A competitive foray #1

My personal identity as an angler has always been pretty clear to me, "I am a specimen orientated angler who could could quite easily slip into that all consuming place where the biggest fish must be caught at all costs, but choose's not to as I value all the things that this would jeopardise too much to do it". Match angling therefore doesn't hold much interest for me. Well, that was until I began doing a spot of lure fishing when young BB was born. You see the two types of competitive match fishing are very different. Traditional match fishing involves drawing a peg, pitching up in that peg with nearly all the fishing gear you own and eeking the greatest weight of fish you can out of your prescribed swim within the specified time limit. Lure match fishing instead is about catching the greatest length of predatory fish out of said prescribed area, which could be many miles within a specified time limit. The latter is much more mobile and strangely you find yourself fishing areas others have fished and failed, only for you to catch.

I have not had much opportunity to explore this interesting facet of lure fishing before apart from a single foray a couple of years ago when I was asked to fish with the England contingent for the CRT International lure friendly, which is organised to build bridges between all nationalities of anglers in the UK. This was not the experience I expected as only a few weeks prior to the event I had surgery to remove a kidney stone which left me with a stent in my water works. A stent, for those who are unaware of such evil things, is a plastic pipe which is designed to hold open pipes inside your body and thus caused in my case, urinal reflux. This is where when-ever you take a pee, urine is forced back up the pipe from your bladder to your kidney. In short this feels like Satan is raping your pee pipe. Hence my first ever lure match involved me spending the day with a non English speaking chap, peeing blood into the bushes, being in a constant cold sweat on a burning hot day and generally feeling like death. I can't even remember the fishing and can only recall curling up on the bed once home whimpering with JB looking at me very worried.

It's taken a few years to get over that experience and conveniently I have been asked if I wanted to be part of the England team for this CRT event and after agreeing I have taken a dip into the world of competitive lure fishing to get myself prepared. Luckily for me a friendly event was organized by Tusses Lure Division a few weeks prior to the CRT event which it seemed might be a good warm up so I duly singed up for it.

Now I do not wish to give full blow by blow accounts of each outing as this would be terribly boring and might serve to share info with my competitors should they read this, so all I will do is outline the events, venues, catches and results with possibly conclusions should they be needed.

Tusses Autumn Friendly

Venue = All Tusses Lure Division waters

Total length = 151cm 

Finish position = 11th place

I did myself out of a couple of points through rushing to total my score, which is a lesson learned for next time. Though this wasn't the biggest lesson taken from this match. Throughout the match I lost four small zander of around 20cm+, two small perch of maybe 10cm+ and a better perch of at least 25cm+. All of which added up an estimated 115cm, which would have taken my score to around 266cm which could have jumped me two or even three places higher into the top ten. All of these lost fish were down to exactly the same thing, poor hook ups, and when forty five percent of hooked fish are coming off something needs addressing for the next time.

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After chatting with my good fried Carl Arcus who is a very experienced in this area, it became clear a practice session was a necessity to help pin down possible fish holding spots for the up coming CRT match. With limited time though and a cut off point for practice coming in before I had a day free, I had to reorganize a few things and skive an afternoon off to get some needed time on the water before the match day.

Practice for CRT International Friendly.

Venue = LACC sections bridge 18 - 30

Total Length = 111cm (In the CRT match only the best two perch count. So 51cm would be my perch quota)

Doesn't count.

Leave well alone!

As pleasing as the practice session was with me making up 51cm perch quota that I would be very happy with during the CRT event it was terribly disappointing on the zander front. With zander quota making up at least fifty percent of the fish you can submit it is imperative that competitors catch any they can. Even more worryingly was the fact that I only encountered two tiny ones both of which let go of the lure at the surface. On a better note a change of hook pattern seems to have helped increase my conversion of hits into fish. on the Tusses event where of sixteen good hits I landed nine giving me a 56% conversion rate of hits to fish. On this practice with a different hook pattern I landed eight fish out of eleven good hits giving me a conversion of hits to fish of 73%.

After only two dedicated outings trying to build up decent match scores I am having to quickly re-educate myself to not actually look for the biggest fish as I have been for many years, but to instead look for the most prevalent fish as this give better opportunity to build length quickly. With this in mind I felt I was on the way to focusing myself to think more like a lure match angler than like a specimen angler.

Get him boys.

I reckon I nearly got lynched the other day whilst out fishing. When I told my better half that she didn't seem at all surprised. Mind you she's always been of the opinion that there is a tiny part of my personality that brings out the worst in people and who am I to argue with that as she's a saint in my eyes and I nearly push her over the edge on a regular basis.

