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Simon R
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Teesside
England
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19 May 2002
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 Posted - 19 June 2012 : 6:57:27 PM
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Sunday we should have been on the Ure for our first river match of the season - unfortunately the heavy rain on Friday and Saturday soon put paid to that.
According to the nearest EA gauging station which is only a couple of miles downstream from our stretch at Spennithorne, the river did actually start to drop Saturday afternoon but soon started rising again - peaking at about 1.8m. It was dropping all day Sunday but it wasn't until early evening that it had dropped back to a level that would enable all five of us to get a reasonably fishable peg.
So we needed a stillwater and after a few venues and suggestions were tossed back and forth we eventually plumped for Brafferton - we've fished it before and always done OK. We discovered on the way that Kev's sat nav needs updating - it didn't know the A1 has been upgraded to a motorway around Leeming Bar and tried to direct him up a sliproad that no longer exists
Arriving at Brafferton Island Lake looked fairly full (judging by the cars parked down the lane anyway), F1 was half full, Ghost fully booked but there was plenty of room on Spring so we dropped into the same pegs we'd fished in our first match there last year. http://www.maggotdrowning.com/forum...IC_ID=129090
Terry had the plum draw opposite the island that Mike had won from last season with Frankie next to him, Bob on the same peg he'd drawn last season, followed by myself and Kev (who got an end peg again)
View across the lake from my peg:
And looking towards the island that Terry had drawn:
It was a breezy day but Spring Lake being 90% tree lined doesn't suffer from it as much as F1 and Ghost - in fact the top-end nearest the car-park stayed flat calm all day. Because we were due to fish the river nobody else had fetched a pole along - so that did give me a bit of an advantage
I just set-up three rigs - one for fishing at 10m at depth. an identical rig for fishing shallow and a margin rig. I also set-up a method feeder. At the whistle four method feeders sailed through the air, whilst I potted some pellets and corn in.
I started on double maggot but that just produced a couple of tiny roach, soft expanders were ripped to shreds in seconds so I switched to a banded 8mm pellet. That did produce a couple of 6oz ide but there was no sign of the hoped for carp. Frankie got a fish of a couple of pounds early on and Terry had a decent barbel before Bob also caught a carp. Kev wasn't having much luck on the method despite having a little island to aim at.
I finally hooked something that pulled back a bit
But rather than the hoped for 'lump' I discovered I'd hooked a fish of a couple of pounds or so neatly in the anal fin. Every so often my peg would start fizzing like a jacuzzi - last year this seemed to coincide with the arrival of a shoal of skimmers - it may well have been the same this year but could I hell catch one
Meanwhile Kev had switched to the whip and was plundering the lakes stock of bits - mainly tiny fish (30 to the pound sort of stamp) but every so often he'd get a fish of a couple of ounces or so. Bob was sticking to the method and had been rewarded with a fish or two. I couldn't actually see him due to the bush between us but I could see the alarming bend in his rod from time to time.
I had half an hour on the method myself but only got little taps and the odd liner - certainly nothing to strike at. Returning to the pole I started fishing shallow, pinging pellets at the float constantly. Problem was there were hoardes of small ide in front of me - a 6mm pellet they had no difficulty in attempting to eat - the float would go under but the strike would result in nowt on the end or a bumped fish. I resorted to waiting for the float to go under and stay under - this resulted in better ide (8oz or so) and odd F1s of a pound or so. Strange thing was that 8mm pellets didn't seem to attract any response from anything - does anybody make a 7mm hard pellet?
One thing I always find tricky when fishing shallow is getting the feed right - feed too much and you risk the fish following the pellets down to the bottom. I had a bit of a helping hand though - whenever I'd been a bit enthusiastic with the feed I'd start getting the jacuzzi-style bubbles in my peg again - indicating that some of the pellets were getting down to the bottom and attracting skimmers back into my swim - this was the signal to cut back on the feed a little.
Shouting time at 4pm I had no idea who'd won - Terry had been pretty quiet (which usually indicates he's getting a few), Frankie had the early carp and that was about it, Bob had a couple of lumps (and lost a couple too), I was hoping for about 10lb and Kev had snared a decent ide on his very last cast.
Starting down at Terry on peg 43 his collection of carp, barbel and skimmers went 7lb 1oz
Frankie only had a few roach to go with his carp and weighed 2lb 6oz
Bob will have been cursing the two decent fish he lost, finishing with 11lb 8oz
My F1s were a big bigger than I thought and I dropped 16lb 7oz onto the scales.
Kev could only muster 6lb 6oz of ide, roach & rudd
So that gave me a second win in ten days - I'd still have rather been on the river though. Next up we're back on Dromonby a week tomorrow followed by another trip to Brafferton on 1st July .
Simon
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Flooded Out - so off to Brafferton we went
