Sunday 21^st July – Ian Chapple Memorial Match, Whitehouse Farm – A Practically Perfect & Pleasant Day

Today’s event was the annual Ian Chapple Memorial match fished across both lakes at Whitehouse Farm. Ian was the Alcove Club match secretary for a number of years and was instrumental in getting carp stocked into both lakes. At the time, it wasn’t a popular idea with everyone and it has certainly resulted in a marked decline of the once thriving tench population. Nevertheless, match weights have improved dramatically across both waters.

There were 21 anglers booked in for this one and amazingly they all turned up. The current match secretary, Jason Pitman, decided to put 11 pegs on Margaret’s Lake and 10 pegs on George’s. I really wasn’t too bothered where I ended up but I don’t make any secret of the fact that Margaret’s is my favourite of the two lakes. The forecast was for dry and sunny weather with light winds. So, what more could you ask for… well, a few fish I suppose.

With everyone assembled and raffle tickets sold out within minutes, it was time for the draw. Well, in goes the hand of fate and out comes peg 6 on Georges Lake. I’ve drawn this one a few times over the years and I have almost always managed to find at least one carp under the willow tree to the left-hand side. For some reason, it also has a resident shoal of quality rudd here in the right-hand margin and the skimbos quite often oblige at around 7-10 metres. Plus… you can easily reach the island with a feeder, so not a bad peg by any stretch of the imagination.

When I got to my peg, I could see that the willow tree had grown quite a lot since I was last there. The branches were now right down into the water, which would make it a bit tricky to land anything. Presentation would also be limited so I decided not to bother fishing for carp today and just focus on the silvers. I wanted to keep my fishing simple too so I set up a 4-metre whip for catching the rudd to my right-hand side, an 8-metre pole line for the skimbos and a maggle feeder for the chub tight to the island.

My skimbo line was 5 feet deep and I selected a ‘Kev Murch’ special pencil float for here. These floats are super slim and offer very little resistance. My hook was a fine wire size 16 tied to 0.11mm Guru N-Guage hooklength. For the whip, I set up a slimline 0.1 gram Chianti style float to fish 16 inches deep with just one no.11 shot placed 6 inches from the hook and the rest fixed directly below the float. My chosen hook for this method was a size 20 Drennan Silver Fish tied to an 0.8mm Accu Power hooklength. My choice of maggle feeder was a 20-gram Kamasan Black Cap.

So, on the all-in, I cupped out a large ball of Scopex groundbait laced with micros to the 8-metre line. Then I chucked out the maggle feeder to the island. I began throwing in a few loose maggles to my right-hand side in preparation for later. There were fish coming to the maggles immediately, which was a good sign. My first fish on the maggle feeder was a skimbo of around 8 ounces, followed by a small chub of about the same stamp.

I gave it an hour on the feeder but there were no signs of any big chub and I’m sure if they were feeding I would have known it by now. What was feeding though was the skimbos. My 8-metre line was fizzing like a Jacuzzi so I had to go take a look. On my first put-in, with paste on the hook, I latched onto a skimbo of about a pound, followed by 3 more before it went a bit quiet. So, I dropped in another large ball of Scopex and micros and went onto my whip line.

I had been loose feeding maggles right from the off and the fish here were feeding confidently. I began catching a fish a chuck… luvverrly! The rudd were averaging 4-6 ounces apiece and it was absolute sheer pleasure catching them on the whip. I would have been happy to carry on doing this for the rest of the match but my 8-metre line came back to life and so I had no choice but to get back out there. There were so many bubbles coming up, it looked like an Aero advert!

A small, pea-sized ball of paste was lowered in and 5 minutes later out comes a 2lb bream. I had 2 more big skimbos before losing one that went absolutely mental. I thought it was a carp at first but a string of slime on the line said otherwise. Well, I had a few more skimbos before it died again. So, another ball of Scopex and micros went in while I went back onto the rudd, which were still there in numbers… waiting. Now, although I was still catching on the whip, the fish were getting a little more wary.

Bites became lightning fast and I was losing just as many as I was catching. At this point, I reckoned I had about 5-6 pounds of them but my skimbo line was fizzing again so for the last 15 minutes I went out there and caught another two about a pound each before losing a much bigger one just before the all-out! Only one carp had been caught on the lake by Jon Amato who struggled for an age to control it and finally land it. That was a 10-pounder and together with his 15lb net of silvers from favoured peg 19, he had enough to comfortably win the lake.

My catch consisted of a magical bag of silver, bronze and gold for 16lb 13oz and second place. I think if I hadn’t become so preoccupied with catching rudd on the whip I could have had a lot more big skimbos but I had a great day and was more than content with second place. The top silvers prize went to Anthony Hole with 16lb 1oz and Andy Gard secured third with 15lb 8oz. Quite a few carp were caught on Margaret’s Lake with youngster Cam Smith getting the better of his more experienced competitors.

This was Cam’s first match but he is no stranger to carp fishing, having put his name on a few big doubles already this season. All in all, the match was a great success with over £300 being raised for Cancer Research UK. Well, I’ll be off to Windmill again on Thursday for the midweek Costcutter and then back there again for another stab at the elusive Bonanza 1000 Qualifier. Surely it’s my time… Keep you posted!

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