21.06.12

Dean Barlow Bags Up!

I was recently invited to fish my good friend and former junior England international Philip Arthur's dads memorial match at Whitmore Fishery near Blackpool. I have fished the venue a couple of times with mixed results, but on the day we’d be fishing the prolific East Lake, which is full of carp, chub and
some big barbel that run into double figures.
There's a sunken island on this lake so I was hoping to draw one of the
pegs that would allow me to chuck a little GURU Method Feeder and also give the
GOO a good workout. However, out of the draw bag came peg 12... stuck in
a corner with the wind blowing out of my corner peg, not what I wanted! The end of this lake is about 12 feet deep so I decided on a pellet
approach at 13m fishing 'up and down'. Rig wise, I decided on a 4x18 Ben
Scott float attached to 0.19 N-Gauge with a 0.17 hook length and the new
prototype LWG eyed hook in a size 16 for fishing on the bottom. For
shallow fishing I used a 0.2 Ben Scott float, again the line was
0.19mm - 0.17mm N-Gauge with a size-18 LWG eyed.
I also chose a margin swim 13m down the bank, this time with 0.19 N-Gauge
straight through to a 14 X-STRONG Carp Spade in case if I had an
encounter with one of the lake’s big carp or big barbel. At the start of the match I decided to cup in some 6mm and 8mm pellets with a good squirt of Pineapple Power Smoke GOO to attract some fish into the area. Down the edge I chopped some worms gave them a good squirt of GOO then filled the cup with dead maggots.
After potting in the pellets, my plan was to start on the bottom and use a
catapult to loose feed 6mm pellets to catch shallow but, after potting
in, the GOO made a lovely green cloud, so I shipped my bottom rig out and
had line bites straight away, so the GOO had done what I wanted and
attracted some fish into the area. Out went the shallow rig and first cast
it produced a carp then a 4lb chub. The first couple of hours saw me catching small carp and chub and when I thought the fish were starting to
disappear, I just cupped in a small amount of pellets soaked in GOO.
About halfway through the match I decided to try my edge swim, which I'd
been feeding every 30 minutes with chopped worms and maggots. Hopefully it was primed and ready for a bagging last two hours!
I baited with a full worm, and as I laid the rig into the water my black Hydro shot out of my pole. A few moments later a small common was in the net. Next chuck it had been in about a minute when the float went under again. This time even more black Hydro was cutting through the water and 5 minutes later a perfect 8lb barbel was in the net. A couple of chub and carp followed before it started to die. Out came the pot and the worm/GOO/maggot mix went into the swim;
straight away the fish were back there. I stayed down the edge for the rest of the match catching more barbel and carp and the odd big chub.
The scales came round to me and after three weighs my total was 130lb 2oz and
a great win on a personal level for me. It seemed that the fish didn't particularly want to be in the corner because there was no wind blowing into it, but I can't help thinking that it was the GOO that got the inquisitive fish coming to have a look in the very coloured water. Once there, there was a banquet of worms and maggots waiting for the fish, which kept them there.

Tight lines, Dean.

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