This year for Christmas we decided to spend it with my side of the family in Milton Keynes, any time I'm back I'll try and get a small bit of fishing in of some sort, this normally entails fishing for Chub, Dace or Roach on the River Great Ouse on borrowed tackle from family members which is never a good thing as there's nothing like using your own gear.
This year was a little different as we had booked in plenty of time I had a chance to jump on a Pike Match which if went well would qualify me to fish the British Pike Championships held on the Peterborough Fens in Nov 2015. Now, the chances of this were very slim from the start, I'm fishing against 25+ actual Pike anglers on there own syndicate water, who pretty much know each peg like the back of there hands, what baits work and what methods best produce.
This year was a little different as we had booked in plenty of time I had a chance to jump on a Pike Match which if went well would qualify me to fish the British Pike Championships held on the Peterborough Fens in Nov 2015. Now, the chances of this were very slim from the start, I'm fishing against 25+ actual Pike anglers on there own syndicate water, who pretty much know each peg like the back of there hands, what baits work and what methods best produce.
This match is run on overall weight rather than 1 big fish so I thought the best thing to do was just try to catch small jacks so i didn't opt for large herring or mackerel for my baits, just a few small sardines, some 3-4 oz roach, a packet of smelt and 2 pints of maggots.
After paying my entry, in the dark ! (07:30) and chatting to a few of the locals the general feeling was you would be lucky to get a bite at all on Hyde Lane, one fella hasn't had a fish in the last 8 matches on here! so with all my piking knowledge behind me (a quick read of a Mick Brown book and a few childhood memories) i wasn't overly confident..
I drew peg 22 which was nice and sheltered from the wind, i had a fallen tree each side of me, a small channel of about 8ft at 18 turns of a big reel i had borrowed, the peg seemed to shallow up the further i went out so it was easy to make a plan, stick one rod 1m out from one of the trees with a legered Sardine, another rod with a popped up roach in the channel and to loose feed maggots on an imaginary pole line with a view to wobble a smelt through it every now and then. Simples :-)
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| Bit of a different view than I'm used too.. |
The all in was called at 08:30, rods went in, buzzers set and i parked myself on my chair ready for the onslaught of 20 and 30lb Pike...i had read a Mick Brown book after all !
45 minutes past and i had been loose feeding maggots regularly now for around half an hour and with no upper doubles showing on my dead bait rods ? It was time to wobble a smelt.
Rather than just wind in the popped up roach i twitched it in very slowly just in case Bertie the 30 was watching nearby.. she wasn't.
First chuck out on the smelt and BOOM! a take in seconds! a small fight later and i have my first ever competition pike on the bank :-) safely unhooked and sacked up i made the call to get it weighed and witnessed, i estimated it to be about 3 1/2lbs so i was delighted when it weighed in a 4lb 14oz.
A few more chucks produced nothing so back in goes the dead bait and back to loose feeding, another 45 minutes pass and a repeat of the previous actions results in another slightly bigger pike of 6lb 14oz so that's 11lb 12oz on the scales in 90 minutes, a good start.
Word down the bank was someone had caught a fish for 13lb and another had 2 for 11lb so looks like I'm sitting in 2nd at the half way point. The next and last few hours passed and all I could manage was 1 more pike at exactly 1lb giving me a end of match total of 12lb 14oz which I was happy enough with, at least i caught and would definitely be in the top half all going well.
Taking only 10 minutes to pack up i can really see the draw to this style of fishing compared to lugging all your normal match gear, setting up feeder rods, top kits, rollers blah blah blah, do they do bank pike matches in Ireland? An idea?
Anyway I headed back to where the draw took place to see how I had done, giving the fact that I hadn't done too well for the last 3.5hrs of the match i wasn't expecting much i was just glad i had caught a few and didn't show myself up in front of the pro's.
A bit of a chat with the lads and as anticipated there was a lot of blanks, no one around me on any of the 3 shores i could see had caught but there was some decent catches from the bank they call the 'Canal Bank'. The best and winning catch was 2 fish for 24lb followed buy 2 fish for 16lb for 2nd, third place was 1 fish for 13lb........ leaving me in 4th ! :-) imagine if i had read 2 books !!
Finishing 4th put me just out of the money but better than any money was the fact i qualified for the British Pike Championships run by the Angling Trust on the Peterborough Fens in November this year, one happy angler :-)
Could i have done better ? of course, even when you win a match your brain goes through how you could have improved on your catch, my feeling on the drive home was that maybe i should have fished a suspended dead roach under a float mid water as the little bit of wind would have kept it bobbing around. I think loose feeding to draw in the silvers defiantly paid off and its something i will try again.....
Tight lines for 2015 and watch this space for some piking trips, i have now read a few more books, read countless online articles and ordered some Quantum Specialist gear for dead bait wobbling and light lure fishing now i just have to figure out how to catch more......
A bit of a chat with the lads and as anticipated there was a lot of blanks, no one around me on any of the 3 shores i could see had caught but there was some decent catches from the bank they call the 'Canal Bank'. The best and winning catch was 2 fish for 24lb followed buy 2 fish for 16lb for 2nd, third place was 1 fish for 13lb........ leaving me in 4th ! :-) imagine if i had read 2 books !!
Finishing 4th put me just out of the money but better than any money was the fact i qualified for the British Pike Championships run by the Angling Trust on the Peterborough Fens in November this year, one happy angler :-)
Could i have done better ? of course, even when you win a match your brain goes through how you could have improved on your catch, my feeling on the drive home was that maybe i should have fished a suspended dead roach under a float mid water as the little bit of wind would have kept it bobbing around. I think loose feeding to draw in the silvers defiantly paid off and its something i will try again.....
Tight lines for 2015 and watch this space for some piking trips, i have now read a few more books, read countless online articles and ordered some Quantum Specialist gear for dead bait wobbling and light lure fishing now i just have to figure out how to catch more......
