This weekend is a big one for me; I had applied to fish the UK Carp Cup and decided to see where I get. I love fishing runs waters and working at getting more bites throughout the day on a variety of different tactics, this is a perfect chance to see where I get in a competitive situation. Going back a couple of years, I fished the British Young Carp Angling Championship on Brasenose two on the linear complex. So I have a rough idea of the set-up of the competition and also countless marshalling experiences to boot. I am now in the driving seat to put my angling skills to the test. I have prepared for the event which has taken around a fortnight to get all my bait, rigs and fishing gear sorted out for the weekend as I feel among other anglers is preparation is key.
Over and above all the experienced anglers I am fishing against, keeping a level head and stay composed and hope things go well. I have tied up all my rigs in advance but haven’t tied up my bags because of the affect oil has on PVA breakdown times, I am going for a reasonable mix as I understand anglers have been doing well on the method feeder so solid bags may be the trick, a nice oily mix will be the key to getting quick bites and getting some sort of weight on the leader board.
Keeping my options open will be the way forward so I can ring the changes if certain tactics happen to be ineffective then I have plenty of other options to go at. As always in a match situation I had my top four “fancied pegs” and then the rest which I will be comfortable with so the draw is the key importance to fish confident. Finally the draw came around and I came 4th out the bag. By the time it got round to me my top choice of pegs were still available and I managed to get into peg 2 next to a small island on my right hand side. As I saw fish crashing I automatically put zigs out on a shallow spot to my left and had a take within half an hour only to proceed and lose that fish. But I then decided to change to brown foam and had a bite almost instantaneously. Later on I decided to put a rod down the margins near to an overhanging tree, 15 minutes later I had my second carp in the net of which fell to a solid bag with a small light mix that I will explain shortly. The rest of the evening was slow and very agitating for me, hooking and losing six fish was a real down turn for me as I was doing everything right but it just wasn’t falling into place?
The evening moved on and it was time to work for some fish, after getting quite stressed because it didn’t seem to be happening I persevered and Spombed mixers to my open water spot which did fish for me on the first day. It got round to four o’clock and I proceeded to land a few fish which was a massive relief. The fish fell to Enterprise Tackles newly released rubber zig bugs also with a healthy soaking in Betalin for added attraction.
As I was only on 19lb by the end of the first night I was admittedly getting a bit agitated as I lost a fair few fish which shouldn’t be happening. I kept with it and as soon as I started getting bites, I was unhooking fish in the net and then doing 8 wraps around the bank sticks and then recasting straight back out and another top up of mixers, this way I could tell if I had fish over the zigs for obvious reasons. To be fair it is like stalking in the margins as it is tense watching fish feeding over the top just waiting for a fish to pick up one of two zigs.
Before I was about to cast the zigs out I could tell the high attract properties of the Betalin as I can only explain it as the rainbow you get when you see spilt petrol, so this appeared to me that it was making the fish snatch at the zig bug for the attractive purposes as well as for the bug itself, the hook
holds I was achieving on the zig bugs were incredible. The reason I went for the black zig bugs was because it became evident to myself and my runner that there was some sort of fly hatch, along with a beetle hatch by looking at the movement of the water. I was using no smaller than a size 8 hook on the zigs which is what I use all the time and drop very little fish on them but I decided to take a massive gamble and use a few products from a box of tackle I had sent through to me by Pondip, this is a newly established company of which sends through a box of tackle in keeping with a theme for me to write reviews and do a short video for. I had some Rigmarole Zig material which I was using, this is an extremely good performer for me as it has little stretch on it which is good to stop the knot on the back of my size 10 Vardis Tackle boilie hook with a small piece of silicone to stop the line grating against the eye of the hook.
If it had gone a short while and still no bites I was changing the depths of the zigs and dipping them back into the betalin and then recasting them to the spot. I then topped up with a few spombs of mixers to keep the fish grubbing around.
The end of the match drew near and that was the end of the weekend, I ended with 105lb 2oz which I know isn’t amazing but I’m gradually getting into the swing of the match fishing scene which interests me quite a bit but keep your eyes peeled for my next match!
