Heather Dyett Memorial

The Ballyhaunis Angling Club held there first ever Memorial match in honour of veteran angler Bill Dyett's wife who sadly passed away earlier on in the year.
 Bill, is a long standing UK angler and now resides here in Ireland for the last 8 years, before moving over Bill and his wife (Heather) had frequented Counties Leitrim and Roscommon fishing as many venues as they could since the 70's travelling back and forth up to 6 times a year for the amazing fishing and scenery Ireland has to offer.
One of Heathers favourite venues to fish was the River Suck, Donamon, Co Roscommon. It was decided by Bill and myself that this would be a great place to hold the event as the access is brilliant and the large Popular trees on the far bank offer amazing shelter from the great summer weather we are getting at the minute!

The draw took place at 09:30 with fishing from 11:00am till 4:00pm, Section A was filled and section B only had 1 spare peg left in it so the match was looking to be a good one.
I chose not to set up the feeder rod today as i was confident that the resident roach could be tempted into feeding fairy easily on the pole line as i had about 4m of water in front of me at 13m , i mixed up a dark groundbait mix containing Browning Black Magic and VDE Black Secret, in this i had a handful of casters and hemp, with a pinch of fresh pinkies

Rigs for today was simple, i had a 1g Cralusso Alan with 4xNo 10 droppers spread out over 1m from a bulk of No8's to the hook on a  0.12mm  Browning Hybrid main line to a size 20 Tubertini hook on a 0.10mm hook length of the same line to a No3 Elastic.
I then had a slightly heavier 1.5g Alan Float with 3 No10 droppers spread out over 60cm from bulk to hook, using the same line and hooks as my first rig.
The last rig I had set up was a 2g double bulk rig, again it was a Cralusso Alan set up on a 0.14mm Browning Hybrid line, a size 18 Tubertini hook to an 0.12mm Hook length, shotting was an Olivette positioned 30cm from the hook with 3xNo10's pushed together just above the hook length knot (15cm Hook length) this will be used if it becomes a bagging match and need to get the bait down quicker

On the whistle I cupped in 3 hard orange sized balls and 1 softer ball at 13m, i laid the rig in up stream to allow my baited hook to to reach the bottom just over my initial feed area, first put in produced a Roach of 60g (2oz), this continued for about 4 hours cupping in 1 ball every 30 mins or so and loose feeding hemp and caster every put in, the last hour slowed up probably due to the couple of small jack pike that had decided to move in for some easy pickings :-)

Fishing wasn't up to its usual standards for the River Suck but every one caught fish and it was an enjoyable day had by all,

1. Leigh Maitland (Browning) - 6.700kg (Pole/Caster)
2. Shane Dunne (Ireland/Tubertini) - 2.600kg (Feeder/maggot)
3. Marcus Kirwan (Roscommon) - 2.240kg (Pole/Maggot)
4. Steven Dyett (The Host) - 2.200kg (Pole/Maggot

Ballyhaunis AC would like to thank Tooman Angling for the donation of 2 €50 voucher that was awarded to Steven Dyett and David Morris, Also a big thanks to Steve Dyett who travelled from England to fish and for providing the shield for the competition.

We are now taking names for the 2012/13 winter league, if anyone is interested or requires any further information please email Leigh@coarseandmatch.com

Match 5 'The Mudflats'

Needed a win on this match and previous experience on this venue told me the pole will out fish the feeder, I drew peg 15 just under the wires, it was 13m out to get into the actual river past the reeds, first of all I plumbed my feeder line and found at 25 turns I was just on the inside of the main flow and a 1.5oz glass tip was perfect and a 35g feeder held well, next to plumb up on the pole, I didn't see much point coming onto a 10 or 11m line due to the reeds so just settled on 13m, I put up a 1.5g Drennan Trio on 0.12mm Browning Hybrid main line with a size 18 Tubertini Series 2 hook attached to 0.10mm of the same hook length. Choice of elastic was a doubled 4 Preston original slip.

I always set my pole up at 13m with 1 top kit with what I plan to be my main rig up and plumb with this first, this will generally give you an idea on the water in front of you and you can set your other rigs up according to what you want them to do for that swim. i had about 1.5m of depth and there was a fair pull from the current which was good, i also chose to set up a 3g Cralusso Torpedo to hold bottom to present a stationary bait in the hope to pick up a bonus fish every now and then.
To be honest i didn't really think i would catch on the pole line as there was no real depth and the catches during the week were all on the feeder at 25-40 turns out.

On the whistle i cupped in 6 hard balls of Groundbait made up of VDE Black Secret, Supercup and 25% Black Leam to add some weight, in this i added some hemp a small handful of caster and some dead pinkies, looking up the bank on my section i noticed only 1 other had chose to feed a pole line.

