Sunday 07/02/2010 - Hillview Open

Hillview Fishery is where the South West Anglers meet Midland Anglers. Through this forum I have heard that Gentleman Ken Giles has retired from match fishing to spend more time woolly hooking. A shame really as Ken is a mountain of knowledge and was always forth coming. He did have a spell fishing Hillview as did Max Winters, who believe it or not learnt how to fish the paste there!

It was nice to have an e-mail from Chris Fox inviting me to fish the Kev Perry series. I have decided to fish it for the first time. They are a good bunch of lads that fish it and very hard to beat on this venue. Looking forward to it; however, I might be missing one match due to another clash with the Landsend League!!

Back to Hillview Fishery with Bela again this week end. It was good to see Tim Ford there also – obviously looking for some decent fishing after finishing the various winter leagues on the River and Canal - and he did!

With number 1, 2 and 4 Canals in the draw bag this week, I was hoping for Canal 2 which seems to give the more consistent all round sport per peg. However, I did better than that I drew peg 46 on Canal 1 (see picture right of Canal 1 pegging) which was one peg away from where it was won last week. However, I know from experience the fish aren’t often on these pegs with them preferring the earlier pegs 41 and 42. I initially set up two rigs – a 4x12 modified PB14 for fishing corn at 30 inches deeps up the far shelf and a 0.3 gram – wire/wire Sensas Jean François for down the track. I had a 20 Tubertini 808 to 0.1 hook length on both rigs – but that didn’t last long! On the whistle I potted in some micro down the track and some micro and 4 pieces of corn over. I started down the track with corn, but no indications, so on to the pellet – no indication – on to the maggot and which produced one 4 oz Carp and two 3oz Ronnie’s. I was struggling down the tack and although it was far too early I decided to go over nontheless. First put on with corn and a foul hook Carp and that was the end of this rig (my rigs usually last longer than this). So on went a TBF xl 12 which takes three no 12 shot and one piece of corn. However, this time the rig had my usual 0.14 mm hook length to a no 20 808. Next cast I landed a 3lb foul hooker. After a spell of loosing three Foul hookers (Nigel Seabright on the next to me had by now lost nine foul hookers) I decide to shallow up a bit and stop feeding micro pellet instead I fed just 4 grains of corn after each fish. This worked for a while - landing Carp to 6lb. I then had a blank spell and decided to introduce some micro pellet which helped pull the fish back in to the swim. Having sorted the feeding I caught decent size carp to the end although I did only manage three in the last hour (well in the last ten minutes of the last hour). I weighed 63lb 6oz for first overall and a pick up of £50.

Bela had drawn peg 86 on number 4 Canal and did well to win that section with 43lb 9oz – all caught on maggot fished to the far bank, rotating two swims. For the record Bela Bakos name is of Hungarian decent. However, Bela is British, his parents escaping the Russian insurgents in 1956.

Runner up was Dave Greig from peg 42 with 51lb 9oz. Sorry Dave no picture my camera has broken – I don't think it was your Shrek "look alike" mug that did it though mate ( I will get a photo next time I'm up).

Full Result:

Mike Nicholls 63-06-0 peg 46
Dave Greig 51-09-0 peg 42
Gary Clarke 48-06-0 peg 58
Bela Bakos 43-09-0 peg 86
Tim Ford 41-06-0 peg 67
Neville Groves 39-08-0 peg 53