2013 Float only Trials, Practise Day

Firstly I have to apologise for no actual event pictures for this weekend, pictures throughout this blog will be used from previous posts, from my library or some proper dodgy diagrams...

Jason Ward and I decided to travel down to Cork together in my trusty van as it was looking like a 'Kitchen Sink' match (bring everything and more)

We left Ballyhaunis at 07:00 on the Friday so we could get down to have a practise and catch a few fish, having a day on a venue before any match is advisable as it will give you a feel for the place and a general idea of what's expected from you to catch, another very important thing to set you up for the day is a good feed before hand, this was taken care of in Charleville where we met Shane Dunne for a breakfast and a coffee.
We followed Shane for what seemed like the longest possible route to the first of the 2 sections, The Concrete. Jason and I had already decided we were giving the other section, The Garden Centre a go today and Shane had decided on this section.
3 lads was set up on the early pegs on the concrete, Gary Radcliffe, Brian Bohan and Phil Walton, all 3 of them was fishing a slider at a guess of 25-30 turns and each of them was catching small Roach, we had a chat with Tommy Lawton and he advised getting our Inniscarra permits sorted out before started to fish so a trip into Coachford was needed before we began.

We finally arrived at the garden centre at 12:30, Tommy Dowd, John Hayes, Fint Brennan, Bob Hulme and Peter Nolan was just there setting up from end peg 12 down to peg 8, we took a walk along the bank and chose pegs 3 and 4 for as there was a few trees kind of in the way on 5 and 6. It was 13:00 by the time we had our gear down on our pegs so a decision was made to fish from 14:30-18:30 then off for a few pints and a well deserved sleep.

Practice

1lt x Caster
0.5lt x Worm
0.5lt x Squatt
0.25lt x Pinkie
0.25lt x Maggots
17lt x Groundbait (VDE Superlake, VDE Secret and Black Crumb)
1lt x Hemp

My mission for this afternoon was to get everything spot on for the 2 days to follow as well as catch a few fish to comfirm i had it at least half right. I plumbed up the slider at 35 turns buy pushing my dropper shots and bulk down onto the micro swivel where the hook lenght will be attatched, the fist few chucks saw my float laying flat on the surface, this tells me my bulk and swivel are sitting on the bottom but my stop knot is set too deep and not making contact with the float.

Overdepth Slider

 A few adjustment later and my float is sitting perfect with just the tip showing, this now tells me that all my bulk is off the bottom, this isn't what your looking for just yet.

Underdepth

Another slight adjustment and i have my bulk just on the bottom and my stop knot just below the surface.

Perfect

I now have the depth (5m) so I slide my bulk up about 1.5m from the swivel and connect a size 16 Serie 18, 30cm 0.12mm hook length, I fold back the hook length and set my bottom dropper just above where the hook meets the mainline, my next dropper is set a a slightly greater distance again.
This set up has me fishing with the swivel and hook length on the bottom.

Rigs set up on the pole was a 1.5g Cralusso Alan to 0.12mm mainline, size 16 Serie 2 hook to a 15cm 0.10mm hook lenght on double 5 solid elastic through top 2 and the other was a 3g Alan to 0.14 main, size 14 Sensas 3405 hook to a 15cm 0.12mm hooklength on a solid No8 elastic running through top 3 sections.
I plumbed up at 13m and have just over 3m in front of me.
I fed 10 balls out via catapult at 35 turns, my recent practise over the last few weeks had paid off because my accuracy was perfect, tight and tidy.
5 balls went in on the pole line with a view to loose feed over the top and fish the slider until the fish came on the pole line.
I could see the Pete, Bob and Fint all catching on the slider at a steady rate, nothing big but they were catching, i had a half decent Roach on the slider after about 30 mins and that was it for at least another hour! so 90 mins in and i started to get bites, Jason still hadn't had a touch, then all of a sudden the fish switched on and fish came regularly, I noticed that when you inroduced a ball the fish would back off for a few minutes before feeding again, next time i fed i fired out 3 balls, this seemed to give me a longer catching period between feeding and still only a few mins to get a bite again. I tried a few things out, just off bottom, half depth, 1m over depth, 30cm over depth and it really didn't matter, the fish were there.
Both of us had been trying the pole line through out the afternoon with out even a touch, Bob had started catching on the pole late on so it kept the interest there and it wasn't until 18:00 that i had my first pole fish, then another and another, i used the heavier rig of the 2 as its very easy to swing the fish to hand once you broke down, it wasn't mental Cork style fishing but at least we had a few on both method and fine tuned our setups..
All the fish were small with a guesstimated weight of 3kg each, and a bit of a chat with the other lads, had us guessing that 5kg would be a very good weight to have the next day.
A phone call to Shane wasn't too promising either, fishing on the concrete was very bad, so a good draw on the Garden Centre would be great......

