24.02.17

Catching where you least expect!

It seems Guru’s Mark Griffiths is unstoppable at the minute, and last weekend he added a match win to his run of results in round four of the Guru Makins Pole Only League. Taking 53lb 12oz from Lagoon Pool, he had a very patient attack, and revealed:

“After finishing second overall on the previous round, I was chasing another result to push me further up the league table.

“The draw put me on either Lagoon or Lizard lakes, and I was first on the list to draw. I never mind being first to draw, as this at least means all of the fliers are still in the bag…but so are all the iffy pegs I suppose! I put my hand in the bag, shuffled the pegs about and extracted Lagoon peg 23, which I was more than happy with.

“This peg has been hard going in previous matches, but has produced the occasional carp on previous matches in the really cold weather. With this in mind and the fact I needed good points to keep my league alive, I decided I would fish outright for the carp. After a week of mild weather, I fancied catching a few to be honest.

“My plan was to ‘dob’ over to the island on bread and maggots, with a rig set four-inches off of the deck for the first hour of the match while I let my other lines settle. Dobbing is basically presenting a single hookbait in areas of the swim where you expect fish to be lying. For this dobbing rig I used a light 4x10 RW Minger float, tied on 0.15mm N-Gauge mainline and an 0.13mm hooklength of the same. My hook was a size 18 LWG matched with white Hydro elastic.

“My other swims were to be a long pole swim at 16m, a margin swim that I fed gently with pellets and corn, and a swim at six metres in front of me where I would throw the odd dampened 6mm pellet and fish a soft 6mm over the top.

“A single rig was used for my short and long pole swims, as these were exactly the same depth. Again, a 4x10 RW Minger was the float choice, tied to the same lines mentioned earlier, but this time a size 16 LWG hook. Again, it was trusty old White Hydro as my choice of elastic."

“I had an hour dobbing around several areas of my peg, in particular along the island where I expected to catch. No signs at all left me scratching my head. I had fed a few pellets and grains of corn on my long margin swim, and decided to have an early look there. After 30 minutes I hooked a fish that felt strange, and managed to net a carp around 5lb that was foul hooked. It’s better to be lucky than good they say!

“No more signs on this forced me to have a look on my short line, where I nicked a carp first drop-in followed later by a skimmer, both on a 6mm expander. It seemed like a day of setting traps and nicking the odd fish here and there, resting swims and changing between them was going to be important.

“At the end of the match I had managed severn carp, a tench and a skimmer for 53lb 12oz. Surprisingly, four of the carp fell on the short line that was a nice surprise, and a good sign of things warming up. I really didn’t expect to catch there, which just goes to show you never know where fish will turn up! It was also obvious that you seemed to catch a fish after resting a swim. Having several swims enables you to do this, because as you rotate between them you rest the others. This is a trick that works well when the fishing is hard, especially if your targeting just a handful of fish.

“The even better surprise on the day was that not only had I won my lake, I had infact won the whole match and was £180 better off for my efforts! More importantly, I had secured a valuable one point, which has moved me right up the league table. Fingers crossed for another result on the next round in two weeks time!”

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