Silverfox Match Angling: Wednesday 25/06/2014 - Amalgamation Summer League - Round One

Wednesday, 25 June 2014

Wednesday 25/06/2014 - Amalgamation Summer League - Round One - Sabre Lake

It was the start of the Amalgamation Summer League with the first match at Sabre Lake. Breakfast at home today, but did get a coffee in the van opposite the venue.

The league is sold out with 24 booked in but we had 4 short due to holidays etc…It was nice to see the legend Colin Golding (pictured right) putting in appearance, peg 1 for him.

The Amalgamation has stocked 1000 - 8 to10oz Skimmers hopefully they will show. I was looking forward to the match and didn’t mind where I drew as long as it wasn’t the Bay of Biscay where the Lake is becalmed.

In to the draw bag and out comes peg 19 which was on the edge of Biscay and for company I had the other river legend Mike Jones on peg 20. Unfortunately for Mike he was further into the bay than me so I should scrap the Silvers battle that was coming.

After plumbing around I found the depth a bit disappointing only finding at 9 metres 4 feet. I set up two Ronnie rigs one on the 4 metre whip and the other on the top-set to hand. The third rig was a 4x14 Jolly – all Silver rigs. I then realised that I had only brought my Carp top sets so walked round and borrowed a top-set off Harry Muir with a no 6 in. I attached the Jolly rig to this.

I started by feeding small balls of GB laced with caster on the top-set line with caster hook bait and the first fish was a Gudgeon. Long time since I caught one of these. I caught a few small Rudd, Ronnie’s and bottle top Skimmers for a while, all of them except Gudgeon were caught in the last 12 inches on the drop.

I then opened a CW&C line at 9 metres at 10-0-clock and first try with worm resulted in a foul hooked Carp which I decided to let go on Harry’s no 6!

The upshot was that after trying allsorts I fished the last two hours with banded hard fours over micro missing lots of bites and bumping just as many 2-3oz Ronnie’s. Once the micro settled on the bottom I couldn’t get a bite so re-feeding was essential.

I would get what I thought was fish fizzing over the feed but I was fooled because if you watched it carefully a lump of black silt would pop up. Hence the reason I think I couldn’t catch on the bottom. The feed in conjunction with the hot weather was reacting with silt.

I weighed 9lb for second in the Silvers just piping Mike Jones. I am sure the roles would have been reversed if we had swapped pegs.

The match was won by Malcolm Ockwell (pictured right with the Silvers winner) with 51lb 4oz from peg 3. Malcolm started fishing for Silvers but notice Carp in his LH margin where he had been feeding maggot and pellet. Malcolm caught on various baits.

The Silvers was won by Doug Sutton with 19lb 8oz from peg 14. Doug caught on his favoured method small feeder with GB and maggot with maggot or worm hook baits. It looked as if Doug was the only angler to land on the new stocked Skimmers.

Full Result: