Add the fact that this venue hadn't been fished by the club here for over 3 years mainly because of the drought in Australia for the last 8 yrs or so as the levels had dropped so low it had almost disappeared to a puddle as you can see on the pic below. All this plus I had never seen the venue before and didn't know what to expect in terms of depths, fish, methods, etc meant I wasn't sure what to expect. You can see from the picture from goggle earth which is about 3 yrs old how low the water was,then I have added a blue line around which is the water line that greeted us Sunday morning when we drew at the venue itself
There was only 14 of us fishing as it seemed this venue had left some bad impression on some the last time it was fished. I drew Peg 11 but to be honest didn't really mean much to me bar it was almost beside the entry gate and I didn't have far to drive or unload my gear ( fishing the venue blind meant I had brought the lot too !)
I had some what of an idea the the bottom was abit all over the shop from looking at the pics earlier in the week and casting a bomb around at the start helped to confuse me even more somewhat. As my peg was somewhat on a point with the deeper dam end to my left and the shallower bank to my right it varied everywhere I chucked it. I finally found it somewhat level with about 9 ft at about 28 turns on the feeder but found it just kept sloping away to my left from there. I spent a while searching around on this line as I had felt the feeder was going to be the method for today and had seen several large fish roll out in the middle as we set up. I had an open end feeder to get some bait in at the start and planned to fish a small method over this or a bomb for the rest of the match. If I thought finding a spot of the feeder was bad to chuck at I almost spent another 25 minutes trying to sort out some pole lines. First I went to my right at 11 mts and had about 2 ft or so and the same at 13 and 14.5 mts in that direction...with it being so cold all week I didn't have much faith on this line but set up a small BGT dibber on .18 to and animal 16 on a loose black hydro. I had been told there were some lumps in here and would leave a full pot of corn and hemp there at the start in case some came in later. Straight in front of me at 13 mts I seemed to have what was like a sharp ledge where it dropped from 2 1/2 ft to 4 ft and then as I as plumbed around to the left it just sloped and kept sloping till GT (one of our Italian club members) must have started to wonder how far over I was going to claim as part of my swim...I wasn't going to go that far thou as once I got to a 2 o clock position it required a top 4 rig and I hadn't much faith in catching on the pole too much so didn't bother setting one up.
I set up a .4 gram HB critter to fish tight at the bottom of the sharp slope at 4 ft on .16 line to white hydro and a B911 16 hook on short line and also set up .5 grm dwezzil on a longer line to fish out past on 14.5 mts or to search down the slope to my left later if it was hard. With all the plumbing up plus with having to do some grass cutting to get into my swim (well it hadn't been fished for 3 years..) I wasn't fully ready to go at the all in, I don't think many were to be honest but threw the loaded open end feeder out as I put my waggler rod together (I was still wondering what I had to do to plumb this up). I cast 3 more feeders out with some maggot and corn in and fed 1 ball of groundbait with some chopped worm and half a cup of maggot and hemp on my 13 mt line plus a cup of corn and hemp 11 mts to my right. After spending 5 mins plumbing the waggler at 25 mts I found it was 8 ft in front and sloped back to 3 ft or so to the right of my swim and continued to catapulted some corn out there while I settled down on the method feeder for a bit. I also had Neil from our nationals team of 4 to my right again (this must be the 5th time this season this has happened).
