Meadowlands Warren Pool Sun 12/6/11

This weekend saw me fishing a Halesowen A.C club match at Meadowlands nr Coventry on the smaller of the two pools on-site Warren pool, this would be a new one for me and most of the members apart from the few lads that had been up in the week for a sneaky practice! Tut tut. The lads who had been up had found out that the pool had lost a lot of water due to the country wide drought and with the pool only 4-5ft at normal level it was very shallow in parts, the low water level combined with most of the carp spending the last week or so spawning didn't bode well for a big weight match. The lads had caught the odd carp & skimmer in the week with JB doing the best with around 35-40lb which tied in with a bit of info i got from Joe Roberts through a mutual friend he said that the last Saturday match was won with 40lb and the mid-week afternoon match was won with 47lb, he also said that on most of the pegs the method feeder was the best approach with the pole line coming better later in the day unless you can find a pocket of skimmers on the pole which would be worth going for the way it was fishing. The weather man had forecast heavy rain all day so i dug out the brolly which i hate sitting under and don't usually carry it but didn't fancy sitting out in it all day, the weather looked ok when i woke up at around 6am but after a good breakfast with my chauffeur for the day Johnny Bab we hit the motorway at 8am and i can honestly say it never stopped raining all day and we didn't get back until around 6pm! With a bit of time to spare before the 9.30am draw Jon and i went for a walk around the pool and the first thing that struck me was how steep the banks were making it look more like a natural pool than a man made commercial, there was a lot of carp milling around in the margins up the far end of the pool where it narrows down into dead arm but it looked like they were getting over the rigors of spawning. Just on looks i fancied drawing the left hand-side of the pool as it looked fishy with trees & bushes in-between the pegs and pretty straight, the bank opposite was more of a bay shape and with next to no features down the sides it didn't look as appealing, the last 2 pegs up the dead arm looked really good and i fancied one of these to take the money. At the draw i pulled out peg 31 in an area by the car park which were set back from the main pool in a bay with just three of us in this bay there were a few spare pegs up either side to stop people casting over each other, the peg looked ok but when you are fishing a pool for the first time you just don't know it might be solid or it might be crap? there was a big overhanging tree passed the empty pallet on peg 30 to my right other than that the peg looked the same as a lot of the other pegs. I set up 3 pole rigs and a method feeder to attack the peg-
Rig 1, 13m pole line, Maver Jona 4x12 float, 0.16 mainline to a 0.14 hooklength and a size 3 Tubertini 175 hook, all the shot bulked 8 inches from the hook in 2 1/2 feet of water, with 13 hollo elastic.
Rig 2, 6m pole line, the same float as above but 0.18 line straight through to a size 4 175 and black hydro elastic.
Rig 3, 14.5m edge rig, 4x10 Preston durra 10 float, 0.18 straight through to a size 3 175 and black hydro elastic.
Rig 4, Shimano 9-11 Beastmaster rod, Shimano Stradic 4000gtm reel, 8lb maxima mainline, a 24 gram Guru x-safe method feeder to size 14 Preston PR27 hook and 0.20 hooklength.
For bait i had brought 4 pints of casters, 1 kg of worms, 2 tins of 8mm cubed meat, 2 pints of hemp, 2 tins of corn, a bag of Ringers micro pellet method mix and a few different hook baits for the method red and white 8mm boilies, 6 & 8mm pellets and a tub of 10mm Baitech pop-up boilies.
I planned to fish worm and caster on the 13m pole line and down the edge to the tree, i was going to feed meat & hemp on the 6m line in the hope of carp later in the match and i had clipped up the method at around 40m after a few casts around the peg it seemed like the peg was very flat and the same depth all over.
The rain was really pouring down and i was glad that i had brought the brolly to sit under as most of the wind seemed to be coming off our backs for the 3 of us on this bank we were protected a bit from the steep bank the guys on the other side had got it side or front on all day, which claimed at least 3 brolly's by the end of the day, nice (one of the reasons i hate them).
