It was good to get back to Whiteacres after the pandemic enforced break, caravan instead of the usual lodge, plenty of the lodges being refurbished, and work still ongoing, Mark Broomsgrove as my caravan mate for the week.
Arrived Saturday afternoon and didn't fancy practising in the wind, so watch the F1 qualifying in the bar, before settling into the van. Sunday saw us a bit indecisive about where to fish, we walked round Pollawyn and saw Darren Vowles catching F1's on the pellet waggler and 8mm pellet. Liberated him of his rod and had a few on it, but Mark wanted to practice on Trelawny as he was on there on Monday, so we went round there. I half-heartedly set up, just a bomb rod and fished bomb and pellet, having a fish a chuck for the first 8 or 9 casts, then had to search round the peg for fish, Paul(Faiers) was also ambivalent about practicing so we pack up and watch Mark and Glenn (Calvert) for a bit, before we wrapped up and headed to the bar, before an early night in readiness for the first day.
My rotation was:
Trelawny
Jenny's/Python
Bolingey
Pollawyn
The festivals have reduced from 180 anglers down to 120, so some different pegging than in the past, also no communal draw in the mornings, the draw is done and put on the FB page just after 08:00 every morning.
I made a decision not to fish a method feeder any day, I just don't agree with it, self-hooking rig that I don't consider to be fishing as I want to do it.
Mondays draw put me on 25, I would have preferred to be on the other lake and expected the lake winner(and framers) to come from there. There was a strong wind blowing, seems like Cornwall had the highest winds and lowest temperatures in the country.... So a bomb rod and just my 11m Power Partner set up, as thinking of fishing 11m was highly optimistic given the wind.
Having previously been on here on a tough day and catching 21lb of roach had helped me out, I set up a rig that would catch roach and F1's if they fed. A rig for meat and a pellet rig. The meat rig being an old Mick Wilkinson Diamond pattern, which is very stable in rough conditions.
Started on the bomb and 8mm pellet and had a couple of F1's and a carp across, it was pretty slow going, but no one was catching, so i wasn't unduly concerned. I did try the short caster line, this did produce a short run of perch and decent roach, but soon died off, I picked a couple more fish off on pellet, before having a couple of carp and F1's on meat short towards the end. I wasn't surprised to be in the worst section on the lakes, but did win it, so a good start.
Tuesday and onto Trelawny, peg 24, it won the section the day before, so plenty of banter about drawing a flyer. Once again, the wind dictated that 11m was to be the most pole that came out of the bag and to fish all of that was probably more wildly optimistic than the day before.
Bomb set up for across, a waggler that came out of the bag and went away unused, as the wind never dropped enough to even contemplate using it. Pole rigs for meat, caster short and cast/maggot/worm 'long' - with long being about 8m if I was lucky.
Started across on the bomb and had a couple of quick fish, but after that it was a real struggle, tried a worm/caster line at 9m, another line with micros and a few different baits over it, caster short and it was pretty torrid, very windy and I was really struggling, couldn't even get a bite on a single maggot on a 22 and 0.08. I finally picked up a few roach. hybrids and a decent F1 on the caster and two very late on the meat, this left me with less than half the weight of section winner Glenn. For some reason Whiteacres took some of the result sheets off their FB pages, so no result sheets for today, but I weighed 21lb, the pegs to my left were my section and they weighed 22lb, 23lb, 30llb, 43lb and 7lb, leaving me with just 2 points, very disappointing. I didn't enjoy the day at all, cold, windy and unable to work out how to get a bite.
Wednesday saw me draw an end peg on Python - 36, so I had high hopes it would be a decent draw and I'd have a chance of winning the section again. I set up a led rod to fish to the island, just in case the wind got up, although the sun was out and it was a better day to be sat outside. Pole rigs were one of my homemade glass stemmed island floats for tight to the island, a Preston F1 Maggot float for the deeper water a metre off the island and a slim wire stem RW floats for the open water.
I expected to catch on pellets, but that didn't happen, so I switched to maggots and caught straight away across to the island after changing, I had a nice run of F1's and then hooked a decent carp that I wasn't expecting, took a while to get in on 0.10 fluorocarbon and a 20 F1 hook. I had to switch between a line in the open water and the island to keep the fish coming, I put 43lb on the scales to win the section, once again the lowest weight section, so no sniff of the superpool.
