Woodlands View Tuesday 31/7/12

This was my first visit to Woodlands since our last fishing week back in last September I was looking forward to it as I have always liked Woodlands fishing many opens, club and winter leagues here over the years, there are many fishery's I have visited over the years and although I have not fished here a lot the last couple of years I have always said that if I was only allowed to fish one place Woodlands would be the place for me. I have caught plenty of fish from here which while Carp are dominant there are lots of other fish to be caught here and at certain times of the year or when the Carp don't want to play ball the other fish are vital to doing well, whether it is this mixed fishery or it is just a nice place to be I don't know but I just like the place and Mike, Ade & Denise have always made me welcome even after nearly 12 months away.
Today's Open was to be fished on Arles pool which suited both Stav and I as this pool contains lots of  the other fish I was talking about ( to call them silvers would be wrong as in my eyes as Barbel, Tench and Crucian's are not strictly silvers! ), this was good for us as we had both come armed with worm & caster as well as the usual pellet & corn. I was rattling to a couple of the Starlets Vets who were fishing on Deans & High pools when the draw took place so I was left with the last peg in the draw box, peg 34 was left in the bag and Ade's face was a picture he commented " ain't been here for 12 months and gets left peg 34, flier"!!! Now for the people that don't know Woodlands View peg 34 on Arles has won a lot of matches over the years and is a very good peg probably due to it being the only peg on the pool where you can reach the island with the long pole (16m)! for the other pegs on the pool it's a wagg or tip job to reach it, I have drawn the peg twice before in the passed winning off it the first time and then blowing out the second time due to strong winds ( if the wind gets up fishing at 16m is a no go and the peg losses its advantage ). Like all good pegs it never fishes all the time I was just hoping that they would have a feed today as I was in the form of my life I was confident of catching a few kippers! Stav had drew peg 38 just to my left which is a decent draw as well, there are a number of good pegs on here which can all win at any time pegs 4,8, 10-14 & 16 can all throw up winning weights, I like pegs 8 - 14 as they are good pellet wagg pegs which for some strange reason is not an over used method here with peg 10 being my favourite.
I set four rigs to cover me for today the first was for fishing the deck over by the island which was around 3 1/2ft deep a bit deeper than I can remember as the foliage has grown out a bit further from the island because it was only around 15m to get there, most of the pegs on Arles have a wooden board on the island with your peg number on to stop people random casting across other each other, on peg 34 you used to fish right over to this board but now there must be 3ft of reeds in-front of the board stopping you from getting right close to the island. A shallow rig was set up for the 16m line, a rig for a 6m pellet line and the final rig was for my left hand margin where I could get to the empty pallet on peg 35 which is one of the favoured ways of catching here in the latter stages of the matches, I won't bore you with the rig details as if you have read my blog before my float, hook,elastic & line set up don't differ a lot during the summer months. For bait I had brought 1kg of worms, 4 pints of (rank!) caster, 4 tins of corn, 1 bag each of 4mm & 6mm fishery feed pellets plus the usual array of expanders for the hook, the rank casters Stav and I like to use are just older casters that the shop sells off cheaper which we have used for a number of years and have found them not to affect catches in fact we think for Carp fishing they are better than the fresh expensive casters, must be the smell? When fishing the worm I just grab a hand full of worm ( 1/2 pint' ish ), I wash off 1 pint of casters taking off any floaters in the process draining off all the water with a maggot riddle, chop the worms to around 1/2 inch pieces add the casters, then add around 1/2 a tin of corn, then the final ingredient which I have faith in and have used for years a good squirt of VDE predator plus, weather its the smell or more likely the red cloud that hangs in the water I like it and put around 1/3rd of a bottle per mix, then just give it all a good mix up, make sure you take a good towel as this stuff goes all over the place normally after a good worm session my pole has a red tinge to it.
I started the match putting a pot full of worm mix over to the island and down the pallet and a pot full of 4mm pellets and corn on the 6m line, I caught steady for the first hour with a few small Carp in the 1-3lb bracket with the odd silver fish I was catching but not setting the world on fire. A quick look on the pellet line for 10mins produced just 2 skimmers so I was soon back over to the island, I could only see pegs 36 & 4 as the island obscures your view to the other side and a bush that stopped me from seeing what Stav was catching, so all I had to go by was the 2 pegs I could see and while I was only catching odd small Carp it was steady and I was catching better than them. Two hours into the match it was time for another look on the pellet line but after only 5mins without a bite I had my first look on the pallet line but this only got me one small 1lb Tench and a couple of Perch, the 3rd hour I started to get fish swimming through my peg up in the water coming to the worm mix falling out of the pot but try as I might I couldn't catch a single fish on the shallow rig which is strange down here as I can normally catch a few up in the water? I could only see the odd fish being caught by the others anglers so I just stuck to fishing by the island catching odd small Carp with a few skimmers and Roach mixed in, I hit a bit of a purple patch in the fourth hour landing around 6 Carp in a 20mins spell while only small they were most welcome and by the end of the hour I guessed I had around 50-55lb in the net. Into the last hour I had a quick look down the margin and this time at last there were signs of life down there as I potted some mix in there were Carp ripping up the bottom swirling and clouding up the water, it took all of 30 seconds before I hooked my first margin fish of the day and soon a nice 6lb common Carp was in the net I was hoping there was a few of his brothers and sisters down there for me. I hooked and landed another 6 fish in the last hour from the margin in the 4-6lb class along with a nice Tench of around 3lb and a couple of Crucian's but I did loose 3 more Carp which I think were foul-hooked, I had used my fish counter today to roughly guess the weight of my Carp and it read 65 and I guessed my silvers at 20-25lb so I was looking at around 85-90lb. Ade had started to weigh-in from peg 4 so by the time I had packed some of my kit away he had already done the side of the pool I couldn't see so when I asked him about the weights he said peg 8 was the best with 88lb, my Carp net went 67lb ( not a bad guess with the clicker! ) and my silvers went 27lb so combined with the ounces he gave me 95lb 10oz with the guy on peg 36 having 60lb odd there was only Stav left to weigh. Stav said he had caught well all day at 6m with a good few silvers after 1 early Carp on the pellet wagg his Carp net went 43lb but with a good 40lb of silvers gave him 83lb for 3rd overall leaving me with my 5th win on the bounce!!! I which I could bottle what I am doing lately if I knew what IT was???? Brilliant, I had a great day at a great venue but more importantly this put me 2-0 up in the fishing week series, this was one of those days that shows you the importance of fishing the worm here during day matches as the guy in-between Stav and I had fished pellet but caught next to no slivers, this obviously does not always work as there are lots of matches won here on pellet & corn especially afternoon matches but if you fish a day match on here with a lot of people on a lot of pegs you could do worse than fish the worm & caster.