Day 2 Fishing week Clattercote Tuesday 2/8/11

Today's match at Clattercote Reservoir was only a knock-up between 6 of us as a bit of practice for a forth coming Halesowen club match on the venue, there was only one of us JB who had fished the place before so after a bit of homework Stav and I had decided to take rods only and leave the poles at home. We have fished most of the other British Waterways venues like Boddington, Drayton & Earlswood which are all no go areas for expensive carbon poles and are home to method feeders, pellet/baggin' waggler and straight lead methods. Me and Stav decided to have a go on the baggin' wagg for a change as it is a method both of have not used to any great effect over the years, after watching the Guru DVD with Steve Ringer fishing it on the same venue at was all we needed to have a go at it after all that's what a practise session is all about. We both dug-out some old baggin' wagg's that we had made ourselves a few years ago but they looked short stumpy jobs made from pike floats so we decided to buy a few off the bailiff John Bonney, we had arranged to meet John on the car park before we started to buy some pellet and baggin' wags off him after hearing that so many of the top flight anglers like Steve Ringer, Grant Albutt and Andy Neal all use his home made pellet waggs. I had heard of these pellet waggs last year when a friend of mine Ian Giddins had made it to the last 4 of the Drennan Knock out cup at Boddington and he said that they were all using them as they fly straight in windy conditions which most of these big waters suffer from, I had wanted to get my hands on some of these pellet waggs for some time but as Clattercote/Boddigton where John is the bailiff is some 60 miles away from home it has took until now to get some. I know I am waffling on a bit about some bits of balsa but trust me after using them they are well worth buying, so if you get the chance to get some do it , you have been told. Right back to the day, John put us on some pegs in the 30's where we could all fish in a line as there were 6 of us he was going to let us use our nets so we could fish for the holy £1 side bet between us and more importantly pride, Stav and I sat on pegs 31 & 33 leaving the spare peg in-between us to park our barrow's on as the boards you walk on around the lake are quite narrow. We both set up the baggin' and pellet waggs I also set up the straight lead to fish over the top of the pellet line Stav later set up the method feeder, we both used 1.75lb barbel rods to chuck the baggin' which weigh around 3oz when fully loaded matched with 8 or 10lb mainline and hook-lengths of 0.22 or stronger. On the bait front I had gone for a mix of ringers red and red standard g/bait with a pint of micro's and a few expander pellets, hook bait was white or red 10mm boilies, I had also brought 3kg of 10mm halibut pellets for the pellet wagg. When we were all ready we shouted the all-in and Stav and I started on the baggin' wagg while starting to feed the pellet line and it took half an hour before I got my first bite and carp no1 was hooked which slipped the hook at the net (shit), around 20 mins later and carp no2 was hooked which kitted to my right towards Stav and ended up leaving the hook in the leg of the empty pallet in-between us (double shit) Carp 2 Westy 0 at least I had hooked fish all the rest of the lads were dry, Stav had been straightened on the strike on the baggin' wagg but that was it (that's what you get for striking like Zoro?). To cut a long storey short it was crap it was very hot 29'c and the carp were cruising in the middle of the lake not wanting to feed just sunbathing, Stav got fed up of no bites so went into the holdall to assemble a method feeder rod I went for a walk to see how the lads were getting on but it was not good all 4 of them were dry? Not a bite between them. Ade was fishing the candle/doggy casting into a ball of carp that were cruising about but they wouldn't even take the freebies let alone the one with the hook in so what chance have you got of hooking one, no chance. Stav was the first to put a fish in the net a small skimmer before he hooked and landed a carp then started to get odd skimmers on his method rig, I went on to hook and land my only fish of the day a 10-12lb carp on the pellet wagg Stav ended up with 1 carp and around a dozen skimmers to win all the £1's. The only other one of us to get a bite was Ollie who had 1 small 5lb carp the other 3 went dry? You couldn't believe it with so many carp swimming around that you couldn't get any bites we could only put it down to the very hot weather, John the bailiff confirmed that the whole lake had just switch off with the best on the opposite side in a match from Tesco was 3 carp. Lets hope the conditions are better for our match in a couple of weeks, the rest of the lads stayed on for another hour after we packed in and Ollie ended up with 3 carp the best around 7lb but the others remained dry. The worst of all was that I was now 2-0 down to Stav in our mini series (anybody want to buy some tackle?).