Cuckoo Canal, Townsend Fishery - 13 September 2009

Match report by Trev:

By not updating my diary with the second-edition venue change and subsequently booking in and cancelling out of an Open Match the week before, I first set eyes on the venue on the morning of the match.

By chance, Keith and I stopped for breakfast at the infamous Green Wellie café in Chatteris, (it’s been dramatically improved and the breakfast was fab) and bumped in to a couple of the March lads. They had cancelled six matches not due to the fishing but because of the nightmare walk you have to undertake when it’s muddy and the general un-loved condition of the venue. They both had no complaints over the fishing but stated the biggest error people made was to under-feed. They commented the venue has a huge head of fish which are ravenous. The problem is made more difficult by the fact you have to use their own feed pellet and at £1.00 a pint, it’s not cheap, ( a little too much profiteering I felt considering other venues such as Tunnel Barn who adopt the same policy make their pricing as keen as shop-bought prices). I mentioned I had come armed with a kilo of worm, a pint of castor and red maggot and after they had stopped laughing instructed me, unless I wanted to be plagued by “bits”, to keep them in the car!!

I pulled peg seven, noted for an unusual feature of a six-foot blow-up killer whale pegged out on the far bank, (fact stranger than fiction eh?). That was the only thing notable in the swim. The banks were scraped blue clay; it was a good 2 foot down with a steep side slope. It was at its deepest just short of middle at four foot.

I set up four rigs, an inside 4x12 to a 16 808. Fishing on the slope, (3 + 2) to my left and right with sweetcorn as the predominant hook bait. An identical rig but with a band on a hair to fish hard pellet. A one gramme, olivette rig at depth down the centre of the track, (3+4) to get through the bits and fish soft hook pellet, this may seem a bit heavy but the wind was whistling down the lake causing a strong surface skim. I had back shotted the rig allowing me to “lean” on it allowing the presentation to be more natural. My last rig, another 4x12 was for across pushing up the steep sloop with banded pellet. I had purchased 5 bags of pellet, three 4mm and two micro but realised before the draw that with the strong cross-wind, the micro would probably end up in Guyhirn and so jumped in the motor and exchanged them for 4mm, (as well as buying two more bags).

At the whistle I cupped in pellet and corn over all my lines. John-baggin’-Ellis had already netted two fish before I had finished! I started down the track and caught two micro tench on soft pellet in two put-ins. That rig went up the bank never to be used again. I went in on my inside line on corn and immediately was in to a carp of about a pound. It was clear they were coming to the sound of the pellet “rattling” in and I quickly learnt that if I just dampened the hook pellet lightly it made far more noise than wetter ones going in. I was still missing bites and getting frustrated by small fish and so decided to go “balls-out” with a 12mm banded pellet on the hook. This immediately settled the bites that were no where near as frequent but every time the float sailed away it was a decent fish. If I did not keep the feed going in they backed off and so it I focused on one line and fed heavily. At times the wait was too long on the big banded pellet and so I would switch to my corn rig to keep something going in my nets.

As for the line over the far bank, don’t know, never bothered with it!

At the finish I was pleased with my clicking. I weighed in 123lb with only some 10lb of bits meaning I averaged nearly 38lb a net. The owner informed us the venue record is 125lb in a five and a half hour match. I was frustrated with the amount of fish I dropped, (estimated 20 – 25lb), which I believe was down to the hair rig and a few foul hookers, (at one stage I had to fish away from the margin as it was absolutely solid with fish). Jonty also had a good match (and a lovely back wind) with 120lb. Maybe the big banded pellet was the edge?

It was clear that our arm of the lake had far more fish present than the other stretch behind us. Fishing maggot/worm would keep you busy wherever and Borug bitterly complained he hadn’t time to eat his sandwiches! and weighed in some 30lb of bits!! A great venue for a match but just needs a bit of TLC and a fairer bait pricing policy!!!