How this impromptu hanging nearly came to be was thus: I've been feeling a little pressured (by myself) to fish the rivers right up until the end of the season, but frankly they're a bit shit right now and I've been itching to check out a pool or two that I have discovered are showing some big perch potential. Anyway, a few things came together where it seemed getting to the river would be out of the question and with weather being almost conducive to still water fishing I took a chance and headed to one of the pools I wanted to investigate. The other thing I also wanted to do was finally have a go with my new Greys fifteen foot float rod which I've been gagging to use.

So after BB's swimming lesson, a pub breakfast and depositing my young at Nanny's for the weekend, I arrived around lunch time at my intended venue. As these commercial pools go it's pretty run of the mill with thirty or forty platform pegs, a couple of small barren islands and a smattering of anglers trying to catch deformed mouthed carp. There were seven or so chaps dotted around the pool and most of them were in the general vicinity of the feature I most fancied, in a quiet area behind one of the islands. On my way round the pool I chatted to a few of the residents and confirmed that only one chap had caught and that was a single small carp first put in, and the rest of them understandably disappointed by the lack of action. On a previous recce I found out about a deep channel in front of a reed bed close to where water trickles into the pool. The depth and cover along with the water entering the pool made it an obvious hot spot for any species in most weathers so that's where I pitched up camp.

One of the reasons I wanted a fifteen foot rod was so as I could use pole rigs to fish for perch as well as tench and crucians in the summer. The idea being that I can fish to a decent range out pretty much as if I was using a short pole and have all the control which that entails, without any of the pole accessories that you really need to use a pole correctly and that hamper mobility. The one pole accessory I have really pulled back into my armory is the pole pot which last year became a mainstay of my float fishing kit and this quickly came into play after I plumbed up and settled on a ledge which ran parallel to the target reed bed. Even as warm as the sun felt on my back I was cautious with the bait and potted in a half a pot of minced prawn, chopped worm and casters onto a very tight area. Moments later my lob tail hook bait sank onto the spot and I watched the yellow and red tip float cock and sink to half depth leaving only the red top showing.

If by now you hadn't figured out where this was going, then here we go. I didn't even have chance to react to the first bite as by the time it had registered that my float had gone the rod tip was bent round and I was playing what felt like a decent sized carp. Happily as described by the manufacturer, my new rod had gone from its stiff rigid state to a pleasing parabolic curve and even with a panicky carp bashing around in the shallows it felt like I had loads of power in reserve. In no time at all the fish had been subdued into my waiting net.

After netting and photographing a rather pleasing mirror I took it well away from swim to release it. It was on the way back that one chap congratulated me and his mate grumbled something about me having a secret bait. So of course the next cast I made onto spot was obviously going to produce the second carp straight away. I actually heard the grumbling chap say, "he's making us look stupid here", as I played the fish. Then as I got rid of that unwanted worm thief the chap and his mate both aired their opinions that I either knew the lake inside out or was using some mysterious illegal bait. I'd say you couldn't write what happened next, but you can and it did! Third cast and boom, third fish on and it's hard to hide fifteen feet of bent carbon on a well cropped commercial pool from seven bored anglers. I didn't hear the chap approach but I certainly heard him proclaim "worms" at the top of his voice to his mates and turned  to see one of the guys standing behind me before he turned off and say "well, I know what to bring next time" as he walked away from my bait box.

Thank god the bites dried up after this and my streak that unsettled the locals evaporated with it. After this I was reluctant to bait up too much in case of drawing in more flipping carp as they seemed to be hungry even if I was the only one catching and my free bait was the special of the day. Eventually I had to bait up and when another pot of bait went in the carp again quickly found it. After catching one smallish carp I moved the rig off of the bait for a while until the carp I hoped cleared up and left. After a suitable amount of time had elapsed I slowly lowered the worm tail bait on what I hope was a spot devoid of carp, and it was. Half an hour later the float rose exposing the yellow stem under the red tip and quickly dipped away. I struck and felt an almost hard thump before the rod bent under pressure and the pressure quickly released sending the rig into the air.

I was sure the bumped off fish was a perch and thinking it might still be around I dropped the rig straight back in. A further thirty minutes without a bite and I had no choice but to roll the dice one last time. With less than an hour before I had to be off the bank I once again baited the spot with more chopped goodness and let it stew for a while before daring to cast the rig. It was an exact repeat of the previous scenario only this time the fish was on. The fight was pure joy on the new rod and quickly the fishes identity was confirmed as a big perch before it slipped into the net. 

All I can say is what a stunner of a commercial fish it was! If every one I catch from this ignored little venue is this good looking then I will be back time and time again to risk a lynching from the local gobshites as fish like this are well worth the risk and more, especially as I have heard they grow to twice the size of this one in there.

