Sunday 14^th July – Bonanza 1000 Qualifier, Windmill Fisheries – Last Minute Frenzy Proves To Be Too Little, Too Late!

There was no mid-week match for me this week, just another visit to Windmill Fisheries near Westerleigh. Regular readers of my blog will know that I’ve been chasing this qualifying match for some time now and the quest continues. There were 19 anglers at the draw for this one and once again it would be anyone’s guess where the winning weight would come from, although the bottom end of the lake has fished well over recent weeks. So, I was thinking I would like to draw 10, 11, 12, or 14 but the hand of fate gave me peg 8.

I have a kind of love-hate relationship with this peg as I fell in here while slipping on a wet and very slippery pallet back in February. It has a new platform now. I’ve also done well here on the silvers, collecting some wonga for my efforts but today it had to be an all-out carp day, come what may. I had my Kingswood RBL clubmate, Jason, next to me on peg 9 so all I had to do was keep a close eye on him and just do whatever he was doing. Well, we both planned to fish paste so great fishing minds think alike lol. Windmill regular, Geoff Francis was on peg 7, in the gap, which can be a good silvers peg.

I set up a maggle feeder for getting out close to the island as it was around 18 metres wide here. For fishing at 6 metres out in front, I set up my paste rig, which consisted of a 0.3-gram ‘Kev Murch special’ pencil float, 0.19 Guru N-Guage main line and a size 14 Guru Kaizen hook to a 0.17 hooklength. I’m beginning to really like these hooks the more I use them, especially for catching big carp on big baits. My only other lines were to the left and right in the margins, where I fed Scopex groundbait and micros. My choice of baits for the margins included worm, pellet and paste.

Just before the all-in, I noticed a couple of cruisers at around 14 metres so out went an 8mm banded pellet early doors. I slapped around for about 20 minutes but had no serious takers so it was time to chuck out the maggle feeder. I was getting liners right from the off but had to wait 15 minutes before I hooked and landed a small carp of about 3lbs. After that, all I had was a skimmer, a roach and a perch so that idea was put to bed for the rest of the day. With almost 2 hours in, Jason caught a carp on paste so it was now all hands on deck for a paste attack.

Up to this point I hadn’t fed my 6-metre line or my edge lines but it was now time to ring the dinner bell. I cupped out a large ball of Scopex and micros onto my paste line and one each to my edge lines. I have learned from painful experience that when paste fishing, you should only cup in some feed after each hooked fish. In the past, I had been using a cadpot to drop in small amounts of feed at every put-in. That only brought the fish up in the water, resulting in multiple foul hookers. And we all know what foul hookers make… (about 2 grand a week)… oh no… I mean lots of lost fish right? I’m a slow learner and it took me a long time to figure out that simple solution… doh!

Anyway, it was now time for a good look around to see whether the carp were on the top, have a cup of tea and check out what the opposition were up to. I could hear lots of splashing about coming from peg 10 and so it was no surprise that the ‘Windmill Wonderman’, Sean Townsend, was hammering out the carp for a pastime. It looked like the guy on peg 11 was fishing short and he was catching too. The guy on peg 12 seemed to be struggling on what has become a bit of a fickle peg just lately. I couldn’t see peg 14 but I think Geoff on peg 7 was struggling a bit, although I did see him net a couple of carp.

Right, onto my paste line with a large ball of paste. I don’t know why but I was expecting some instant action… but it didn’t happen. A look down both edge lines also proved fruitless. FFS! Not another one of those days… Well, I had no choice but to persevere on the 6-metre line and as I had not had any indications, I dropped in another large ball of Scopex and micros. More edge work only produced a tiny perch to a large dendrobena so I totally gave up on that. Now, with around 2 hours left, all I had in the net was one carp. Jason had 3 or 4 by this time.

Then, finally, the carp arrived on my 6-metre paste line. Over the next 100 minutes or so, I had 7 more carp in the net and 3 carp lost. I was just beginning to enjoy myself when some silly bugger shouted… “All out!” FFS! Just when it was getting interesting. Well, all of my 8 carp were quite small by Windmill’s standards and weighed just 41 pounds in total, putting me around halfway down the table. I’m beginning to think of myself as the ‘halfway man’… it’s so sad! See the results image showing pegs 10, 14 and 11 taking the top 3 places. Well, a place in the Bonanza 1000 final still eludes me and all I can do is keep trying until the bitter end.

In the meantime, I have club matches to attend to. The next one is the Ian Chapple Memorial Open across both lakes at Whitehouse Farm. This is a charity match where we raise funds for Cancer Research, a subject that recently came too close for comfort in my case. So, I’ll be more than happy to be a part of it whatever the outcome. However, I’ll be coming back to Windmill again soon for another tortuous event, which could very easily send me over the edge at this rate… keep you posted!

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