Monday 17/10/2011 - Stafford Moor October Festival Day One - Woodpecker

We were out for dinner last night in the New Inn at Roborough. Nice local pub complete with the village drunk (been in there all day – me thinks). After a good pork and pineapple casserole in comes about ten hikers. Not ordinary hikers, these were from Barnstaple and were “All night Hikers” and were just starting out – they all had the same livery – “We do it all night”! Best not look this lot in the eye. And I thought the Bridgwater folk were strange!
After a Mark Tanner breakfast it was off to the draw, joining the queue of 80 Anglers. We were all presented with a polo shirt and a few bags of GOT pellets. If I don’t win any coin it will be the most expensive item of clothing I have bought. However, I am hoping as the week progressive that it will become less valuable!

Mark and Glenn drew the same section – Emily’s and dam of Josephs – luckily for me they were on Emily’s as there were four blanks on Josephs and I fear we would have been on our way home otherwise.

I was next to draw and out comes the peg I drew in the last match I fished, theMaver Pairs – peg 20 on Woodpecker. There is always good advice given out And I always listen to all of it before deciding what to do. Mel King, Brian Shanks and gentle giant Stu Foale are always worth the listen. Arriving at the peg the wind was blowing at me from 11 o clock, but just gentle enough for the waggler. So I set up a deep waggler, a shallow waggler, a 4x14 Jolly to be fished at 10 metres with soft pellet and a paste rig to fish over the same line (the peg isn’t 9 foot deep as published), finally a Ronnie rig to fish in the margin with caster. I decided on a gentle approach starting on the 6 mm expander over hard 4’s, to my amazement this resulted in nowt, not even an indication. In to the margin where I had been heavily (for me) feeding caster and I had two small Ronnie’s and one 8 oz Perch – then nothing. So out on the shallow waggler and by this time the wind had increased making presentation almost impossible with presentation lasting about ten seconds. So it was out on the full depth waggler which in reality was about three foot deep ¾ across. I was soon left wonderment at the size of scale that was left on the hook. Presentation was still not good enough; if I dragged it through it would lead to a foul hooker. So I succumbed and went back to the car and got the lead rod! The upshot was that I landed ten Carp on the banded 8 mm pellet, breaking on one. I kept feeding my pole lines and did the rounds from time to time. A few small Skimmers finally arrived on the 10 metre line landing 5lb of them. I spent an unproductive last hour on the lead.
What I found was that if you kept feeding 8’s over the lead the Carp would move up in the water allowing access underneath for the Skimmer which pecked at the hard pellet. So it was a question of stop feeding until the carp followed the bait down. However, I would catch one or two, subsquently the peg would die. I put this down to the fish tearing off in the shallow water scaring the few others away.

I weighed 74lb 8oz for 3rd in section and ninth overall. One out of a reduction in the cost of the Polo shirt!!

I am looking forward to fishing Josephs lake tomorrow.

Glen did well weighing 33lb 12oz for third in his section off Emily’s 7 and had a section pick up by default. However, can’t say the same for Mark who weighed 8oz off Emily’s peg 2, but not last of the Bristol boys because Bela blanked and Chris Davis had 5oz!

Mike Duckett did fish having made a miraculous recovery and caught 77lb until he broke his pole on peg 10 Woodpecker.

The match was won by Dave Churchwood (pictured right) with 132lb 5oz from peg 3 on Woodpecker. Dave caught on the shallow waggler until the wind got up making the last hour difficult. Dave fed 4 pints of 8’s with the same banded.

Full Result:

1. Dave Churchwood 132-05-0 peg 3 Woodpecker
2. Bob Clarke 129-08-0 peg 36 Tanners
3. Neil Cottee 126-04-0 peg 28 Woodpecker
4. Gary Thorpe 120-14-0 peg 15 Tanners
5. A. Mooreton 111-0-0 peg 26 Woodpecker
6. Mark Thomas 82-08-0 peg 10 Tanners
……
9. Mike Nicholls 73-13-0 peg 20 Woodpecker