| MARK WINTLE |
| Mark Wintle, an angler for thirty-five years, is on a quest to discover and bring to you the magic of fishing. Previously heavily involved with match fishing he now fishes for the sheer fun of it. With an open and enquiring mind, each week Mark will bring to you articles on fishing different rivers, different methods and what makes rivers, and occasionally stillwaters, tick. Add to this a mixed bag of articles on catching big fish; tackle design, angling politics and a few surprises. Are you stuck in a rut fishing the same swim every week? Do you dare to try something different and see a whole new world of angling open up? Yes? Then read Mark Wintle’s regular column. |
Wintle’s World of Angling – Memorable Matches Part 4 – ObliviousANY EXPERIENCED MATCH angler will tell you that at times they have failed to see the obvious. That they’ve misread a match so badly that their best hope at the end is to sneak off quietly and hope no-one noticed. It happens to the best of them, and I hope you’ll enjoy these examples of memorable cock-ups!
I have often found that my best results on a water are on my first visit or on waters that I really know well. When match fishing a water for the first time I have a completely open mind and that can be a tremendous advantage. But second visits are tempered by that first visit and a little knowledge is a dangerous thing. It is all too easy to base your approach solely on what happened that first time when what is required is once again the truly open mind. Medley Mockery My first example followed on from another week’s holiday at Wolvercote near Oxford. This time around the match (on the Medley Reach) was at the end of the holiday on the final Sunday before returning home. It had been very hot all week, and I had good catches of decent roach on hemp and tares. As is often the case with such weather in summer a hot brisk easterly breeze had set in. I thought long and hard about tactics for the match. I could not envisage hemp and tares working in match conditions with the river being clear, yet with the hot weather the bleak had been a plague all week on maggot. I decided that I could blast the bleak off with lots of bronze maggots, and took 6 pints plus a couple of pints of hemp. I drew in the bay below the Poplars – not a bad draw. My downstream neighbour tackled up one rod – a feeder rod with open-end feeder, and mixed a bowl of groundbait. The whistle went and we all cast in. My float hardly settled as myriads of tiny bleak shredded my maggot hookbait. My neighbour watched his tip which pulled round steadily first cast, a 3lb bream on worm and caster. Ten minutes later he had another, and then another 15 minutes later. Anyone spotted the flaw in my master plan? So with less than half an hour gone I was getting ‘bitted out’, I was failing to catch anything worthwhile, and was 10 lb behind the next angler, and worst of all, had no worms, casters or groundbait. I had totally misread the match. My neighbour on the other hand had it completely figured, the breeze and heat meant the bream would feed, and went on to win the match. At 11:45 I decided on an early bath, and having checked that there was an afternoon match on the Dorset Frome just a mile from where I lived at Wareham (100 miles away) with a 3pm draw, hastily packed my gear and drove home. I made the draw with a minute to spare, drew a weedy peg that seemed barely fishable due to the amount of rowing boats brought out by the heatwave. I finally had a brainwave influenced by the morning’s fiasco and set up a feeder rod with a blockend feeder, and dropped it into a hole in the weeds. 26 eels later, I ended the day with a win but it taught me much about tackling matches on the Thames! Longleat losers Back in the 80s there were regular, fortnightly opens on the three Longleat Lakes running from autumn through the winter. Although only 60 pegs they attracted a strong field with the best of the South West (stop laughing) plus some from further afield like Dorking, South Wales and the Midlands. Tactically there were two approaches: try and catch lots of small roach on waggler or sit it out for bigger fish such as tench or bream on an open end feeder. Which approach would work best depended on conditions, mild weather favouring roach, colder conditions the patient approach for bigger fish, and also on which peg and area of the three lakes you’d drawn. One very mild but windy day I drew the bottom lake. This is the smallest of the three, and rarely produced the winner, yet with a gale force 10 blowing the outcome was wide open. At that time (1985) Longleat had banned the use of lead completely, yet substitutes were few and far between. This meant my light waggler approach had wisps of special putty as dropper shot. The angler to my left was downwind and opted for the feeder approach, sitting with his back to me. Despite the gale I started to catch small roach, fish averaging just an ounce. The fine drizzle didn’t help matters, especially when it came to sticking the bits of putty on the line, but I persevered with the roach, fishing maggot but also feeding a few casters. Every couple of hours my neighbour turned round to see how I was getting on, usually seeing me swing in another tiny roach. By the end of the match my