Army Angling Federation Group 3 match 3 Old Nene Ramsey St Mary 13/12/2011

Another match in the Army Angling Federation Group 3 saw me yet again on the Old Nene at Ramsey St Mary. I love this time of a year as the commercial’s slow down with the carp becoming less forth coming to normal summer tactics I like to switch my attention to rivers/drain and canals.

Today saw me on the Old Nene on a cold and windy day (around this side of the midlands there is no cover other than hoping for a steep bank to get away from the wind due to the landscape being very flat and open.

Having travelled the 1 and a half journey down to the venue we all met up in one of the local pubs for a good old fry up and a quick get together due to it being our annual fur&feather event.

With Royal Engineers having their own fur&feather event about 2 weeks ago it was decided to take out the first 6 pegs on the stretch due to them being flyers giving everyone a good chance overall.

On the draw as Engineer B team Captain I drew for my 3 man team, with me picking properly the best draw out of the 3 drawing peg A3.

Even though I had drawn well I felt it could of gone either way as I had drawn near the beginning of the section. With the rain it could of moved the fish further up river away from where I was. Or if the Old Nene hadn’t had a flush through it would only push the fish up willing to feed from the flyer pegs.

After looking down the stretch before my peg I had a feeling it was going to be hard, there was a lot of Canadian pond weed in the stretch which you could clearly see cut off certain stretches within the river due to it being thick all the way across. Another thing I noticed was how clear the river was no signs of a flush through or flood down here.

Well down to my peg and with my trusty Browning Z9 pole it was out looking through the swim to see what weed was in my peg. After having a good 15 minutes plumbing around I managed to find 2 free swims both 11 meters out at the 10 o’clock position and 1 at the 2 o’clock. Down the middle it was fully of weed about a foot of the surface with both swims being around 5 foot deep. After plumbing up the left swim was dead on depth but the right was 3 inch over depth which I decided to leave as this gave me the option of fish just slightly up off the bottom.

Rig wise as what I like to use is a Browning Cenex number 5 elastic set through a PMK (power match kit) to a 0.10mm main line to a 0.08mm 8 inch hook length. Reason why I like a 8 inch hook length is that’s the target area I want to catch in and with no shot on the line I feel with it gives the perfect slow fall at the last 8 inch.Shotting pattern is always a button shirt spread with smaller shot towards the hook length to give it than natural fall. Float choice today was a Sackup Aqua float 4x12. A float that I had not used before but had heard good reviews about and having owned some of the original  Sackup floats when they fist came online it was some thing I wanted to try as they are always true to what they are aimed at, and their build quality and finish is second to none.With a wire stem for stabiltiy and a bright orange tip as well as will as the finesse built into the float it was of the new range I hadnt tried before, but going on previous models it was one that I was looking forward to using.

Bait for both lines was Browning Champions Choice 2 parts Black magic to 1 part Gardons flour sieved  out (to take ou the larger particles finished off with 2 tea spoons of Sensas black dye as I wanted a really dark ground bait but with the dye put it a good dark haze to the water as it went down and broke up on the bottom.

No bonus line was set up today of hemp line I felt confident as long as a could keep the pinkie fish going I was sure to frame

With the all being called it was straight to work  3 golf ball sizes of grounbait with the last one have a pinch of pinkie in (firm believer  you can put in but you cant take out of the swim) and go carefully into the swim and build it up, both 11 meters swims were fed with the same amount which I feel create a trap, catch um down, swim or if they haven’t came right into the swim I could catch um on my right swim.

I started off on my 10’clock line and straight away the float went under for fish number 1. I knew this was going to be a fish/ speed race so chose to fish to hand once breaking down from my number 4 section. After an hour had past I was doing well with 50 fish in the net looking around the rest of the section it want going to well with the 2 pegs to the right catching steady but felt I was catching a better stamp, and as for the right it was pretty slow.

Not knowing how the rest of the lads were doing I just got my head down catching fish. As the bites started to slow down it was time to re-feed and move over to the 2 o’clock line which had been fed throughout the match and was further down towards the better pegs should the fish come up river and settle the bait. This turned out to be the best move of the match as it was averaging 2 fish every minute for the first hour and looks were coming from the peg from my right who had he also clocked onto what I was doing. It turned out to be a fish race to the end what let him down was he tried to get the hemp line going which he spent time on and didn’t work, mean while I just kept catching small pinkie fish.

With the left hand angler now picking one or two hemp fish off was this going to be a re-run of the last match were I lost it in the last half hour?

Keeping my head down I carrying on I kept switching between the 2 swims just to catch as much as possible some times moving after catching a fish in 1 swim just to move to the other and back just to keep the pace up.

With the all out being called word down the bank that C section had blanked except one and B section had a few bites between them (no where near my 200 odd fish which I managed to put in the net). On the weigh in it became apparent that the water flow not flushing out the top end sections and being clear lent for some poor fishing. With me being in A section it looks like the fish had slightly moved up to the feed in the section with my left hand peg taking 2^nd me finishing 1^st and my right 2 pegs taking 3^rd and 4^th overall through the match.

Looking back I feel I made the right decision of a good peg but still had to beat the angler to my right as well as the two anglers to my left which were sat on the end end pegs. With me moving between my 2 swims I feel I got the most from the peg under windy cold difficult conditions.

The final weigh in saw me win the match with 2.220kg which was a joy seems as I messed the last match up not making the right decisions.

TOP 5 WEIGHTS TAKEN FROM OLD NENE (RAMSEY ST MARY)

Chris Glover         Engineer B Team/ Browning                  2.220Kg

Mathew Jones      Engineer A                                              1.820Kg

Borris Kilner        Ind                                                            1.760kg

Stuart Abbot        Ind                                                             1.230kg

Gaz Arnold           EOD A Team                                           0.480kg