A competitive foray #3

Match day

When I walked out the door into the dark at six in the morning I was met by the sight of sparkling cars reflecting the street lights. I knew it had been cold but this seemed a bit more than a sharp frost. Sitting there as the ice melted from the car window screen I was nervous, this was a big event I was going to and it had been playing on my mind for a few days now that this was only my third ever lure fishing match and frankly I didn't want to make a fool of myself. To sooth my nerves I just kept repeating over and over again in my head my mantra of the day 'just get something on the sheet'. Soon enough though I was speeding through the frosty countryside headed to the McDonalds on the A45 near rugby where Dave Mutton, the team captain, had called us for a team meeting and breakfast.

If I had felt a little out of my depth before I left then now I felt worse. Most of my team mates were seasoned competitors and the mix of lure branded kit indicated they did this regularly or a manufacturer had faith in them. There was me in my bobbly fishing hoody and hat looking like I was going flipping paint balling not fishing. A few of them I knew from the Tusses match a few weeks prior, a couple I knew via Facebook but for most they were all new to me, happily though we all spoke the same language of fishing. Talking about our practices and sharing snippets of knowledge served to settle me and soon enough Dave stood up and began his captains talk. He went through the does and don'ts and ultimately made it clear this was first of all a team event and thus helping out each other was paramount to the general effort, which made a lot of sense.

On the road again the sun was now rising and I was bleeding lost like an idiot! Some of the team had come half way across the country and here I was travelling through my own county lost looking for a village I have driven through hundreds of times this year alone. Soon enough I was back on track and found myself queuing to drive onto a half frozen half fallow field filling with keen rubber chuckers of various nationalities

It seemed to take ages to get ready to be set free by the CRT chaps in charge and people were getting very impatient to be off after registration. After discussing plans with many of my team mates I had just about decided on where to go. Of the three sections the match stretch could be divided into I liked the look of the middle heavily featured lock section or the more distant top section. The bottom section from the start down to the welsh road bridge held no appeal at all as I knew this section was a royal pain in the arse once the locks opened and I wanted no part of that. From what I could see there were a lot of people intending to hit the locks so I made the decision to go for space over features and head up to the top in order to have more water to fish. This in mind I never took my gear out of the car and instead lingered on the periphery of the crowds looking for my pre-assigned Bulgarian partner for the day, Svetoslav Ognyanov, whom I had already contacted via Facebook. With the initial parings officially brought together they gave the milling crowed some final instructions before they cut us all loose to fish. As we had previously agreed I headed back to my car, partner in tow, to zoom up to the top of the match stretch and get fishing...

The CRT international friendly

Venue = The Grand Union Canal bridges 18-30

The first hour was hard! The colour had dropped out of the water overnight with the cold and visibility was good, but this made the fish nervous to begin with. I had several slight enquiries early on fishing tight to features but nothing was prepared to commit. To make matters worse I saw some of the other competitors catching, which made me panicky. It wasn't till we all started spreading out along the stretch that I caught my first small perch just off the shelf which served to settle me down. All I needed was another one and a few zeds and that would do.

Quickly me and my partner developed a method of working together. I continually moved at a snail's pace working the inside hard as he picked spots he liked the look of and fished them before catching me up, either choosing a spot in front or behind of me to cast across the canal. For quite a while I felt like we were in a fishless void and was wondering if I had made a mistake coming up the top.

Pluck...I was sure something snatched at my lure then bang! I was into a fish which was straight away pulling line off my lightly set clutch. I have never been so scared of a fish coming off as I was this one. My heart was beating fast; I was fumbling with the net. This had to be a good zander I thought just before a mottled head broke the surface. At the first opportunity I salmon scooped it up and was proper on the board now with this 57cm pike...

Reports were now coming in via the whatsApp group that things were very hard all over and everyone was experiencing the same with odd fish here and there. Myself and my partner pushed on until we came across one of my Team mates, Gary Coulson, and his polish partner who were dug in hard on a spot where Gary's partner had caught two zander. Although invited to jump in quite close the spot produced nothing for us and we carried on up the stretch. Literally we covered probably half a mile before I snagged a small zander in the lea of a bridge which brought me so close to a metre of fish.

With that metre score now in sight I was working harder than ever making sure I had every chance to get another fish. After heading to the top of the match stretch and coming back again I doubled my efforts to cover the area where I'd had the small zander from, but the spot now seemed barren. With lots of other competitors all around us all the features were getting hammered. A quick chat and myself and Svetoslav agreed to work our way back to the car, stopping at any spots that had produced fish. Not long after, as my partner fished a very fishy looking reed bed feature, I hooked a second small perch tight to the edge which came up in tandem with a copy of itself. At 17cm I knew I was over the metre with this valuable little gem.

A change of tack...

On the way back up the stretch we again came across Gary and his partner who were still holding firm on the spot that had produced now three zander. As I chatted to Gary he hooked a zander on a jig in the centre of the trench. It was then that it occurred to me changing tack might bring me those few zander I now wanted so much. I'd already covered all the margin I was about to fish with the dropshot on the way down, so why not change things just a bit to see if it might work. The micro jig was moving much quicker than I had worked the dropshot and as a few boats were now chugging down the canal I opted to work the lure off the marginal shelf just on the edge of the trench and this plan worked perfectly, producing my best zander of the day by way of a very pleasing 42cm fish to top off my catch.