After a few chucks with the feeder to get some food out i started getting the odd Roach, nothing of any size but i seemed to be the only one catching in the section, on every cast i pinged out 5 or 6 casters on the pole line in the hope that a few fish may move in, about 30 mins later and only a few fish in the net i decided to try the pole, i baited up with a single caster and 30 seconds later I'm in to a nice roach of about 150g, this continued through out the match with an average fish being around 100g, i continued to catch throughout the match only topping up my grounbait when the bites slowed down a bit.

I finished up winning the section and the overall match with 6.700kg, i tried the flat float on a few occasions but they seemed to want a moving bait on this day
I won't be fishing the next league match due to the 'All Ireland' in Killishandra


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Match 4 Kesh Lake

After a few shitty matches, (i won't go into them),  I felt I needed to get a bit of a result here, my first line of attack was to be the pole fished at 13m with a feeder rod set up for about 30- 35 turns. I drew ball 10 from the draw bag which i was happy enough with as I'd heard these are the deeper pegs, i humped all my gear down to my peg, I had Padzer to my right and Cliff to my left.

I plumbed up at 13m and had just under 1m in depth, i chucked out the bomb to see what sort of depth i could find and only found weed beds from around 20 turns outwards, BOLLOX ! so 20 turns and a count of 2  was my only line of attack really, i couldn't see anything being caught on the pole line to be honest so just had to work the feeder. I blew the whistle to start us off and pinged out 7 or 8 balls of groundbait laced with caster on the catty and fished over the top, had a few fish straight away, lost 9 feeders and god knows how many hook lengths through out the day on the mass family of Zebra Mussels that live in peg 10, i probably lost as much as i caught to be honest but nothing i can do about it now, I think if i fished a fixed waggler i would have had a better result and would possibly go back to this peg to get it right... no rush though...

I finished up 2nd in section and 3rd overall beaten by 40g (Padzer) for second and 540g (Larry) for first

 Larry

 Padzer

Leigh

With 4 matches now gone and a  2,3,5 and a 2 now under my belt it doesnt look like i'll be picking anything up in this Summer League...

Next match is on the Mudflats....

The First Qualifiers

The beginning of the 'Summer Season' hasn't really started off too well for me to be honest, i fished my first ever Irish Float Qualifier for the Irish Team this year which was held down in cork, i chose to miss the first one on the River Barrow mainly due to the fact that the section it was supposed to be on seemed to be void of fish as a few of us found out the week before, this could have been somewhat of a fatal mistake (mistake No1) as the section was moved and the fishing seemed ok, and Cork.... well !

After already fished Innishcarra a few times in the year and hearing reports of it still fishing it tits off i set myself up for a good day of speed fishing (mistake No2) and in turn hoped for some quality bags of Roach with the odd Bream thrown in for good measure. I chose to fish Rooves Bay on the practise day as this had been the hardest of the sections during previous festivals with the Graveyard being the better. To put it no better way, the fishing there was shite ! At the draw the next morning no one wanted to pull Rooves out of the bag and thankfully i pulled a peg i had fished already earlier in the year on the Graveyard stretch, so going on previous experience and local reports i figured i would set up for catching around 250 fish in a 4hour period, this can be done in Cork usually with no problems at all.

I didn't pay much attention to my Slider line (mistake No3) as I'd set up my pole line at 10m with a 6m whip and then a 5m whip for when i got them in close. I didn't have a massive array of top kits available as i was using my new Browning Z12 and was waiting for top kits to arrive.

This didn't bother me too much as i just set up a few positive rigs at a full top 3 deep (mistake No4), the Z12 top 3 is the equivalence to a Daiwa top 4. What i should have done was to use my Daiwa G8 with a selection of top 5's set up so i could fish a 13m line at 5m deep and waited until all my sections had arrived before using the Z12, but being a new toy an all, i had to have a play...

After 30 seconds of the 'All in' i looked at Tommy Lawton and commented on how slow the fishing was, he agreed ! 4 hours on and i had caught fk all and finished a joint last in my section!

I leaned a massive lesson on this match and that was to NEVER assume anything......

The Begining

Well here's my first 'Blog' ever in the world of 'Blogging' not to sure  what its about to be honest but i guess the only way to find out is to dive in and try !!

Most of my life is now revolved around Coarse angling so this will be pretty much an account of what i get up to from day to day, some will agree, some won't. if you don't agree then don't read on and go moaning about it to someone else !, it's a Blog, you read it by choice...

I can be outspoken and stubborn but all for the good of fishing, if i was straight laced then it wouldn't be a very interesting read :-)

I currently help out in Tooman Tackle for some bait and ground bait each week so i can get out on the banks with out the missus having a moan in the ever decreasing economic climate, also i am sponsored my 'Browning-Fishing' so all my references will include either one of these companies as they make my angling life a whole lot easier.