Match
Fishing Methods
There are quite a few rules at this fishery, please make sure that you are
aware of them before starting to fish. Hook baits are limited to maggots, casters,
worms and hemp, and groundbaits must be bought at the tackle shop on-site, and
are limited to brown crumb and crushed hemp. I believe that luncheon meat can
be used for pleasure fishing only, but check this first. There are limits on
the amounts of hook and groundbaits that can be used. Don't be despondent
about the number of rules, they are there for the good
of the fish, and they obviously work, because those carp are in excellent condition.
Right, let's get down to methods. Feeder (groundbait open ended feeder in Summer, maggot feeder in Winter, works on all lakes, with the only problem being that especially in the summer, it seems to catch the smaller fish. In fact, in the winter, maggot feeder is just about the only method that will consistently catch the carp. You need to be in the right area, the fish become very tightly shoaled, but big bags are not uncommon in even the coldest weather. Check the match reports, or ask at the clubhouse to find the winter hotspots.
A popular summer catching method is 'up in the water' using either pole or waggler,
and spraying maggots around
the float at very regular intervals, plus the 'big waggler' which involves repeated
casting and retrieval of a very large bodied waggler to the middle of the lake.
At this range it's impossible to loose feed, and groundbaiting past the pole
line is not allowed, so this bizarre method relies on the carp investigating
the splash from these huge floats hitting the water. Using just this method,
William Raison, joint owner of the fishery, and a member of the World Championship
winning England team, used just
33 maggots to catch 100 lbs of carp for a magazine article !!.
That leaves us with one last killing method, my favourite, and perfect for the pleasure angler. It involves fishing a pole float on a running line under the top of a 13 ft rod. The rod should be strong, I've got a couple of Milo rods, but most of the major rod makers now offer a carp float rod. Couple this to a reel loaded with 5 lb line, a half gram pole float, and a size 10 - 14 barbless strong hook, and you are ready to go. I use a centre pin reel for this method, it's the very best way of playing big carp on float tackle, but a fixed spool reel will work nearly as well. You'll need 2 bags of brown crumb / crushed hemp mix, Sensas Gold Valley is perfect, buy it in the Gold Valley shop, a couple of pints of casters, and a tub of worms. On arriving at your peg, mix one of the bags of groundbait quite wet, and put it to one side. Set up your tackle, plumb the depth under the rod top, then go back to your groundbait give it a good stir, and slowly add a little more water until you can form the groundbait into small HARD balls. They have got to go into the water with a plop, and they've got to go straight to the bottom. The mixing is quite hard to get right, it involves adding a LOT of water, but gradually else you'll end up with a useless, sticky pudding. We're aiming for hard balls of groundbait that will break up into crumbs if rubbed between your hands, but that will still go straight to the bottom.Mix a few casters into the mix, and introduce two balls the size of eggs off the end of the rod. Bait the hook with half a worm, and strike at any bite, no matter how tiny. Each cast, throw in one small ball of groundbait, only about a third of the size of the first two that you introduced, making sure that the groundbait hasn't dried out, remember, it must plop into the water. Follow this method, and I guarantee that you will catch some very big carp, especially as evening approaches, and the fish move into the edge to mop up anglers discarded bait. This method works much better when there is a ripple on the water in your swim, especially if the wind is blowing straight into your bank. It is useless in flat calm water, and doesn't work very well in a lot of the pegs in Middle Lake, for some reason the fish don't seem to come into the edge much on that lake, they tend to stay on and beyond the pole line (10 metres).
You will have noticed that I haven't mentioned pole fishing at Gold, this is simply because the fish have just got too big for catching on the pole. You'll lose too many fish. some of the experts catch big bags of carp there on the pole, but for us mere mortals it's a recipe for disaster.