Having a decent length on the sheet I was mindful to get back with plenty of time to hand in my score; I was sure under the difficult conditions of the match I had done pretty well and being late back would be a stupid thing to do with a good score. Soon enough we pulled back into the field with all the other cars to find out how things had gone. With my sheet handed in and my length added up by an official and double checked by myself I was happy to confirm I had attained a little more than my target of 150cm with a satisfying 154cm. I then went about locating some team mates to try and figure how we had done. It seemed I had done well as had a few others in our team, but most of all it seemed as a team we had just about all caught fish.

I had it half in mind that I might have been in the running for the biggest fish with my 57cm pike but news of a few bigger fish soon came in. One chap had caught a 70cm zander on his first cast, rolling the dice with a humongous lure and one of my team mates was rumoured to of had a 68cm zander as well. From what I could tell only Jacob Stone had scored over a metre with 155cm, so I was chuffed to be up there with him.

After a long wait the officials finally had the results ready to announce, the team was all together and we were hopeful that we had done well. Dave, our captain, was just about ready to explode with nerves. They first announced the biggest fish was, as we suspected, the Romanian competitor with a huge 70cm zander then they quickly moved onto the individual winners. When the third place winner was called out as Daniel Everitt with 154cm I could hardly believe it was me. Then they called out Jacob Stone with 155cm was second, much to his amazement, and not long after that Richard Haines with 165cm was first. We could barely believe it at all, we had done a clean sweep of first, second and third, and better was still to come. We all thought it and a few mumbled it, we had to have won if we'd done all the top places. And when the called out that the England team had won the overall competition we all went bonkers! Dave the captain was beaming as the bottle of champagne was sprayed all over him. What a result for team England on such a hard venue in competition with some really great teams. As for me, I still can barely believe that all my hard work paid off and on my third ever lure match I was lucky enough to get my hands on some silverware!

Total Length = 154cm

Finish position = 3rd
Team finish position = England 1st with 1435 point and an average legnth per angler of 57.4cm

Me and my new friend and brilliant partner, Svetoslav Ognyanov.

Dave couldn't stop smiling after such a brilliant victory.

and neither could this lot!

Well done again chaps on a great overall performance and victory. I had a brilliant day and made loads of new friends that I hope to fish with again and again in the future.

A competitive foray #2

With a week to go till the CRT event I really wanted to get out to further sharpen my skills and try and put some theories to the test. After stewing for a few days over the performance I had put in on the match stretch along with some other performances team mates had put in on the venue as well, it was clear this was going to be a hard match. Add to that 124 other anglers all being on the same bit of water and this was starting to look like a real challenge. The best option for practice seemed for me to go and fish the same canal only just off the now out of bounds match section; hopefully it would be similar in performance and get me more in tune with the fish populations of the canal, rather than say fishing the Coventry, which is fishing much better it would seem.

Practice  for the CRT International

Venue = LACC sections Radford bottom lock - Fosse way bridge

Total Length = 230cm

Best two perch for CRT quota = 48cm
Three of the four zander for CRT quota = 76cm
Score for CRT =  124cm

First of all my hook up rate increased massively once again fishing the dropshot rig. Of thirteen fish hooked I landed eleven which worked out to be an 85% conversion rate of hits to fish. That figure just served to further boost my confidence in the change of hook pattern I had made. As explanation I should say that I changed from an Owner mosquito hook which has a beaked point, to a kamasan B420 sedge hook which is exactly the same shape as a dropshot hook apart from having a straight point instead of beaked, which I believe offers a quicker hook purchase in the bony predators mouth and less chance of skidding along before gaining purchase. Secondly, after this practice something really clicked in my mind as to what I would be looking for to do well in this up coming CRT match and that was...

2 x 25cm perch for 50cm
4 x 25cm  Zander for 100cm
0 x pike (As there are so few pike I felt it was pointless targeting them)
Total = 150cm

This I felt was an obtainable score under very hard circumstances on an already hard venue given the fish populations. But this was just a theoretical target, achieving it was another thing...

Let the predators flow.

I am not a massive fan of catch up blogs, largely because I tend to forget the ins and out of sessions if I don't write them up quick enough, but this catch up blog I feel is a necessity to get me back into the swing of things and to fill in what I've been up whilst I've been busy over the last few weeks, even if it is a little abbreviated  in places.

A while back and I mean a good while back, I fancied a spot of lure fishing on the Avon to try a root out a few more of the relatively ignored zander on the deep wooded section of one of my club books.

After a visit to the local lure purveyor, Dave, at Specimen Fishing UK I was tooled up with some nice new rubber which I suspected might incline those much neglected predators to attack.

The zander on this occasion were not exactly crawling up the lines, but the jack pike were more than obliging to shoot out of the bank-side cover and attack the lures as they rose out of the depths and tear the living hell out of them.

