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....