Go big or go home.

Of all the facets of light lure fishing it's the dropshot that intrigues me most. By that though I don't mean it's the only method I use, as I have grown to understand that every method has its moment and I am just as likely to cast a tiny crank bait, jig or Carolina rig when I believe it is appropriate as I am a dropshot. But all those methods have one single thing in common that the dropshot doesn't, and that's that they are predominantly retrieval methods where as the dropshot to all intents and purposes is generally conceived to keep the lure in one area, or at least retrieved at a snail's pace.

The other day I actually went out with the sole intent to fish the dropshot on a section of canal so rife with structure that it would be easy to think it was built specifically for the method. I had with me pretty much the entire spectrum of dropshot lures, from tiny Mebru shirasu worms right up to E-sox Lobworms, but it was the latter sized lures I intended to use... You see I have become adept at using all sizes of lures drop shotting, and see that by using scaled down tactics, micro hooks and tiny lures you can catch tiny predators all day long. Occasionally these mini methods tempt bigger fish, but honestly in my experience they do lean heavily towards small perch, or wasps, as people seem to be calling them in lure circles.

Now although I do not believe that the bigger bait catches the bigger fish, I do believe that if you offer a fish something that is too good to pass up they will more than likely eat it. It's like when you are trotting maggots on a river; once the fish are focused on the maggots that are moving towards them they have to make an instant choice - grab the maggots or let them pass by where they will be lost. Transpose that onto lure fishing and think of it this way; if you drop a tiny lure into the vicinity of a big old perch on a freezing cold day, if it is big enough to catch her attention then she is going to work out instantly if it's worth being bothered with or not and she might have it, or she might not. Now replace that tiny lure with a lure three inches long and suddenly it's a feast not a snack, and when you're weighing up energy expenditure verses reward, bigger baits have to be better, right.

So rather than mess around with 2lb line, mosquito hooks and maggot sized worms set up with a much larger rig intended to fish big lures. Given that the Grand Union was quite clear I chose a core few very natural looking lures, like the Wave pumpkin Tikki monky which looks rather like a newt, the E-sox lob worm which is a great replica of a lob worm and the now ubiquitous Savage gear 3D bleak to concentrate on through the afternoon.

In the past I have had some great results with the Tikki monkey creature bait, but even after working that hard in every conceivable manner around loads of structure, I had exactly no interest in it. The same went for the E-sox lob worm and even the 3D bleak was striking out fished under the rod tip. At this point the thought occurred to me that although the structure offered cover to the resident predators, maybe they were actually in the deeper water looking for warmth. So I resisted changing onto a jig rig to search out the open water and stuck with the drop shot rig so I could work the lure really slowly across the bottom. I knew there was a good chance I would lose some gear fishing this way in a snaggy area but the risk was worth it.

After casting onto the far shelf margin I gently work the life like little fish down the shelf into the trench the barges carve out. I worked the lure slowly down across and up the contours of the canal until finally I located a willing taker close to my own bank just were the shelf began to rise up. There was no doubting it was a fish, there were no plucks, just wallop, as a nice size perch engulfed the lure.

That same area produced three almost identical in size perch in consecutive casts and showed me exactly how tightly these fish were grouped in the clear and recently thawed and still thawing water.

I had my doubts that the zander might play ball at all in the clear conditions, but after working a few more areas over diligently, I targeted a patch of dead rushes on the far bank. Zander I have found can be very subtle taking lures, unlike perch and pike which seem to thump and tear respectively. I have often thought this might be because they sometimes seem to grab the lure and either stop or move forwards, which doesn't give a definable hit until I reel or lift the rod with something on the end. This was exactly one of those occasions where I felt no hit then reeled, the line went tight and the fish moved, then I struck. Considering how far in the mouth the hook was, anyone would have thought the fish had really hammered the lure which was just not the case.

The rest of the session passed by quickly with me working hard to find localized shoals of perch which all seemed to be lurking in similar areas around the bottom of the near side shelf, and I even found couple more small rouge zander loitering amongst them. My confidence in the 3D bleak lasted all day and every fish landed on this session felt the lure of this realistic replica fished as if it was a struggling injured fish, was too good of a meal to let pass by. 

Every single perch absolutely nobbled it and proved my decision to go big or go home right on this occasion. Although I feel I would have probably caught fish on smaller lures, I don't think I would have caught as many or as higher quality perch as I did. I ended up catching twelve good sized perch of between 20-25cm perch and three 25-30cm zander for a rough overall length of 3.5 meters, which I am led to believe is a respectable length of fish from any canal and happily I lost no gear as well.