right eye had closed up due to the gale blowing through the gap behind my glasses. After packing up my neighbour (nameless to spare his blushes) told me he’d had just three little roach but couldn’t understand why I’d battled the gale for a few tiddlers. I said nothing, knowing that those casters had finally drawn in some net roach in the last hour. The scales soon told the true story. I had half an ounce short of ten pounds and was three pounds clear of the field, an easy win. My neighbour couldn’t believe it, he’d been so convinced that my approach was wrong and yet here was the evidence. The following year Kim Milsom turned up. It appeared that he’d fished there some years previously, and his skills showed as he turned in a masterly performance on the waggler, coming second with 11lbs of small roach. What had happened was that a big shoal of small roach could be seen topping far out in the top lake and he had managed to reach them with his loose feed and gradually draw them in leaving us, the two anglers either side, the crumbs from the master’s table. Two weeks later, having tasted success, he was back for the next one. But it was now much colder. Paradoxically the three of us had drawn the same three pegs though the order was reversed so again Kim was sandwiched by the same two anglers. Kim set about trying to draw in the roach; the two of us patiently fished open-end feeders with red maggot. This time we had the last laugh – I won and the other angler was second, both of us catching some bream and tench, with Kim biteless. Let’s just say the previously exuberant Kim was mightily subdued! Maidment’s Miscalculation When Neil Maidment was much younger he once, somewhat rashly, offered to host the 1983 Barclays Bank AA annual team and individual championship. This was the previous year at the AGM, and those of us with him were surprised but having sold the idea (very successfully I might add) with tales of 4lb chub and big roach, the match, a two hundred pegger, was scheduled for the Dorset Stour in October 1983. The reality dawned of attempting to get that many pegs on a weedy river but to save Neil’s bacon the Christchurch and Ringwood clubs kindly provided several big pits around Ringwood. That meant some incredibly tight pegging, and Neil also suggested that we allocate lakes prior to the match to members of our 6 man team (allowed under the rules) so that all we needed was our peg number. I got Hightown Lake that had 68 pegs on it with another team member, Glen. At least this meant that we could concentrate on practicing just one water, and Glen and I soon found that groundbait, red pinkies and maggots, fished with groundbait feeders and pole or waggler would tempt the plentiful small skimmers and roach. We suspected that Neil was plotting to win it individually but, as we looked like getting some decent fishing anyway, accepted our lot. And in any case we couldn’t predict the effect of so many anglers on the venues as they were packed to the gunnels. On the day it was mild, windy and overcast. I had an end peg with one of the Bank’s best anglers to my left. I decided that sowing a little confusion was in order. When my neighbour asked what to expect I said roach on bronze maggot close in, failing to mention skimmers, groundbait, feeders etc. I started as I’d described, getting a roach after ten minutes but I also started to put out a small ball of groundbait 25 yards out every five minutes. The strong wind concealed the splashes, and so when I went out with a feeder after half an hour some skimmers were waiting. After half an hour my neighbour followed suit but with no bait out there nothing happened. Whilst fishing further out I fed the inside with groundbait. After an hour on the feeder and several skimmers, I gauged it was time to come back on the inside line, where I caught more skimmers. My neighbour had yet to cotton on the fact that it was the groundbaiting that was the key to catching the skimmers. His only fish so far was a tiny perch. Confused, he came back inside too. With no groundbait going in, and not having fed the line either, he couldn’t get a bite there either. Over the final three hours I continued to alternate the two lines, catching at will, and getting one or two big skimmers (most were only a couple of ounces). With an hour to go, my neighbour slumped, dejected on his box. I asked what the matter was. He replied that he was totally demoralised, couldn’t buy a bite, and that he’d never had a lesson in match fishing like it.
With just ten minutes to go, local tackle dealer Dave Swallow came round. He’d been around the entire match and reckoned that scarcely a fish had been caught. 5lb would win he said. I told him I had 5lb, and so it soon proved; my 5-12 winning easily. The Poole team annihilated the opposition with all of its anglers in the top 4 of the 33 peg sections (Neil only had a couple of ounces but still enough), and we even won the Stewards cup. I hope those who suffered in the cause of match fishing were not too mentally scarred, it being no different to any other competitive sport. Next time – The quest for All-England Glory  When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission, which supports our community.
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