Silverfox Match Angling: Thursday 19/05/2016 - Harescombe Fishery - Cost Cutter

Thursday 19 May 2016

Thursday 19/05/2016 - Harescombe Fishery - Cost Cutter - Match lake

It was back to Harescombe with my Apprentice Pensioner Geoff Francis. It was another reasonable turnout today with 18 entrants. After the usual breakfast it was into the draw bag and out comes “unlucky for some” peg 13 – which was to leave me out of pocket. Second time this term I have drawn the peg and it is looking even worse for wear with the far bank wooden piling collapsing and each side margins similarly collapsing leaving no bank side cover or an even bottom (pictured below). Nonetheless I was optimistic until Mr. Jinx - Terry Girdlestone arrived on peg 14. Matey Geoff was on next peg 11.

I set up the usual two rigs with the 4x10 Yoof being suitable for both the RH margin and over (after adding 6 inches) to the tilting piles.

I started shirt on he F1 rig with 4mm semi-hards over pellet and had a good first 30 minutes catching six Skimmers and five decent f1’s and as per usual the swim died. Not to worry keep loose feeding the margin and try over with meat over 2mm pellet. Plenty of bites ensued but very few fish graced the net, but plenty of missing meat. The bites were from Silvers I did have a couple of Skimmers and F1’s. In the meantime Terry had caught very little fishing conventionally so he switched to the mechanical method namely the “Jig-rig” and Terry started to catch an F1 every few minutes. I tried the F1 rig a few times I even opened another line at top-set plus two to no avail. So back out over to the piles and whilst shipping out and for no apparent reason my number 4 snapped clean in half – bugger. I did have a spare and reluctantly put it on but this only produced one more F1 and another load of missed bites. I decided to bin the long line and sulk in the margin. The upshot was that in between catching Skimmers I added some decent F1’s to 3lb. Terry had bagged throughout the match so we were all fishing for the remaining two coined places.

I finished the match with 17lb 13oz of Skimmers and my Carp weighed 43lb 14oz for a total of 61lb 11oz to scrape in to third spot. I was delighted with this from this peg.

As stated Terry Girdlestone (pictured right with his third weigh) won the match from peg 14 with 102lb 14oz mostly caught at 12 metres. Terry explains how he fished the Jig-rig in the video below. I personally couldn’t fish this method as you don’t strike at bites with the method being much mechanised! It won’t be long before there are control wires running up the pole to operated the pre-programmed feed pot and to automatically strike at any movement probably control by a smart phone App! I wonder what Max Winters would make of these types of fishing. That said I am happy to compete with it using traditional methods.