East Delph Lakes Fishing Match

   So this Saturday (27th September) my father and I went along to The Riverbed Fishing Club match held at East Delph Lakes.  The RFC fishing matches are always a good laugh and the normal format is as follows.  Meet at McDonald's for x.  Drive to Lake.  Set up.  Fish a match over 5-6 hours.

   Saturday was no different.  We met at McDonald's in Huntingdon.  Obviously my dad and I had a Maccy D breakfast and black coffee.  Met the guys out the front.  Nice to see some faces I hadn't seen before.  We all then headed over to East Delph Lakes at about 10:15.  So off the convoy of cars and vans headed off.  East Delph Lakes is about a 30 minute drive from Huntingdon.  Maybe less but the head of the convoy took a wrong turn :).

   Once at the lakes we were met by the new owner and talked through the rules for the match.  The owner also recommended we use mixers off the surface.  The price for the match was £6 for the fishing and £2 for the couple of pints of mixers.  Plus the obligatory £1 towards the prize money and £1 to the club.

   I drew peg 3 and my father drew peg 17.  As it happened I swapped with a chap to peg 14 so I was closer to my old man as we loaded up my carp barrow to get the gear to the pegs.  The picture shows the view from my peg I had an island in front and plenty of margin down my left.  I started with a pellet waggler approach as unfortunately I had no floating line but hoped this would work with the mixers.  Having had no success straight away with plenty of carp visible I moved onto pellet waggler with sinking bait only.  I caught the carp shown within 30 mins of the change which I would guess was about 5lb.  

   The picture to the right shows the view from my peg to that of my dads.
   As the match went on the carp just stopped feeding everyone was struggling for a bite.  I had been feeding my left margin in the hope of pulling out a big'un towards the end but I started fishing it for silvers to try to build a weight.
   I had a couple of nice Roach, a couple of nice size Roach hybrids, lots of small Roach and a few skimmers.  In total by the end of the match I had 3lb 9oz in silvers.  At least it kept me busy.
   After a while I moved back onto the carp same method no joy.  Changed to a free running lead simple hook length with a hair rigged large pellet topped with a white corn shaped boilie stop.  After about 10 minutes I had another carp to 5lb.
   I also got snapped up by a very large carp which if landed may have won me the match.  My father lost 3 big carp two hook pulls and one snapped!
   So to the weigh in.  When it go to me the current winning weight was 12lb something.  I weighed in with 10lb of carp and 3lb 9oz of silvers for a total of 13lb 9oz and into the lead.  This lasted until the very next peg where my dad had 2 carp to 15lb and 1lb 1oz of silvers and into the lead.  Come the end of the weigh in I finished 4th and my dad 3rd out of 12 so not to bad on a hard day.  Interestingly the chap who won it had an Eel to 2lb 14oz!

Blog later....

Fishing with Kids before work trip away

So I had a trip coming up with work that meant I had to go to the U.S.A for a week.  As this would be the longest trip away from the wife and kids we took them to the local river in Godmanchester so they could play on the park and do a spot of fishing.  Very handily the park has several swims very close to the park.  This was also Parker, my son's, first experience of going fishing.  Ok he didn't actually do any fishing but he was fascinated with the little fish Daddy and his sisters were catching.  

So in preparation I for fishing on the Sunday the girls and I had walked to the tackle shop to pick up some maggots.  The girls wanted the multi coloured ones even though I prefer red and white.  However the girls won the choice and so we were ready for the next day.  We walked down to the river as a family and whilst I got set up my wife took the kids on the park.  Once I started to catch the kids came over to join in or watch.  

As per usual from that spot there were plenty of little bleak and perch about which I could see easily with my polarised specs on.  Kahlan and Aoibheann booth caught easily as you can see from the picture of Kahlan.  Aoibheann didn't want to hold any fish on this particular day so I dont have any photos of her.

Now Parker bless him was shouting "Ish, Ish" when we were holding the fish and he wanted to hold one.  So we let him.  It was particularly funny when he refused to give it back!  We did get the fish off of him and retiurned it safely back into the river.  When I caught a Perch given the spikey fins I thought it best just to show him that one lol.

I love taking these guys fishing.  Its just the done thing in my family.

Blog later.....