
It looks like the weather is going to be fairly reasonable for the Junior Pairs Match this weekend at Harbourbridge Lakes.
Rules I am asking everyone to arrive a little earlier than normal so we can go over the match rules for Junior events. There were a few situations that have arisen from the event last week that I want to sort out, mostly because I haven't addressed them before. The rules for all events are written by and decided upon by the committee for senior and junior events alike. Of course, there are concessions with new juniors that have to be taken into consideration, but the rules are there for everyone to follow and once we have gone through them together, then we will all be singing from the same hymn sheet, so to speak.
Event
The Junior Pairs match this year will be organised as follows.
The draw will be made for pegs in the order that the tickets were booked on the website as per normal.
Participants will fish a normal match for points against each other.
During the event, I will do a draw again using the numbers in which the tickets were booked, to pick the pairs for the match taking place.
The weigh in will take place with points being given out in the usual way. There will be no medals for the points winners at this event.
The pairs will then be announced and the Top three pairs will receive medals.
The pairs trophy will be awarded at the winners at the presentation evening in 2022.
Fishing
On to the fishing and some of you may have read the blog from yesterday. It looks like the method feeder will score well on Saturday. I used a dark groundbait mix and caught fairly well using 8mm pellets on the band. Si Wagner was also using a feeder, but this time with a 50/50 mixture of groundbait and micro pellets, with an orange wafter bait on the band. I don't think there was that much difference between the two, so I don't really think it matters that much. I did catch a few more fish, but I think that was down to being on a better peg rather than the baits being used. One thing that Si did do differently to me was to use the pole at roughly 5 metres out (Top kit plus two sections), feeding and fishing with 6mm pellets, hard on the bottom of the lake at full depth. He was catching the odd bonus Bream, some of them a good size too, along with the expected Roach and Rudd. Si fed some medium sized balls of his method mix and caught some Carp over it later on. He did feed some groundbait down the edge close in, but I'm not sure that he caught anything over it.
I had a go on the pellet waggler at about mid session, after the breeze had dropped. But it didn't produce anything other than a few knocks from silverfish. I guess if things got desperate, you could put some maggots on the hook for some silverfish shallow.
There are literally thousands of small fish present in the lake that will jump on a hooked maggot faster than you can say 'Fish on!', so there are loads of fish to catch. If you have one, I would set up a whip to catch some silverfish very quickly as a back up weight, but I don't see it being able to compete with those catching Carp.
Summary
So, pole or waggler at around 4 or 5 metres with 6mm pellets or maggots fished hard on the bottom.
Maybe a whip fished shallow to mid depth to back up your weight with small silvers.
Feeder fished roughly a metre from the far side. You don't want to fish it too tight because the fish will be crawling up the back in water that is too shallow and you will foul hook fish to often.
Bait list, for me, would be;
1 pint red maggots.
1 bag of Method mix groundbait
2mm micro pellets
4, 6 & 8mm pellets
Wafters as hook baits.
I do not see any reason to bring much else, but that's doesn't mean you should not bring other baits if you want to...
See you Saturday!
Juniors Sec.
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