Moorlands Farm Silver Pool Sunday 29/5/11

This weekend saw me fishing a Halesowen A.C club match at Moorlands Farm Silver pool which would be a new one for me and a lot of the club members having never fished it before, i had done a bit of homework beforehand asking a few people who have fished it and based on the information i got it seemed like a straight forward pellet job fishing for the f1.s. There was one big problem i thought that would make this match a bit hard there was a 130+ peg Fish '0' Mania qualifier on the complex the day before! With all the bait and the pressure of the day before i was going to take it easy on the feed and fish light rigs, the general conscious of opinion that it was going to fish hard was confirmed as we were eating breakfast in the Moorlands cafe a couple of lads that had fished the Fish '0' the day before said that 50lb was the best off there! With 2 good anglers Grant Albutt & Steve Pearce packing in before the end signs weren't looking good for a fast action packed day, coupled with quite a strong side wind blowing down the pool towards pegs 46 & 1 ( which looked like good wind assisted end pegs ) we were in for a hard day by the looks of it. With all that aside it was still better than being at work so into the draw bag i went and out popped peg 10 which looked the same as all the other pegs apart from the end pegs of course, i new from my homework that the pool is very shallow with only 3ft on the long pole line and 18" at 4m but with the strong side wind i decided to scrap the long pole line from the start and try to get good presentation by fishing short. By asking different people i knew that the f1's and carp in the pool feed on the short line without having to wait too long before they come in maybe due to the narrowness of the pool? There is a 14.5m limit on this pool because that is the middle of the pool! So i was going to base my attack at 4m and down both sides, i did set up a shallow rig but never used it as i was told they catch odd fish up in the water but it rarely wins a match due to how shallow the pool is, the 2 pole rigs i used were:-
Rig 1, 4m line 0.30gr Maver Invincible series 7 float, 0.16 mainline to a h/l of 0.14 and a 16 tosciro hook, bulk shotted with 8 & 10 stotz 6" from the hook and a no 8 stotz back shot to try and combat the wind and tow, finished with Mosella yellow 7-10 elastic and a pulla bung.
Rig 2, margin rig 4m for both sides, 0.20gr float the same as above in around a foot of water, the same hook, line and elastic.
For bait i had brought the 2 pints of 4mm pellet from the on site shop as per the fishery rules and 3 pints of dead maggots to make up 5 pint bait limit as this is all you are allowed at Moorlands 1 pint of bait per hour, for the hook i had brought just some 4 & 6mm expander's a hand full of corn and a few live maggots. I was going to feed pellets at 4m and down the left-hand margin and just feed maggots down my left-hand side where there were a few reeds.
On the whistle i shipped out on the 4m line with a 4mm expander on the hook and started to trickle in just 6 feed pellets on both of my pellet lines and some 20-30 dead maggots down the reeds hoping that some of the proper carp would move in later on, less than a minute into the match and i hooked my first f1 of the day a 120z jobbie was in the net soon followed by another not long after. After the first half hour i had got 10 f1's and missed a few bites as is par for the course when fishing for these fish but just when i thought the peg was solid the bites slowed down to a stop, over the next half hour i managed just 2 more fish and i was left wondering what had happened surely i hadn't fed too much only feeding 5-6 pellets every put-in? I tried adding half a section replacing the long no4 with a short no4 and the no5 too see if the fish had shied away a bit but to no avail, i tried both margins with only the maggot line producing 1 f1 and a couple of small roach. The word on the bank was that it was fishing very hard as we all expected so although my peg had slowed right down at least i had caught a few most of the f1's were in the 8oz-1lb, all i could do was pick off the odd fish and hope that they came back in force or a few bigger carp moved in later on. On the maggot margin line i had a couple of 6oz skimmers a couple of nice 10-12oz perch in with the odd f1 i did briefly hook a better carp on but it came off after only around 10 seconds and a few yards of elastic we parted company ( i think it was foul-hooked), i just got my head down and kept ringing the changes on the 4m line with 4 & 6mm expanders, corn and maggot getting odd bites to keep my net ticking over but try as i may i never had a bite all day down my left-hand margin all match! With around 30mins of the match to go i started to catch as fast as i did in the first half hour putting around another 8 f1's in the net but with 10mins of the match left i hooked a good fish which tore off a rate of knots, with only a light soft elastic in the top kit it shot off down the pool in the shallow water which had me adding a couple of sections in an attempt to stop getting broke, after a while the fish started coming back with me using the pulla-bung but i could feel the rig doing the zig-zag sideways motion typical of a foul-hooked fish. After a short but hard fight a 4lb foul-hooked common was in the net and worth around 4-5 f1's i was hoping for another before the whistle, i hooked a f1 seconds before the all-out but as i struck at the bite there was a big swirl next to my float as another 4-5lb was spooked by the strike it looked like the better fish had come for a feed right at the end of the match typical! I had finished with 43 f1's, 1 carp and a few silvers. We started to weigh-in from the top end peg 22 down to peg 2 as we used 2 sets of scales 1 on each bank, one or 2 had struggled with the average weight 15-22lb and JB the best with 27lb odd, Jeff to left had 19lb my bag went 45lb 13oz putting me in the lead so far, Andy to my right had 23lb and with another 2 weights of 20-23lb further down put me first on my side of the pool. To my surprise Dave Wood in the much fancied end peg 46 managed on 20lb so things were looking good. A quick shout over to the other side reveled that Baz Robson had the best weight from that side with 35lb odd of better fish on paste meaning i had won the match. I was well pleased to have won the match after doing a lot of homework on a venue that i had never fished before taking time setting rigs up and trying to feed the peg right in the conditions, i fed 2 lines most of the day with pellets only giving up on the margin line in the last hour as i felt the fish would never come there but i didn't use 1 pint of pellets all day! It was great winning this match as it meant i had done the HA-TRICK winning all 3 of my last matches. The usual mickey tacking was all in good fun comments like " where are you going on your summer holidays this year what we have paid for?" or " you may as-well only work 3 days a week with what you are winning at the weekend".