On the all-in i fed my 3 pole lines and chucked out the method feeder with a 8mm white boilie on sat back and awaited the action, after around 30mins i had my first bite which turned out to be a 1lb skimmer and looking around the pool i hadn't seen anyone get of to a flying start. After around 50mins i looked up to see John Bill 2 pegs away playing a carp when my tip flew around and i was into my first carp of the day, a nice 8lb common was the culprit and although it had been a slow start the way the pool had been fishing the last week it only looked like you would need 6-8 good fish and you would be in with a chance. That first fish made me stick to the method for another hour which only produced i more skimmer despite trying all different hook baits i couldn't find another carp, so with 2 hours of the match gone it was time to have a look on the pole i put on a worm head filled the kinder pot of my worm mix and shipped out to 13m trying to keep the pot out of the water i had to stand up to ship out down the awkward high bank! 10mins on the pole i was still waiting my first bite which came not long after in the shape of a 3oz roach, another 10mins and roach no2 was in the net with his mate, a perch of a similar size was my 3rd bite so after 30mins on the pole i had amassed a massive 8-10oz great this pool is supposed to be solid with skimmers but not in my peg. 10mins on the margin line only produced a small rudd and the 6m line just 1 perch on the meat i was soon back on the method as i thought if you got a bite on this it was more than likely to be a carp, looking around the pool it was fishing very hard with just odd fish coming out Stu on peg 6 seemed to have the most with 3 good carp although i could only see around half the pegs. With 3 hours of the match gone JB hooked his second carp on the pole and i needed to make something happen as i was going nowhere fast with no liners or signs of bites on the feeder i had another look under the tree down the edge, after 5mins the float buried and my black hydro went screaming across the lake at a good rate of knots the elastic was bottoming out i just hoped the 0.18 would hold as big fish in very shallow water don't like being hooked. After a good battle a 10lb fish was my prize and with around 1 3/4 hours left to go it looked like Joe Roberts had been right in saying that the fish turn up later on the pole line, but another 20mins went passed without anymore action and a look on my other 2 pole lines was called for. Despite trying different baits i couldn't get another bite on anything and JB was starting to catch on his pole line Phil in-between us had got 1 carp and with the last hour upon us i decided to stick with the margin for the remainder of the match, i hooked and landed 3 good carp in the last hour from under the tree all on worm to finish the match with 5 and around 3lb of bits. The carp were all good fish in the 6-10lb bracket but JB had got around the same in carp plus a few skimmers, Phil had ended up with 3 and a few silvers.
I walked around the right hand side of the pool to help John & Phil weigh-in as there was another set of scales on the tree lined bank we had only got to weigh-in one side of the pool, the first 2 pegs we got to were the two i fancied before the start pegs 15 & 16 up the narrow end of the pool but they failed to produced much with 16 & 26lb respectively, we heard that Stuart on peg 6 in the trees had got 8 carp all on the method feeder and looked to have a lot more than anybody else was owning up to. Ade's 26lb was the best weight up to Baz Robson who put 29lb on the scales but there was a lot of low weights, that 29lb was the best off that bank which just left the 3 of us in the car park bank to weigh-in i was the first to go putting 45lb 13oz on the scales, Phil had 19lb odd but JB just pipped me by 2oz with 45lb 15oz. Stu's carp went 51lb after a disaster at the weigh-in with Bob & Jeff missing the weigh sling with one of Stu's fish which slid straight down the bank and back into the pool OOPS! Luckily it didn't cost him as he won the match anyway Stu said it was his biggest fish 12-13lb which had been his first fist of the day, lucky for Bob & Jeff that it didn't cost Stu the match as Stu is 6ft 5in and built like a brick shit-house he was wee bit pissed off to say the least! Shaun Waite had 47lb for 2nd made up of 4 carp and around 20lb of skimmers the only one of the day to find them in any numbers JB in 3rd and leaving me 4th by 2oz fair play (Jammy b*****d), i was left wondering what might have been if the fish had come sooner under the bush the size of the fish 1 more carp and i would have won the match but that would have been cruel on Stu. We were all glad to get back in the cars and on the way back home as if anyone who reads this fished on this Sunday will know what i mean when i say that everything was soaked swimming with water it really slashed it down all day, it's going to take a week to dry all the gear out!