March 17th – Windmill Fisheries, Near Westerleigh – A Nod And A Wink With Baits To Make You Think

It was 2 matches at Windmill for me last week, the first being the Costcutter 500 on Thursday 14^th. This match has piqued so much interest since it was first announced and now some anglers are resorting to stealth tactics bordering on… skulduggery. At least it seems that way, especially when one angler I know has a whole array of different bait flavours in his armoury. Which one was he catching on? It’s only natural that competitors should want to know what baits are being used by those who have been having the most success at Windmill lately and I must admit I’m one of them. I’m always trying different baits in the hope of getting an edge and sometimes they work… sometimes they don’t.

Recently, I found out that a particularly successful competitor was using a certain glug on his pellets. I ‘secretly’ told someone else and they tried it but it didn’t work. I couldn’t get any of this particular glug myself so I bought an alternative one and I caught well on it. However, it didn’t work for me after that but something else did… still with me? Okay, so let’s get on to the match report before I delve deeper… I drew peg 20, which I was happy with as I wanted to target both silvers and carp. My thinking was that if I couldn’t get enough carp then I might still have a chance of picking up some wonga if I did okay on the silvers… right? So my plan was to fish right out toward the island at 16 metres with maggles for carp and a line down the middle at 7 metres for silvers, also with maggles. For some reason the inside lines haven’t been producing for me lately but I was willing to have a quick look later in the match.

Now the weather was beginning to turn quite nasty with persistent rain and a strong side wind. My plan to fish at 16 metres lasted all of 10 minutes. Plan B, which was hastily dreamed up, was to come in closer at 13 metres but that didn’t work either, so I ended up fishing at 8 metres for anything and everything. There was quite a tow on the lake so I added a few inches to the length of the rig to try and counteract that. So now I had 2 identical rigs set up at just under 8 feet deep with 0.5-gram pencil floats, 0.15 mainline and 0.12 hooklengths to a size 16 Guru LWG hooks. Elastics were 12-14 on one rig and 14-16 on the other. Groundbait was Thatcher’s Original together with Dynamite Swim Stim F1 micro pellets. I had a rig set up for both edge lines but didn’t use it.

From the all-in, I began feeding live and dead red maggles plus groundbait regularly through a cadpot. It was about 30 minutes before I had a small roach and about 15 minutes later I had my first 2lb skimmer. Feeding at every put-in was important in bringing fish into the swim and building their confidence. After about 90 minutes, I was getting bites at every put-in. I wasn’t hitting many of them but I still managed to catch 4 more big skimmers before I hooked and lost a carp. Now my swim was dead or at least I thought it was. As carp had moved in, I tried changing baits to pellet… nothing… corn… nothing… meat… nothing… bunches of maggles, well a few indications but nothing hooked. So as I mentioned earlier, I often try all kinds of baits and when you’re desperate to get a bite it can sometimes pay off. My secret bait today was cold water prawns.

That’s those little pink critters you get with a prawn cocktail… remember those? Anyway, I had tried everything else so I had nothing to lose. I chopped up a couple and cupped them in. Then I put half of one on the hook and laid in my rig. About 2 seconds later I was playing a carp. I repeated the process and amazingly I had another 5 over the next hour before I lost a few and ran out of prawns and time. I finished third in the match with 49lb 7oz and won top silvers with 10lb 9oz. I was so glad I had brought the prawns with me. I must admit though, I had tried prawns a few months earlier but with no joy. It just goes to show that you never know with carp. They can be so picky at times. So now, here’s the funny bit. The angler who told me about him using crab glug on his pellets asked me what I had caught on and… obviously… I told him. (To be continued).

17^th – Windmill Fisheries Open – Hammered Off The Next Peg.

Don’t you just love it when someone gives you a real pasting off the next peg… not! So, there were 19 in the hat for this one and surprisingly the weather was dry and warm, which meant the carp would probably be mooching around in the top layers today. I drew peg 3, which is where my Legion clubmate, Kev Murch, was drawn on Thursday, finishing second with 69lbs. This is not a known silvers peg and so it had to be an all-out carp match for me today. The plan was to go long at the start and then feed a line at 8 metres with groundbait and micros as backup. My inside right edge looked good but I would be sharing it with Gerry Welsh who was on peg 2. My rig for 16 metres was simple. A 0.2-gram dibber rig set at 15 inches deep with a size 16 hook. Maggles and pellets would be the baits of choice for this line.   

On the all-in, I baited my hook and shipped out my pole. I could see the reeds moving so there was no doubt the carp were in residence. After a couple of attempts, I hooked my first carp, which went about 8lb. Next, I fired out a pouchful of maggles and instantly regretted it. On the next put-in, I foul-hooked a biggie and then lost the next 2 in a row. WTF? Well, I guess I shouldn’t have put so much bait in. I decided to leave the swim to settle down while I tried the 8-metre line. I had a couple of very small roach on that but it was obvious there wasn’t any quality fish there. During my spell on this line, Gerry had landed 4 fish so I was aching to get back out and across. As soon as did, I hooked and landed another carp about 7lbs. I then lost the next 2 in what seemed to be a snag. As soon as they were hooked they were in the snag.

I started to come away from the far side a bit in the hope I could avoid losing anymore but it seemed if I didn’t get close to the far side reeds then I wouldn’t get a bite. Gerry was catching with impunity by now and left me trailing way behind. He too lost a couple in what appeared to be the same snag. So today, it was a case of accurate bait positioning or simply no fish. About halfway through the match, the angler I mentioned earlier with his bait glug, came over to see me. He said he had been using prawns like I had done earlier in the week and that he hadn’t had a bite. He said he was going to pack up early, go home and make himself a prawn omelette. Hey! It’s not my fault prawns didn’t work for him… I’m still laughing about it though. Now he thinks I stitched him up… as if.

Anyway… the rest of my match was all about catching one lose three and losing a couple of rigs along the way too. Gerry made few mistakes in landing almost everything he hooked and it soon became pretty obvious that he had caned me and deservedly so, for being such a silly boy. However, Gerry wasn’t having it all his own way. On peg 11, was Angling Maestro, Tim Ford. So what do you get when you put a top-class angler on a great peg? A magnificent result! Tim obliterated the field weighing in a whopping 159lb 12oz, which is the best weight recorded on the match lake this year. Well done to Tim. Gerry Welsh was second with 98lb so well done to him. I ended up with just 44lb 13oz for 7^th overall, leaving twice that still out there in the reeds for next time. Well, I’ll be back again next Thursday for another go and then onto Margaret’s Lake, Whitehouse Farm, next Sunday… keep you posted!

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