Day 1 to be continued....

2 Days on Lanesborough...

It has come round to that time of year again where the fish start to turn on a bit and a decent weight can be had if the right tactics and baits are used, its a little bit later and colder than last year but i believe that if the levels are right that there is always decent fishing to be had from the hot water stretch of the River Shannon in Lanesborough, Co Longford. I had a look at Paul Waghorns reports on his Lanseborough Angling Blog and he had mention an abundance of small Roach between 50 and 120g being caught  and a seemingly good number of Roach with an average weight of 200g  and the odd bonus fish of 340g+ in the mix.

 My views on this is if you lay off the loose feed and feed heavily using a sticky groundbait full of hemp and caster the smaller fish do not fill your swim, and the bigger stamp of fish can move in....

Sunday

Bait for the day

• 2 Pints of Caster
• 2 Pints Hemp
• 1 Pint Maggots
• 1 Pint Pinkies
• 2kg CC Black Magic
• 1kg CC River
• 2kg Black Crumb

Is there enough ?

After getting up late we arrived at 07:00 time to find 2 lads fishing 4 rods in the 'Burning Bush' swim and the peg just above it. i noticed a new method these lads were fishing that i must try sometime, basically what it looked like was a size 6 hook tied to 10kg+ line with 2 fixed 60g lead weighs approximately 20cm from there hook... similar to this..

Secret Setup

Between the gusher and these lads was a nice fella called Padraic (i think) just setting up from Kildare, after a bit of a chat he informs me that Paul McLoughlin and John Herrieven will be joining him shortly, i noticed that he wasn't setting up in the same way as the lads on his left, maybe he hadn't spotted there secret set up ;-)
Callyn and myself chose to fish between the gap and the bridge, i chose to fish the upstream peg out of the 2 of us just slightly down stream of the gap.

Tuesdays Peg

The waters levels are as low as i have ever seen them so i wasn't expecting too much depth maybe 1m max but guessed that would be enough to tempt a few fish, I always prefer to fish the pole in Lanesborough, to me its just better fishing and keeps me active from start to finish and looking at the other lads setup i wasn't equipped for the job ;-)...i just set up 2 topkits and a cupping kit in case i needed it, with a view to fish at 11m leaving the option to move out to 13m if i the fish back off, the first top kit had a No8 solid elastic running through 3 sections and the rig comprised of a 3g Drennan Trio float on 0.16mm Browning Hybrid mainline to a size 14 Tubertini series 18 hook on 0.14mm line of the same, before putting up any other rigs i will plumb up with the first to get an idea of the water in front of me, i shipped out with a heavy plummet to 11m and could just about see my ollivete sticking out of the water ! I had about 50cm of water at most at 11 and 13m so now i'm beginning to think bites will be hard come by.
Callyn was 15m down stream and had a good 1.2m in depth so at least he was happy and expecting fish...
(I didn't both my arse setting up another rig as i was thinking a flat float and the length of it was probably half the depth)
Paul and John had now arrived so had some more bank side chat to get on with, leaving Callyn to get started, he cupped in a few balls and started to catch instantly giving me a little hope i can draw the fish from him by feeding frequently  and being a loving father that i am :-)
I got back to my peg and balled in 4-5 balls and ran my float through, nothing on the first run, i popped in a nugget of groundbait with a few loose offerings and had my first fish, a nice Roach.

The First

This continued as long as i fed a nugget every put in the fish were lined up for the taking, my only thought now was had i brought enough bait with me to put together a decent weight,  the short answer was no!
still, there was plenty of fish to be caught so i had nothing to complain about. Callyn to the left of me was catching a bigger stamp and was well ahead but thankfully he had the urge to Piking so i managed to over take him to save face :-)
His first cast was the quickest take you have ever seen, the float hit the water on the cast and never came up then shot off down the river (John H witnessed this) It put up a nice fight and estimated at 4.5kg.

