Sunday 16th October saw me back on team duties with Loughborough Soar in the Angling Trust Soar Valley Winter League, round two. For those that don’t know this is a league of 9 teams of 10 anglers, fishing over 6 rounds to qualify to get into the National Winter League Finals (Angling Trust Competitions).
Weather conditions couldn’t of been any further away from what they were on the Sunday before. Then the river was low and gin clear, now with around 2 ft of extra water on it chocolate brown and pushing through like a steam train.
With two sections moved on to Sutton Bonington, as it can take a lot of water before it’s unfishable, I found myself heading back home after drawing p19 on Sutton playing fields. Happy days 😁, not that p19 is the best of pegs but I have fished it a few times.
Joe Oakes had drawn p11 (a proper good peg with water on) and Lee Wright on p24 The Wires; a peg that is out of form of late but you had the fancy Lee on it. Oh and Charlie Gooch on p23, then Mark Perkins on p22 it was a definite 😲 ohhh . Going to be up against it just with those anglers in my section, let alone the pegs and the conditions!!
The water was still traming through with loads debris coming down it, so it was time sit on my box for 10 minutes and think about the best approach. With a brew of course.
I know there is Perch along these pegs and I know I can catch them. Plus I could see lots of small fish blipping on the surface, but they would have to be a last resort. You’ll need lots of those to equal one Billie.
I thought about the flat float on my top five so chucked an 8 gr flat on just to see and yeah that was a waste of time.
That settled my mind – two pole feeder lines it was then; one on top 5, one on about number 7 section.
Set these up as best I could but they would need some more tweaks as I’d need to find the right weight of feeder once the match had started. (Can’t plumb up with a feeder on – rules).
Now with a Nisa pole cage feeder on I found 55g was just enough to hold on both lines. As mentioned I wasn’t going to mess about it was going to be a full on Perch attack. Yes I know they are sight feeders but they’ll soon home in on a good worm scent trail.
Slightly tweaked my usual groundbait mix by adding 50% mole hill. Whilst loading the feeder I added finely chopped worm plus chopped caster.
Wasn’t long before the first Perch was in the net followed by a few more. But the problem was I kept either missing bites or just not hooking them corerctly. Trying to strike up with 55 g of feeder in fast flowing water is not easy to get right.
I was feeling so out of practice with the pole feeder, despite it being something I’ve actually fished a lot in years gone by. Really needed to concentrate.
A change of hook size to 14 Hayabusa 157 seemed to help get a hook hold resulting in a proper billie, then I managed to lose another whilst reaching for the land net 🤬
In the end I put 1 kilo 250 g on the scales so pretty happy with that from middle of the section.
Huge well done to Joe Oakes who smashed the section with 11 kilo of mainly Bream.
Really enjoyed using the pole feeder again if you’ve never fished it before worth checking out NISA Feeder Products.
To be honest looking like pole feeder action again this Sunday by the looks of the weather coming in. I will be a bit more prepared this week. Perch watch out here I come!
Tight lines.
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