Robin Hood AC - Round 5 - Barnburgh Lakes, Doncaster

Chris Moorhead and I agreed that today we have the 2nd leg in the club knockout competition.  I had an almighty lead of 6lb 3oz which I had carried over from Hayfield.  It was all to play for.

Barnburgh Lakes is now my adopted home.  I have fished here (excluding the feature that I did with Lee Kerry) 6 times and my lowest weight has been 65lb from peg 9 on the middle lake going up to 163lb from peg 1 on bottom pond.

Barnburgh Lakes - Today we were on Pond 2

There are 23 pegs on the middle lake at Barnburgh Lakes and by the time of the draw there were 19 of us in attendance.

I wanted to be between pegs 8 - 16, only because this is where I have seen most of the weights come from in previous matches.  Lurch and I had come down for a drive around yesterday and the match was won from peg 11, catching shallow on pellet.  I put my hand in the lucky bag and drew peg 14

I drew Peg 14.

Yes, I was happy with that.  My adversary for the day, Lurch had drawn peg 11 - I would be able to keep an eye on him.  I asked Gary Jubb in the shop what are the corner pegs as I was on peg 14, he said to me that they are 12 and 13.  I got to my peg and started to unpack my stuff.  Then the lad that helps weighing in said that I was in the wrong peg.  I went back to Gary Jubb and he said that 12 is the corner, then 13 (is one out of the corner), DOH!

I finally got to the right peg and found that I had Jason Langshaw on peg 15, Eric the pheasant on peg 13, Barry Hunter was on 12, Chris Moorhead was on peg 11 in the corner.

Tackle

I set up my trusty 11ft Shakespeare Mach 3 XT pellet waggler rod (just in case), then I set up 3 pole rigs as follows.

Rig 1 - .2g Frenzee FD200 Float on .17 preston Powerline mainline with a .11 Preston Powerline hooklength.  This was attached to Preston 11h elastic.

Rig 2 - this was one of two 'Jigga' rigs that I set up.  I set this one up to fish between 6" to 2ft deep.  Again the mainline was Preston Innovations .17 Powerline to a .11 Powerline hooklength, this rig was also attached to Preston 11h Elastic.

Rig 3 - The same rig as above, but this one was set to fish a maximum of 1ft deep

Ian Heywood Jigga Floats

For bait, I had some 4mm pellets and 6mm pellets for feeding and for the hook.  I had a ball of paste in case my plan of attack to fish shallow did not work.

That was it.  I was ready.  I went to speak to Eric the Pheasant and he asked me (in my role of Team Captain) what to do.  I asked him what bait he had and he said that he had 4pts of maggots.  I said to fish top 2 + 1 down the edge to his left (towards me) all day.  I then looked at his rig and saw that he had a knot on his line and his hook was too big.  I got my hooklengths and tied him on one of my hooklenghts (a .13 Powerline to size 16 Colmic B501).  I then told him where to plumb up and his float was standing too proud, so I added a couple of shot to get the float right for him.  Eric then set up another rig to fish to his right, where it was a little deeper.

The Team Event

The club have started up a team event within the club and have seeded everyone based on last years overall result.  I am the team captain and I have Craig McKenny, Charlie Colefax, Eric White and club newcomer Andy Limbert in my team.  If all of us turn up, the best 4 results count.  There is a prize of £200 for the overall winning team, based on overall weight.  Both Craig and Andy had drawn iffy (pegs 19 and 21 respectively).

The Match

There should have been a prize for the first fish as Eric was still putting his two maggots on his hook and I was into my first F1 of the day - all 12oz of it.  I caught this one on the Frenzee shallow rig.  I managed to catch 32 F1 carp in the first hour for about 25lb or so.  The carp seemed to be at all depths, so I decided to go out on the 'Jigga' rig and see if I faired any better on that.  I managed to get 17 F1's over the next hour.  I must have caught all the giddy fish and I was now having to work for bites.  Eric the Pheasant was giving a good account of himself on the next peg and was getting plenty of ide/F1's and barbel on the top 2 + 1 rig.  My adversary was also catching plenty of fish from both down the corner and also from the shallow rig.

Everyone seemed to be catching fish.  Jason Langshaw was also getting one or two and I could see people all around the lake catching short, long or even on the method.

Best get my head down and work a bit harder.

After a couple of hours, the bites seem to have dwindled off, I decided to have a chuck out on the pellet waggler and managed to catch a couple more carp, nothing bigger than what I had been catching shallow at 13m, that seemed a bit slow.  Everyone seemed to be catching one or two and Eric was still steady away as was Barry Hunter.  Lurch was still here so must be bagging.  Oh Crap!!  He must have tuned his radio into Radio Luxembourg again. LOL.

I continued to swap between the Jigga and the Frenzee rigs and also the pellet waggler for the duration of the match.

I shouted over to Pid, 'Damn Pid, you are quite today'. To which he replied 'I get told off for moaning, then I get told off for not moaning. I can't flippin' win'. LOL.  Bless!!

Going into the last hour, most of us had between 30 - 60lb and what from I could see, I think that there were about 5 of us in the shout for the top 3 places, that possibly included Lurch and myself.

Jason at the side of me had cottoned on to how I was fishing and Eric had lost his rig, so had to use his other rig for the right of his peg.

That was it.  TIME. match over.

Eric had caught, Castaway Wilson had caught as had Wilco Wilson, Lurch was still here so must have caught, Macca had snared some.

The scales started at peg 1 (Alan 'Snooker' Hunter) who had 22lb (lowest weight of the match as it transpired), then there was a 47lb, 40lb, 60lb, Castaway put 69lb on the scales for best weight so far.  Next to weigh was my adversary - Chris Moorhead - he had two weighs and whilst tipping his fish into the weigh sling dipped his net back in the lake to add more water (LOL he wishes he could have) for a total of 52lb 8oz - damn is he still here???.  Barry Hunter on peg 12 then put 51lb 14oz on the scales.  Eric was next to weigh and thoroughly enjoyed catching a mixed bag weighing 58lb 5oz.  Now it was my turn.  Had I done enough to beat Lurch?

I had two weighs and after the needle had finally settled, I ended up with 87lb 10oz and was leading the match.  Jason had 43lb odd, Pid 52lb odd, Gary Jowett 54lb odd, and finally the last two to weigh were Craig and Andy Limbert who weighed in 35 and 29lb respectively.

19 anglers caught a total of 975lb of fish which is an average of over 51lb each angler and the biggest fish caught was approx 2lb ish with most of them between 12oz - 1.5lb.

Full Result

1. Mike Herrington - Peg 14 - 87lb 10oz
2. Stuart 'Castaway' Wilson - Peg 10 - 69lb 3oz
3. Paul 'Wilco' Wilson - Peg 7 - 63lb 9oz
4. Dave Wathen - Peg 18 - 62lb 2oz
5. John 'Macca' McCall - peg 5 - 61lb 3oz.

Oh and I forgot.  Lurch the loser is knocked out of the knockout cup LOL and I am through to round 2 (Which I have now found out is Andy Limbert, Gulp!!).

Thanks for reading (again).

Big Pellet