Brownings Youth Masters Qualifiers

Tingrith Fisheries - Fringe PoolYesterday at Tingrith Fisheries one of the qualifiers for the Browning Youth Masters was bein held here, as its only half an hour a way from me i thought i should give it a go and just see what happens! I had no intention of coming first as i knew that some good anglers would be there, and i honestly thought id come last!When me and mum arrived there we went to the cafe where there were only 4 other anglers! We payed our money and started to have a little chat. It was then my mum realised how little gear i actually have compared to the propper match men with there big holdalls, trolleys, posh boxes etc!With the draw at 9 i was the first to pick my peg, i pulled out number 5! I was happy with this peg as its an end peg so id have abit more water than some of the others...When i got to my peg i got out my bait for the day,1 tin of corn1 tin of luncheon meat4mm expander pellets6mm feed pellets4mm feed pelletspaste1pint of castersand some left over maggots!PLAN OF ATTACKMy plan of attack was to go for the rudd which apparently are all nice fish, average is 5 to 1lb!So i set up a little dibber float, 3lb main line, with a 2lb hook length and size 18 hook, i was going to be fishing with caster on the hook and spraying caster all around at 9.5m out.I had also planned to try abit in the margins for some of the lumps that live here! so i put a hand full and a half of corn in the margins and left it for abit. Which i topped up every half an hour!THE MATCHAs the whistle sounded i started shipping out my pole and fed a hand full of casters, and straight away i had my first rudd, next put in, next rudd, next put in, next rudd! The rudd were feeding as soon as the caster hit the surface! some point the rudd were taking my float aswell!I also had some nice fish which i think were orth, they were bright orange but looked like rudd? Can someone help with this?Anyway. After 2 and a half hours of rudd fishing i decided to try the margin line.First put in next to a small patch of reeds produced a roach of just under a pound. But the next put in produced a small dip, i stuck and there was 12 elastic streaming out of my pole! It must have taken me abit 10mins to land the fish on 3lb line! It was a nice mirror of around 5lb.Next put in produced the same, but a common of around 4lb.Then another common which i lost which looked abit smaller at around 3lb.I then dropped my rig in again, and surely enough after about 10mins my float dipped again and i connected to a nice fish. it didnt feel as big as the others but as it came to the surface i saw it was a nice tench of about 4lb aswell! Chuffed to bits with this i put it back in my keep net!How ever the next put in was completely different, i keep getting what i think were line bites, but i finally connected to fish. When i first hooked it, the fish just plodded around for abit. But then it shot off and tried to get me in the tree opposite me, this fish gave me a lovely fight for around 10-15mins, and when i finally landed it i saw it was a much bigger fish!There was 5mins left of the match, but i couldnt hook another one before the whistle sounded! so i headed off to watch the weigh in. First weight was 42lb something i think the second weight was 70 odd lb the third weight was 24lb and the fourth weight was 32lb i think.Then it came to me. My rudd came to 12lb, and my carp came to 26lb!So i had a total of 38lb 15oz if i remember correctly which gave me 3rd place which i was happy with considering id never fished the lake and everyone else had!Everyone who took part Thanks for taking your time to read my VERY LONG report

Photo's will follow!

Pike at emberton with red_al. 21/2/09

Once again i was back at emberton, we arrived at 7:30 to see that the peg i wanted to fish was already taken :O so instead we fished a peg nearly opposite it.
When i got to the peg i set up my pole to try and catch some bait, i soon realised id have no luck for bait here so i walked round and tried by a bush, whilst i was doing so my dad had 3 rods out on dead baits. I had caught about half a dozen small roach and dace, only just, so i walked back round to my peg. Dad said he hadnt a run, so i put a small roach on a rod cast it out and WHAM! i had a take straight away and landed a little jack pike of around 3lb.
Today wasnt the easiest day with the pike but we managed to land 4 between us, (me and red_al as my dad went home after about 2 hours), i landed a 7lb pike and the 3lb pike, and alan landed a 6lb 8oz pike and 6lb pike.
I didnt get any pictures today as i forgot my camera but im going back tomorow to catch my dad his first pike in a while so i will try and remember my camera!
Id also like to say well done to red_al for landing not only his first pike but his second pike too in 25 years!
Thanks for reading.