After this match 9 of us headed to The Pheasant at St Newlyn East and that was the first time we'd eaten here, I'd recommend it, nice food and a decent pint.
Thursday and couldn't afford to draw a bad one on Bolingey, peg 24 was against my name when the draw was published, concerned about the split section, as my section has pegs on two lakes, whereas all the other sections have the pegs on one lake, the 2 pegs on the back lake had been doing well in the section.
The size of the lake with both banks pegged means there really isn't a need to fish anything but the pole, but I did set up a bomb rod that never got used. Four pole rigs one for short, one for 13m and one for either edge, I then did set up a shallow rig, as they were moving around. Started short and had one bite, could have been a liner. Went out long where I fed a very small amount of pellets, this was pretty negative, but there had been a frost and whilst everyone else was sat in T shirts, I was under the trees and shaded from the sun wearing a fleece and a windstopper!
The day was turning into a repeat of Tuesday, struggling to get a bite, but I was sure it would come good. I was feeding pellets in the RH margin and did feed the LH margin with micros and maggots a bit earlier than I would usually, but I needed something to happen. Then fed a few micros on the 13m line and tried corn over it, again nothing. I did see a swirl in the LH edge and finally had a 3lber to go in the net, that appeared to be a loner as no more signs or bites in the edge in the next 15 minutes I tried it.
A switch to worm over the micros at 13m brought an instant response, a carrasio and a carp around 6lb, then four eels, struggling to remember the last time I caught four eels in one match, but I'm not sure it's a good sign when fishing for carp. I did manage another couple of carp on the same line, never had a bite short and one more down the edge that was 2 1/2 lb, so festival over as I only beat two in the section - I honestly have no idea what I would differently if I could revisit the match. As expected, the section was one from the other lake and peg 25 took advantage of the empty peg 26 and his long margin to catch from it.
As that was festival over, it was at least nice to have our traditional beer in the Perranporth Inn whilst waiting for the takeaway Indian to be prepared, I think the Massala on the high street has changed hands, the curry used to be excellent in there, this one was OK, but not anything to shout about.
Friday was my turn on Pollawyn, which had been fishing pretty hard, the draw given to me was 16, so if the lake fished to current form, that was another day without a lake win on the cards. The wind got up so the plan to fish the waggler was looking dodgy, I set up two anyway, one shallow and one at depth. Two bomb rods, one for bread and one for pellet. Four pole rigs, one to fish caster short and that would also cover 'deep shallow' further out. A rig for full depth with a banded hook, one without a band and the Mick Wilkinson Diamond for meat at 5m
Started on the bomb and bread, that resulted in 3 bites, a carp, an F1 and a bumped fish, a switch to bomb and pellet was no good. I tried a line at 13m with micros and corn, nothing on that, I switched to a worm line at 14.5m I only had one bite on that, a 2oz hybrid. Then a cautionary tale, I don't like to trust repaired pole sections, unless I know it was one clean break, I hadn't managed to replace the section before coming down here (see blog Viaduct 26th Feb) so had it repaired, 4 separate wraps and it didn't seem too bad, but the tree must have caused unseen damage and lifting the rig saw the section break and I was lucky to get all the sections back.
The caster line short did produce bites, but only small roach to start with, they got a little bigger and the line then died off. I could see others in the section catching on the method, so back out on the bomb - nothing doing. I was banking on my meat line coming good and intended to fish it for the last 2 hours. The meat line did give me some F1's around 3lb and a couple of carp, but ti was slow going in the middle of the 2 hours and I did try a meat feeder, having one carrasio on that before I caught the island with the hooklength and lost the lot. So back on the meat short and had another carp and decent F1.
I was expecting to be near the bottom of the section as I'd seen a few catching on the method, so I was surprised to see my 27.06 to take second in section, those better meat fish paying off. I was now ruing the two bad days on Trelawny and Bolingey.
So I ended up 32nd, feeling one more good day would have seen me sneaking into the top 10, one thing I did notice was my weight was the lowest of the top 64, showing my drawing remains consistent.....even if I get a good peg, its in a poor section.
A good week company wise, the weather was decent after the wind buggered off, picked up money for the couple of section wins and was quite sorry not to be staying for the Dynamite Festival this week.
Well done to Paul Nichols on his top ten finish.
