Welcome to my fishing blog… July 2023
July 2nd – Margaret’s Lake, Whitehouse Farm – It’s An Ill Wind That Blows Somebody Some Good
Well, it was back to Whitehouse Farm for me today and much more familiar territory than my recent escapade. I can’t believe all 20 pegs were in today but I guess with so many members now wanting to fish the matches, Tony felt obliged to let them in. With the walking wounded taking pegs 1 and 2 and pegs 3, 10, and 11 coming out early, I was confident of getting a good draw, which I did. At least, on any other day, this peg is a potential match-winner. No, it wasn’t peg 17… it was peg 7. I haven’t fished this peg in a long time and I was really looking forward to it. Especially as I had brought 4 pints of maggles with me.
Peg 7 has an island chuck and is a good peg for catching chub, providing they are on this side of the island. So, chub were to be my main quarry. I set up an 11-foot Tyson feeder rod with a Shimano Sedona 4000 reel, loaded with 0.18 Matrix Horizon line, a 25gram Drennan maggle feeder, and a size 16 Guru LWG hook to 0.15 hooklength. I was planning on taking lots of prisoners today.
I also set up a rig for fishing shallow and one for fishing on the deck at 7 metres. The wind was getting up so I thought a short pole would be more manageable. Finally, I set up a rig for my left-hand margin where there were a few lilies but it didn’t feel right somehow. The bottom sloped away too quickly and the lilies were right up to the bank limiting the area I could fish. My right-hand margin had very little cover and I was sure nothing would come into it, although I would obviously take a look… just in case.
On the all-in, I had a quick look around to see if there were any cruising carp but I couldn’t see any so I lobbed out the feeder to within a foot of the island. After 3 minutes, I repeated the process and then repeated it again every 3-5 minutes so that I could get a bed of bait out there. After 20 minutes I hadn’t had a bite so I put the feeder in at about 2 feet from the island, in slightly deeper water. Ten minutes later and I was into my first chub. It was a long lean specimen that went about 2lbs.
So I carried on with this method for the next 2 hours and had 2 more chub around the 2-3 lb mark and a few of the new chublets, which go to about 4 ounces. It wasn’t going very well. I would have expected about 4-5 fish an hour but it wasn’t happening. In the meantime, the wind was getting stronger, blowing down toward the deeper end of the lake and I could see carp and skimmers being caught there. Over the next hour, I had 2 one pound skimmers from the island but little else. It was time to try something different.
I switched to the method feeder and carried on with that for another 40 minutes but didn’t get a single bite on this method. Next, I picked up the pole and shallow rig and tried to catch up in the water at 7 metres with maggles. Well, surprisingly I had nothing on this so I switched again to fishing on the deck. It was about 6 feet deep here and a slow-falling maggle did the trick, with a steady stream of small chub coming in quick succession until that swim eventually died. A look down the edge on meat, corn, pellets, and worms produced absolutely zilch.
So, it was back out on the maggle feeder. The wind had picked up considerably now and it was blowing a hooley toward the end of the lake where the fishing was obviously vastly improving. I could see out-stretched elastic everywhere I looked. It was pretty evident that the wind had blown all the fish down the lake too. I did catch another chub in the last hour but bites were very few and far between. Tony to my left had caught a few carp from the island on the method or pellet feeder but I couldn’t get a touch on this method.
Silvers ace, Steve Dawson, was to my right and was really struggling for bites, which is unusual for him. Those drawn in the shallow pegs at the top end of the lake also struggled for bites. It seems the nearer you were to the deep end, the more you caught. Well, I don’t think I would have done anything any differently on any other day, as this peg can be a flyer for chub… usually. I finished up with just over 12lbs, which was second best silvers on the day, but with no beer tokens to collect, I was going to be in for a dry week.
The top plonker on the day was John Dursley on peg 13, who had a steady run of big carp from his edges to win convincingly with 77lb 15oz. Well done to him and also to Antony Hole who was next door on peg 12. Antony had 34lb 4oz, just ahead of Kev Swanston who was third with 30lb 14oz. Andy Gard took the top silvers prize with 18lb 1oz from peg 14. My next match is at Staverton on Sunday 9th when I’ll be back on the river and once again, I’ll be chasing Chubbies. I’ll keep you posted.
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January 2023
February 2023
March 2023
April 2023
May 2023
June 2023
July 2023
9th – River Avon, Staverton Meadows
16th – Windmill Fishery, Westerleigh
23rd – Whitehouse Farm, Earthcott Green
30th – Warks Avon, Stratford-on-Avon
August 2023
September 2023
October 2023
November 2023
December 2023
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June 2022
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