Emberton pike again! 19th Febuary

I was back again today, on the same lake i landed the 8lb pike and 4lb pike yesterday. But today it was even better! When me and my dad arrived i saw Kevin down there, we went and spoke to him for about 10minutes before i went and unloaded the car and got my gear ready. My dad promptly left to go back home and work.
I tried catching bait on my match rod but i couldnt catch as much as kevin was on the pole, so he generously gave me enough bait to keep me going as i had only managed one small dace.
Next was to set up my pike rods, out went the float ledger with a 5inch roach, and 10mins later i put out the ledger rod with the small 4inch dace i caught. I then put the rod on my pod and put the swingers in place. i walked round the other side of the pool to see if i could catch anybait there, first put in and i swung a 2inch roach to my hand, un hooked it and put back. As it went in the water i looked over to kevin running over to my rods and striking into a fish.
I ran over to him and he gave me the rod to keep playing the fish, after about 4minutes playing it i saw the fish, my words were "Bloody hell kevin its a biggun!" After playing it for a further 2 more minutes kevin slipped the net under it and we placed it on the un hooking mat, un hooked the pike and put it back in the water in the net to rest whilst my dad drove down to see it.
5mins later my dad came and told him the weight, 21lb 4oz, a new PB by 7lb! Got a few shots and slipped it back.

Kevin left about 15 minutes after. About 40 minutes after i had another take on the ledger rod in the same place, i landed this pike and i guessed the weight of around 8-9lb. Didnt get a picture of this one though.

Through out the day i had 5 more runs, 1 of them i let my dad hit, he lost his pike, then i let my mate hit another take, he also lost this pike. But i did also loose 3 pike myself!

All in all it was a very enjoyable day and hope its this good on Saturday and Sunday!

Bye for now.

Emberton pike. 17th & 18th.

On the 17th Febuary me and my mate went to Emberton Country Park for abit of pike fishing,We started on a little pool of the main lake, there wasnt much action here but my mate had 3 runs, connected with 2 of them for a second but lost them. We decided to make our way round to a much harder lake, the boating lake. This was a very difficult lake to fish and not many pike are caught from here, but we thought we would give it a go. We got to the new location at about 12:30. On my rods i was fishing ledgered herring and a ledgered roach, and dan (mate) was fishing a free lined mackeral tail and a ledgered roach. Theres not much to talk about here apart from my mate lost, what felt like a good pike.To cut a long story short we had no more action here.A few pics from my peg:

We returned to the same lake again on the 18th that we finished on hoping we could catch a pike from here, we were fishing a peg on the opposite bank of the bay that we were on yesterday. Using the same methods apart from i had one of my rods set up on a ledger, we tried sprats, roach, herring and mackeral but still,we didnt have a touch Because of our bad luck we decided to fish the small pool that we fished yesterday to begin with, using the same setups apart from my mate who put a bung on his freelined rig, we cast out to likely looking spots. A couple hours after we put our rods out i said to my mate, "theese roach aint biting no more are they?!", for some strange reason he didnt reply until about a minute after when he said: Jack!! Yourr float, i turned my head to see my pike float making its way across the pool, i picked up the rod, let some line out and WHAM! a good firm strike connected with a pike. All exicited my mate chinned the fish out and we put it on the unhooking mat to unhook... Once she was unhooked we put her in the net to rest whilst we got the camera ready for a few shots.Here is the best shot:

I then cast my rod out again in the same place with another live bait that we had caught, a roach.Then it was my mates turn to get abit of action, unfortunately he left the bite to develop way to much and missed it, GUTTED!An hour or so later whilst i was catching more live bait, i heard a click, my swinger had dropped and i had a drop back bite, once again i connected with the pike and shouted to my mate who was on the other side trying to sneak out a pike. This fish was smaller, we didnt weigh him but estimated at 4lb, i have a picture but its on my phone, will post it soon!We had no further action in the day but it was the first pike ive caught in a while so i was very happy!