13 mts in front of me was where the ledge was and the dam was to my left from there
My swim at 11 mts to my right was one about 2 ft deep as far out as I went
The lake is full to the brim again of years of drought.....But I really do wish I had got some good pics of the bottom of it when it was low..Neil was once again drawn next to me with 5 of us on this side and 9 anglers on the other side of the lake
After having just one twitch on the feeder for the first 30 minutes and not seeing anyone on my side catch anything some thoughts of taking up some new hobbies here to blog about were really starting to enter my head. Yorkie on the end peg to my left then hooked into a good fish and after 5 or 6 minutes landed a fish about 3 kgs. He hadn't got his fish in the keepnet when I had just decided to chop a little more worm for the pole line when my tip flew around (it's like carp know when you got your hands full to try and drag you rod off). I also now had a fish close to 3 kg in the net and then looked around two minutes later to see Neil and Jon on the end both playing fish on the waggler together. I continued with the feeder after feeding some more worm on the pole line and had plenty of twitches and knocks but despite trying all sorts of baits couldn't get a proper bite. I tried a bare hook at one stage and got another smaller fish in thinking they maybe just hitting the groundbait on the feeder and thought that's it but didn't get anymore after that. After finally spending 1 1/2 hours on the feeder I had to try something else as Neil and Jon on my right were now getting fish regularly on the waggler despite both fishing in just 2 1/2 ft of water. A quick drop in on all pole lines and I didn't have a liner I refed a little on each and went out on the waggler. After another biteless 30 minutes and now hearing reports of some having 20 fish from the far side plus the 2 anglers on my right still catching I was really wondering if bird watching would be such a bad hobby to take up.
A quick check on my 13 mt line with a small piece of worm before I was going back on the feeder in the hope of a few more lumps and my float shot under just as the rig settled. Back out again after putting a 1/2 kg fish in the net and it went down again. Next put in and I also added alittle chopped worm in the kinder cup and it hardly settle before it went again. And then again, and again, and again..........Bird watching is for poofs anyway and I wasn't really going to take it up.
After adding 11 fish all between 1/2 to 3/4 kg to the net it slowed down a little so I fed another ball of groundbait with some more chopped worm and hemp and flicked my longer rig our at 14.5 mts. I added 2 more fish but decided to rest it for a bit and tried my 11 mt line with nothing and decided to try the feeder for a little while. Both to my right had slowed catching and now the 2 to my left were picking up the odd fish. With an hour and 20 minutes to go I hoped I would get a good last 60 minutes from my pole line. With only a few twitches and liners on the feeder went back with an hour and 10 minutes remaining and had 7 similar size fish again in as many put ins before it went quiet again. I decided to stay on the pole and search about a little around the slope and got another fish close to 5 kgs. to the left of the slope. The last 5 or 6 minutes they had lined up again at the ledge and I had 3 more smaller ones out before the final whistle. The bigger fish seemed to keep moving in and out and messing the swim up but I had quite enjoy the last 2 hours of the match
It turned out the whole lake fished well in the end and Jon to my right had finished ahead of me on my side with 31 kgs. My net went 25 kgs something and was enough for 4th on the day with new member Brummie Paul winning from Peg 1 on the far side with 35 kgs mostly on paste in his first club match here. Well done but I don't think you need any more tips on adjusting to fish in Oz !
my own net went 25.5 kgs in the end...........
What a match it was in the end...most of the shallower swims threw up the best weights and it ended up being the highest weight per angler on average for the whole year for the club with over 273 kg of fish caught by 14 anglers and when you consider its winter here, all the venues here are wild fish and carp are never stocked it was not something everyone expected today. Plus when you look down at the weights and consider almost everyone had a 3kg fish or two in their nets plus many lost a few it was a close match up to the end. 4 anglers all had fish on a the all out so a good day was had by all. The next winter league match has now been switched here too so fingers crossed will be just as good. Trouble now is it can't stop raining here.......
Myself and Brummie Paul and maybe more are out here again midweek for a go on some other venue as the rain has held up work for me now too so will post on if we have a knock up, plus he has a nugget belonging to me now from the weekend which I need to get back................
Here also is the full weigh sheet from last Sunday's match
- paul heath peg 1 34.86kg
- jon moses peg 13 31.22kg
- howard hill peg 4 28.66kg
- dara finnegan peg 11 25.56kg
- danny brown peg 7 22.16kg
- bill childs peg 5 21.74kg
- giles cooper peg 8 20.92 kg
- mark dean peg 3 19.16kg
- shaun redmond peg 6 17.40kg
- ralph czichon peg 9 12.10kg
- neil dourish peg 12 11.72kg
- john davis peg 2 9.28kg
- mark york peg 14 9.04kg
- GT peg 10 8.64kg
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