UK Champs 1st qualifier

Weds 4th May, UK Champs qualifier Barston.

Here we go again I thought to myself as I again pointed my car in the direction of Barston Lakes and immediately became snared up in the local road works. What is usually an hour long journey at weekend took almost two and a quarter hours even having used the M6 Toll to avoid the inevitable congestion around junction 10. At £5-30p a go it is not surprising that this great bit of road remains almost empty whilst the M6 continues to have major problems with the sheer volume of traffic often turning it into a huge car park.
After consuming a nice Barston breakfast and a couple of cups of coffee I was in a much better frame of mind and looking forward to the challenge ahead. I drew peg 31 on the river side of the lake and decided to start on the method feeder at extreme range whilst having a closer cage feeder line plus a pole line at 13 metres. I was a little shocked when the angler to my left balled it in BIG style on the whistle but I resisted the temptation to follow suit and just fed one large pot of loose ground bait onto my own pole line. I had ten casts with a large cage feeder to kick start my short tip line then chucked my method feeder to the horizon and waited for the tip to pull round. Well an hour and several casts later I was still waiting as the only movement had been from line bites. I reasoned that maybe the fish were on my short swim and decided to try that for half an hour. This resulted in a solitary bite from a skimmer bream which prompted me to try my pole line. Well it certainly was not solid but after a period of careful feeding with a few 4mm pellets every drop the interval between bites started to decrease and I found myself starting to piece together a decent weight which was aided by the capture of a couple of 6 to 8lb carp. At the weigh in the scales went round to 58lb 6oz which proved to be enough for 5th in the match but more importantly gave me second in section which was enough to qualify for the actual UK Champs series. Strangely the section and match was won from peg 37 where I had failed so badly the previous week in the open atch.

Sun 31st April – It’s Barston again!

Sun 31^st April – It’s Barston again!

My love/hate relationship with Barston continued as I managed to secure a peg in this open run by Lee Taylor. I drew what I thought was well on peg 37 which is the first one after the island on the river bank. I only set up a long chuck method rod as I wanted to practice it in readiness for the forthcoming UK Champs and Barston Masters Qualifiers. For some strange reason the tip has never been kind to me at Barston and today was to be no different as it took me three hours to get a bite which saw a small skimmer hang itself on the mega sharp QM1 hook.

The angler on 36 had also up to then only had one bite for a single skimmer so I decided to pack up having saved the dry net and go see what was being caught elsewhere. I noticed on my walk that the skimmers seemed to be predominant in the high numbers with the carp showing best between around pegs 10 to 25 with the very low number pegs again fishing poorly, useful information to have for my forthcoming UK Championships qualifier on the venue

Sat 2nd April – Barston Lakes.

Sat 2^nd April – Barston Lakes.

Well it was an early start and a trip to the lovely Barston Lakes for the first of the Barston Masters Qualifiers. Having enjoyed a nice full English I pulled out peg 2 which only had one thing going for it – it was only around 100 yards from my car. In the warmer months this can be a flier but it was anything but today. I had Gary Thorpe as my neighbor to chat to whilst waiting for a bite but little did I know just how long that wait would be. It did little to boost our spirits when Pete Bennet on peg 5 snared a proper munter early in the match but the lack of any other significant action convinced us that we needed a few carp to win our five peg section. Gary was the first of us to see his tip move after changing from a long chuck on the method to a shorter one – 40 yards – on an open ended cage feeder. In the space of around ten minutes he netted two F1 carp and in response I cast my method feeder to a similar distance. We were now three hours into the match and at last my tip went round rewarding my patience in the form of a 4lb common.

I decided there and then to sit the rest of the day out on the tea bag and go for a couple of decent fish. Well to cut a long story short I had two more bites from carp of around 8lb and 3lb which were to put me second in section just a pound behind Pete who finished with 16lb 8oz.

Paste Heads

Pikey Paste Floats……….Its that time again for all you paste heads

HB Pikey Paste TOP TIP

Most lakes have sloping margins and carp tend to be fussy about the depth they want to feed in. They like to suck feed off the slope without having to upend themselves to do so. To take full advantage of this set a couple of Pikey rigs at different depths so that two areas of the slope can be fished. Drop the baited rig in the swim so that the paste pulls the float under then carefully ease the rig up the slope until about half the tip of the float is showing.