I did however manage to scratch one small, if rather sorry looking zedlet in the morning, which took a liking to my Berkley Havoc beat shad which I was bouncing along the bottom. Judgment is out on what happened to that little fellows fin. Personally I reckon it had a lucky escape in its youth.

Apart from that little warrior the rest of that session was just lots of casting, lost lures and tiny stripling pike, which the entire stretch seems to be infested with.

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Next outing I had myself a little wasping practice for the CRT international lure challenge I was meant to be attending a few weeks later on the Gloucester and Sharpness ship canal. Sadly I ultimately couldn't make the event due to other commitments, but the wasp fishing was certainly an interesting distraction. I have never actually measured the fish I catch as is the norm in these competitions. Happily though I was pleased that in a little over four hours I put together over two meters of small perch, or wasps as they are called in light lure fishing circles, along with a few micro zeds all by working a super light drop shot rig along the nearside bank.

One interesting thing I did discover by doing this was that not all areas of the canal are equal. By that I mean that the fish populations seemed to be grouped tightly in areas. After working a good mile or so of tow path it was plainly obvious that there were definitely hot spots where multiple fish were caught and in between these hotspots were large swathes of canal seemingly devoid of these little fish. Certainly I reckon I might incorporate this method of locating fish into my zander fishing in the off season, with the theory that the bigger predators might well be near these hot spots.

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Earlier on in the year I put together a pair of rods and reels to target the roach on maggot feeders at Napton and after holding off as long as I could for the colder weather to arrive, I finally got out with my new roach outfits to have a go for a big old slab of silver.

Seemingly I didn't wait long enough though, as in this unseasonably warm weather we are experiencing I caught nothing but small tench which were hell bent on feeding up for their long dormant period over the winter. A few more weeks and a couple of frosts and I will give this endeavor another run out as I am sure some special silvers will be on offer once the temperatures drop

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Although not fishing related, somewhere during this very busy period in between work and fishing sessions I even managed to take the Doctor to comic con!

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My next opportunity to get out found me once again wandering the banks of Napton reservoir. This time I was out with the surface lures for a spot of excitement with the pike. Weirdly the area where I expected most of the attacks to come from was out of action due to the level of the water being two feet down on normal levels and there being no water above the dense weed to fish. But after working most of the weedy large half of the venue I did land three tiny pike and one better very dark fish, along with numerous pant wetting follows that came to nothing.

After putting the surface lures away I grabbed a dropshot rod from the car and embarked on a second session of the day. Throughout the afternoon I'd been wondering why I hadn't had any follows from any perch, in fact I hadn't seen hide nor hair of a stripy. I soon discovered on my first put in that the perch were shoaled very tightly next to any kind of cover. My first and only spot on the concrete pumping station on the small lake was rife with perch at all depths. Literally as the small chartreuse crappy thumper lure I chose to use dropped quickly to the bottom I could feel the fish grabbing at it. The two hours leading into dusk were some of the most insane fishing I have had fishing light lures full stop. Averaging around six ounces the perch came one after another constantly until I got to the point where I was looking at the time thinking I should have been away long ago.

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Finally I visited the quiet, much ignored section of the Warks Avon again in search of zander. Myself and Mick off of Piscatorial Quagswagging have both had some surprising results over the warmer months catching zander in even the clearest water in this super deep section. Literally I've had a zander every time I have lure fished it. The question I found myself asking though was; are those zeds that are taking the lures just laying up on the bottom in that deep water and being spurred into action by the lures passing by or are they actively moving around hunting? To answer this question I figured a session fishing ledgered deads would clear up the matter somewhat.

The zander captures for my part have all come in very specific section and it wasn't hard to figure this the best place to start. With a relatively mobile approach I began towards the bottom of the target area. Mick was also fishing the same bit of river with the lures and I intended to keep in contact with him in case he located a zander before me.

Early on I got a run in the first swim which to both me and Mick who was present at the time seemed like a zander run. But even after letting the fish run and holding off the strike for far longer than I liked I didn't connect with the fish. I held out for a while in that swim before itchy feet had me moving off to a swim in the centre of the target area.

This swim produced nothing for ages until just before I was about to leave when a pike picked up one of the dead roach baits and screamed off in a way distinctly different from the first run.

I actually moved immediately after this fish was released to my final swim at the top of the target area. I was a bit reluctant to fish this swim as it just seemed a bit lifeless to me whereas the other two swims were buzzing with bait fish. I sat it out though and about half an hour before I had to away the downstream rod bleeped into life with another tentative run. Again though giving the culprit time enough to engulf the bait proved fruitless as my strike came to nothing.

Really I don't want to pass judgment with this single dead bait session as evidence, but honestly I think I am right in saying that lure fishing for these zander seems to get them interested even if they're just dormant on the bottom and the dead baits are probably best saved until the river is coloured and the zander are actively hunting. The reason I say this is that even if those couple of slow twitchy runs were off zander they obviously weren't being aggressive enough to actually get the bait in their mouths. So it seems like barbel fishing on the Avon, fishing for these zander is just a case of doing it when the conditions are optimal and at least I have a good idea where they will be.