Picture doesn't do it justice

The fishing slowed off a bit so we called it a day mid afternoon with a view to come back Sunday and try and get up to the deeper pegs.
Callyn finished with 6.500kg which he could have doubled if he had fed more and not wondered of with the Pike rod.

I had a nice bag from the peg i was on and finished with 9.100kg of Roach and if i had more feed that too could have easily have increased.

Tuesday

Bait for the day

• 6 Pints of Caster
• 3 Pints Hemp
• 1 Pint Red Maggots
• 1 Pint Bronze Maggots
• 1 Tin of Corn
• 2kg CC Black Magic
• 2kg CC River
• 3kg Black Crumb

Tuesday morning i managed to get myself up at 05:15 and on the road for 05:30, i arrived just under an hour later and Larry Parkes had just got there before me, it was still very very low light so we was pretty confident no one else had got there before us and we got the pegs we wanted to fish, the bush and above.
After 10 mins at our pegs 4 lads arrived to fish the stretch, they also wanted to fish the same area we was on so it had paid off to get up that little bit earlier.

Rigs were simple for today, i had a decent depth of about 1.5m so i chose an 8g Cralusso Torpedo Tuning on 0.16mm main line to a size 12 Tubertini Serie 26 on 0.14mm Hybrid Line for fishing a stationary bait set 30cm over depth connected to grey Hydro through top 3, as you can see by the picture below a 8g flat sits perfectly in the flow (straight up) if your float leans up stream your float it too light, if it points down stream its too heavy, the heavy elastic allows you to pull right through the float for a better connection to the fish, something i was put on to by Rory Dunne last year, a light elastic will result in many missed bites.

8g Torpedo

The other rig was the same as on Sunday a 3g Drennan Trio on 0.16mm and a size 12 Tubertini Serie 18 on 0.14 hook length, the only difference is the top kit consists of 13H Elastic through top 3 with a puller kit, the puller kit is great in these situations as it allows me to use the soft elastic in case i hook into a lump and also once ship back i can pull the kit and swing fish up to 250g with ease rather than wasting time using a landing net.
I am not using my Z12 today but have chose to use Brownings new Black Magic Slimstar to see how it pans out on a bagging session

Black Magic Slimstar

Feeding the swim will be simple, I'll introduce a one handed balls of groundbait laced heavily with casters, some hemp and a few grains of corn every put in. By feeding slightly down stream of my pole tip and lowering my rig in on the same line every time in line with a far bank marker, give me total control over my rig. I may loose feed on occasion to draw a few fish up if needed

There was no initial balls introduced this time just a nugget then a run through, the second put it produced a fish, and so on, after probably 10 mins and constant feeding the stamp of Roach started to get a bit bigger and as time went on bigger fish started to make an appearance, i had a few Roach to 700g and 2 Bream to 1.8kg amongst a 32.5kg final weight.
As you can imagine you can go through a lot of bait fishing at this pace but if you want to catch well on the pole up here you have to put in the effort, the groundbait i used allowed me to mould a sticky ball very quickly and held the loose offerings together through the water and break up on the bottom.

Picture taken Sunday (less caster)

I was happy enough with the pole and felt it dealt well with swinging in bigger fish off the top kit, i have been informed they are not the Black Magics of the past but they are still a very strong pole, i got to really test out its performance when i hooked a landed a 4.100kg Pike, this, when having a strong pole coupled with a pulla kit really come into there own and the control you have when playing a hard fighting fish in a heavy flow was excellent, very enjoyable. makes you wonder would piking on the pole be worth a go ? people catch big Carp on the pole, why not a Pike ?

Great fun

My Final Catch

Larry chose to mainly loose feed for the best part of the day and the stamp of fish was much smaller, he had a similer amount of fish but they just wasn't stuffed with casters :-)..he did have a cracking Hybrid of over 1.5kg but when i tried to take a picture it managed to escape his grasp and flee back into the Shannon, he finished up with a total weight of 17.100kg.

The second weigh is underneath, my scales only go to 14kg

I will do a full review of the Slimstar once i have used it a few times, please feel free to leave any comments you wish.

Leigh