28/05/09 - Rolfs Lake

Weight – 188lb 9oz
Catch – 28 Carp, 3 Roach, 1 Chub
Weather – Warm & sunny, slight breeze.
Water Temp– 18.0c > 18.0c
Match – Carp Vadar Invitation – 5th

Firstly I would like to say thank you to those who left messages of support on this blog and the Match Fishing Scene forum. It appears my last blog entry struck a cord with many and the latest MP expenses only services to make the general public angrier. Its ironic that those MPs, who heavily criticised the financial services industry for being greedy, have themselves got their own snouts in the trough.

Back to Rolfs. Mark was kind enough to invite me along to this match, which was an invitation match for Carp Vadar sponsored anglers, plus a few guests.

My record at this venue prior to this match is probably the worse in the country. I have been 3 times now, but only managed a top weight of 19lb 8oz! Mark reckons I have been really unlucky with my draws, so I was really hoping for a good draw today.

Following a couple of drops outs only 13 anglers were fishing, which mean plenty of room, however there was some very good anglers in attendance. The day started well when I drew peg 8. As the venue expert, Mark has had a good run of results here, so I listened to his advice, which was start at 16m across to the far bank, fishing on the deck, then fish by the bush to my left late on fishing pellet, but don’t bother with paste.

Another bit of advice, echoed by Nick was don’t use my N47 to fish the far bank, because I would be taking home more pieces than I arrived. This meant fishing my J27 at 16m and being a heavier pole I was just thankful I remembered my bump bar, because we are not all built like Tony Rixon!

As instructed I started on the far side, but after 90 minutes I only landed 4 carp, losing a further 4. It became obvious there was plenty of fish in the swim, but I was struggling to get their heads down. Part of the problem I wasn’t sure I was feeding enough by cupping in, the other issue was the pole, which was sticking in my hands, making shipping a cupful of bait difficult. I also had Marks advice in the back of mind that I wouldn’t catch shallow tight across.

I needed to change tact, if I was going to catch, so I switched to the bush swim sooner than intended. 1st put in on pellet and I lost a foul hooker, but I wasn’t completely happy, so I turned to my paste rig and landed a carp straight away

And so my match began and I started to sack up with carp nearly every put on the paste. At 1 point I landed 3 carp in 3 put ins weighing 10-11, 15-9, 11-7, which really put me back in contention.

Whilst fishing the paste, I kept feeding the far bank, by way of a full pouch of pellet every couple of minutes and this now became my throw away swim. As more pellet went in you could see the carp slurping the pellet stuck in the grass. My gut feeling was to fish shallow, so I quickly set up a poly ball rig and soon started catching, in fact some of the bites where quite savage pulling the elastic from the pole. The only problem with the far side was the average stamp of carp was only 3-4lb, whilst my paste fish were much bigger.

As the match progressed I rotated between the bush & far bank swims. Ideally I wanted stay on the paste line, however at times I had too many fish in the swim and was suffering from too many liners. I had been feeding a handful of pellet every carp and since I needed to keep the feeding going in, I decided on 2 handfuls of pellets, which seemed to work.

As the match drew to conclusion, I stayed on the paste and my last fish weighed 15-7. I wondered whether I would beat my previous best match weight of 168lb from Joseph’s lake at Stafford Moor, but I wasn’t sure I had done enough. First to weigh was peg 4, with 333lb, which is the best weight at Rolfs so far this year and won the match.

I was delighted to beat my previous best match weight, although I felt a little disappointed I didn’t break the double ton. Some people are never happy! However today illustrated the problems when seeking advice from others. Whilst Marks advice was correct, conditions do change and my 2 main catching method was virtually the opposite of what I was told, which just proves you need to be open minded in this game.

Just for the record I wasn’t the only 1 to break my match record, Mark came 3rd with 213lb and Nick had 258lb for 2nd.