Gold Valley Lakes. June 19th, 2004.

J Sainsbury’s National Angling Championships 2004.

Down to Gold Valley today for the annual J Sainsbury National Angling Championships.
This is a match that has been pretty good to me, over the last 6 years I’ve had 4 top 5 finishes.
The match is open to all Sainsbury’s employees and members of their staff association. I qualify as Maria (Mrs M) works for them and I’m a paid up member of their staff assocciation.

Normally this is a 110 peg match, but this year only 80 entries had been recieved so the match was pegged on Syndicate, Middle and Bungalow Lakes. The weather forcast for the day promised sunshine and showers, but on the drive down there was nothing but blue skies and bright sunshine although the wind was quite cold and blustery.

I arrived at 7am in plenty of time for breakfast in the clubhouse that is laid on as part of the day, and after that it was time to get the nets dipped and collect my bait from the onsite tackle shop before returning for the draw.
The Clubhouse.

Into the pot and peg 114 on Syndicate was my alloted spot for the day. I was quite chuffed with the draw as pegs 110 – 114 have a gravel bar to fish to that is about 25ft short of the ropes that run down the middle of the lake to stop anglers casting past ½ way, and once the weather warms up the carp normally move onto this bar.
Peg 114.

With an 11am start there was plenty of time to set up, so the feeder was set up to fish to the bar, set up on a snap swivel so that I could easily swop feeder size, or from a cage to a maggot feeder if needed. The pole lines were simplicity themselves as the bottom was perfectly flat and level from 3mtrs out all the way to 14mtrs with a depth of around 6ft. 3 rigs were set up, 1 at depth, 1 at a foot deep and a third that I could adjust to fish between the two. 1 other rig was set up for the margins that still had 3½ft of water, and would hopefully produce some lumps in the later part of the match.

All the while I was setting up I hadn’t seen a single fish move which is unusual on Syndicate, and with 45 minutes to the off I went for a walk around. Reaching the end pegs 99 -102 it was soon obvious where the fish were!!! sheltered and calm these pegs were alive with fish and those anglers in them all had large grins on their faces.

11am and the all in, and with a large cage feeder 20 casts were made to the bar to put a bed of groundbait down on it. Then out on the pole with a couple of balls of groundbait with pellet, corn and grated meat at 5mtrs and 12mtrs to see if there were any silvers about.
The lad to my left started on the waggler and the one to my right was on the feeder. A slow start all round and after the 1st hour I just had 6 Roach, then the lad to my right had a Carp on the feeder which he lost at the net. Out onto the bar with the feeder and a piece of hair rigged meat. The lad to my right had another Carp which looked close to double figures as he netted it which was followed by another next cast. Despite swapping between meat, maggot and corn all I was getting was the odd minute tap in the next 2 hours which resulted in another couple of Roach.

2 hours to go and the tip pulled firmly round and kept going, something had picked up the piece of meat and after a spirited fight, there in the net was a nice double figure Common Carp. “Here we go” I thought, WRONG!!!! Not another bite for the rest of the match! Just before the end the lad to my left had a large Mirror on the waggler, a good double, but placing it into his keepnet it flipped back into the lake. The language to say the least was industrial!!!!!!

The end of the match came, and I knew that I’d come nowhere even in my section, so I tipped back about 5lbs of silvers when the scales arrived. Talking to the scalesmen it appears that this year for some reason not a single decent weight had come from this swim this year which even they can’t understand (Now they tell me!) I got them to weigh the Common as they were there and it went 11lbs 2ozs, so I probably had about 16lbs in total.

The Winner? he had 102lbs from end peg 101 and reckoned that he had lost as much again.
To the Winner the spoils.

Back to the clubhouse for the presentations, with a buffet and bar laid on it soon became apparent that the complex as a whole hadn’t fished up to expectations. Having said that if it was easy we would probably get bored. I’ll just have to try harder next year.

Willow Park Fishery. The Small Lake. June 12th, 2004.

Well, It was off to Willow Park Fishery for me to fish in the TalkAngling/ForceBaits southern qualifier, which was a match within a match, organised by Dave (Pikey) Pearson from the Total Fishing site, and another chance to catch up with, and put some names to faces from the Intersite series. After a leisurely trip down and a full English in the on site café, a dip into the draw bag saw me wandering round to peg 25 on the Little Lake.

Peg 25 A brief chat with Kenny Collings told me that there would be a few to be caught, but not to expect too much from the area.

An 11am start meant that there was plenty of time to set up and get comfy and with peg 24 on my left empty, I fancied that I may be able to tempt a couple of lumps into the margins later on. An almost constant depth of 4½ft from 5 to 14mtrs meant that I opted for a main swim at a comfortable 9mtrs with another at 13, and rigs covering both depth and shallow were set up. The margins would be covered with a heavy meat rig set up on my margin pole.
There is a limit of just one kilo of groundbait and this was Sillybait® and crumb in the hope that the fishmeal would hold both the Skimmers and Carp. I also brought 1kg of micro pellets for loose feeding from the shop as there is a rule that only allows 1kg of the fisheries own pellets to be fed though any pellet can be used as hookbait. Hookbaits were various flavours of both 6 & 4mm expanders, meat both plain and flavoured, paste and some worms.

At the off I wanted to be positive so cupped 2 large pots of micros and loose Sillybait® in on both the 9 & 13 mtr lines and 2 pots into both margins along with some meat.
After about 30 minutes of alternating between 9 & 13mtrs, the first bite came at 9 and I was greeted by the site of a “Flying” Skimmer doing a fair impression of a Trout. Around 1pm Beebs put in a appearance for a bit of a chat which was appreciated, even though I did my best to smack him round the ear with both the pole and landing net as I landed a couple of fish.

Despite spraying plenty of micros to attract the larger Carp that were cruising around all day, the up in the water rigs produced virtually nothing for me on the day, in common with the majority of anglers who reported a similarly frustrating experience of watching large Carp cruising through their swims and showing no interest.

The margin swims? another disappointment. Going into the final hour 1st put in with meat and the float buried resulting in a suicidal Perch determined to choke itself to death on a piece of meat only marginally smaller than itself. Each following attempt resulting in another of its siblings taking up the challenge.

At the all out 16lbs 10ozs of Skimmers & F1′s meant that I had beaten the 5 anglers to my left, but had lost out to the anglers to my right. Still a good day out and nice to catch up with some of the lads from other sites.

Next Saturday it’s back down that way to Gold Valley for the J Sainsbury National Championship, can I beat my 4th place from last season? I’ll let you know.