FARM – TOP POOL PEG 14 – 63LB 2OZ
After a good start, I was hoping to continue with another good section placing. The previous evening Steve’o had told us there was a lake change with Top replacing Club and that with more space and the lake was full of Ide as well as more Carp amongst the F1s. Of course, when it was my time to draw I drew on Top peg 14.
Arriving at the lake, my platform was a bit creaky to say the least. Martin Pettifier’s platform next door was the same, Andy Eagle’s was worse so much so he had to move to a spare peg after nearly going in. I wasn’t overly happy as there was every chance I could end up going for a swim so I left the majority of my kit on terrafirma.
APPROACH
I decided not to change my approach too much from the day before the plan was to start 2+3 with pellets, then fish in three foot across towards the sunken islands, have a margin line in the same depth of water and also loosefeed maggots over the deep line for the last two hours. With the raise in temperature I also set-up a shallow rig to fish over the 2+3 line with maggots.
RIGS
2+3 LINE – PELLET
Elastic – NG 4-8 orange
Float – RW Flexi Dink 4 x 14
Mainline – 0.152 Colmic F1 Spider
Hooklength – 0.11 Colmic Stream
Hook – 18 Guru F1 Pellet
2+3 LINE – MAGGOT
Elastic – NG 4-8 orange
Float – Hillbilly Oliver 0.3g
Mainline – 0.152 Colmic F1 Spider
Hooklength – 0.11 Colmic Stream
Hook – 20 Guru F1 Maggot
2+3 LINE – SHALLOW
Elastic – NG 4-8 orange
Float – Hillbilly Oliver 0.1g
Mainline – 0.152 Colmic F1 Spider
Hooklength – 0.11 Colmic Stream
Hook – 18 Guru F1 Maggot
MARGIN LINE / 13M LINE
Elastic – NG 4-8 orange
Float – RW Flexi Dink 4 x 12
Mainline – 0.152 Colmic F1 Spider
Hooklength – 0.11 Colmic Stream
Hook – 18 Guru F1 Pellet
MATCH
I started short on pellets and after the first hour I was plodding along nicely with five F1s and five Skimmers, no-one else was emptying it although Martin had started to catch Ide long and Lee Jan & Paul Reynolds had started fishing their edge lines picking off odd fish.
When the short line died I moved out to the long line, I had a bite first chuck and it snagged me. I landed one next chuck before losing another. I decided to replumb somewhere else and started again. I had a short run of F1s and I thought here we go, except I had a nightmare half an hour losing the next 10 F1s I hooked either losing them on sunken snags by the islands or under the platform. I upped my elastic to 6-10 which helped land a few more.
During this period Martin was catching a lot of Ide and Lee was catching me up with Barbel and larger Carp. I need to make a change so I came back on the shorter line with maggots and started to regularly catch F1s, Skimmers, Silver Bream and Ide, after 20 minutes or so I started to get liners so I picked the shallow rig and it was a first a chuck with lots of Ide with the odd bigger F1. When the shallow line slowed I just went back on the deck rig until I started getting liners again. It was quite a straight forward match when I came back on short line.
When the scales arrived I weighed 63lb 2oz, which surprised people as they thought I had a lot more but the Ide even though they were big they didn’t weigh much. My weight was enough to win the lake and was third on the day.
After two days, I had two section wins and was top of the festival with 28 points, two points clear of Steve Veale and a further one ahead of Roger Durham. I was in the same position after two days in last year’s festival, all I had to do was not mess it up again!
Mark's Match Fishing Musings 