Welcome to the second article in the series. Before we go on, lets get something straight right away … this article is about scratching !!!  And if like me you fished last weeks SFCA Summer League second round match, you’ll know exactly why.  But lets come back to that later and focus firstly on the Monklands club match fished a week earlier on Forrestburn reservoir.

I was a bit nervous going into this one as it was pegged on the same section I’d blown out in at the first SFCA League match.  As I was setting up I had flash backs to that terrible day, but it did get me thinking about how best to approach the match and I was quickly recalling lessons learned from last months Davie’s Diary.  So I decided to play it coy this time by not starting with an all-out roach attack and instead opted for a ‘catch what you could’ game plan, targeting the shoals of small perch.  I drew end peg which, to be honest, was a big help as I could feed regularly and pull new fish into the swim from my left.  I felt that if it was hard and it turned out to be a perch match I could win from that draw and that’s exactly the way it turned out as I took first place with 30 odd fish for 2 ½ lbs.

I caught by fishing the method covered in article one, i.e. chopped worm and joker in leam on a close in line (5 metres) and a long line (13 metres) with redworm on the hook.  After 45 minutes on the long pole for half a dozen fish I switched inside hoping to up my catch rate and immediately got bites .… I love it when a plan comes together!!!  For the remainder of the match I switched between the two lines catching most fish short which was satisfying having made a mess of it the last time I’d been on there.

I found that the perch would come to a ball quite quickly and I would often get a bite just as the float settled.  When I didn’t however, I simply dragged my float left or right 6 inches at a time almost teasing the fish to have a go.  One thing about perch is that they love a worm, and they love it to move, so by lifting and dragging your bait you can often induce bites.  When bites dried up I feed another ball and the smell of the chopped worm and joker was too much to resist and brought them back within minutes, and I started the process over again.

OK, I know What you’re thinking…"yes, that sounds like scratching to me" but wait, the worst is still to come.  The following week I was fishing the SFCA Summer League team event on the Forth & Clyde canal at Wyndford.  They should have played the theme music from The Omen at the draw to this one as we were all about to endure a horrific nightmare from which there was no escape.  If you think that’s a little dramatic you should have been there.

To be fair I knew we were in for a grueller having practiced twice on the venue in the week leading up to the match.  Don’t get me wrong, I caught 45 fish (mainly roach) for 2lb in the first session, which is respectable for this venue.  But the way I caught told me there weren’t fish in any numbers in the stretch. So what were the signs?  Two of us fished and we both started similarly by feeding a couple of small hard balls with joker on 10 metres which is the deepest part of the canal and I caught a few small perch quite quickly followed by nothing.  My team mate waited 40 minutes for his first bite and when he swung in a small perch he found its mouth full of joker.  That told me that I had caught the few resident perch that were living in my peg and that he had caught a fish that had swum into his peg mopping up the lot including his hookbait.  I continued to feed regularly to try and encourage fish into my swim but did not get bites again until almost an hour and a half had passed.  Again those fish weren’t there to begin with, they had been attracted into my swim by the cloudy leam and joker but when they did arrive I caught reasonably steadily.  I tried to picture how the canal would respond with 40 pegs on it with a fair bit of feed going in and I must say it looked ominous.

A week later and a similar scenario but this time I had only 17 small fish.  The water was gin clear (again) and any fish that I could see were hugging the lily cover.  By fishing a little cloud groundbait just over the lillies I could catch 4 or 5 at a time before they spooked and moved off.  So the team plan was simple…just catch a fish as any team with 4 weighers would be in with a shout of the win.  I’ll not bore you with the tactics on this one as the match was so bad that nothing really worked but we agreed that feeding any amount of bait in your cloud or deep line would be a death wish.  We knew that fish would be in your peg at some stage and that you just had to keep at it to catch.  Personally I had 2 fish for 40 grams at 14.5 metres against the lillies which was good enough to win a section that contained 5 blanks and put me fourth individually. Now don’t ask me to repeat that, you heard me correctly the first time, it really was that bad.  A decent bream with a few bits made the winning weight look respectable and a Tench was second.

Too much excitement!

Team wise our prediction was spot on as Monklands A recorded 4 weighers to take first place and open up a substantial lead at the top of the SFCA League table.  They really are fishing with confidence at the moment, even in tough conditions and will prove difficult to catch.  However, it’s early days yet and a lot can happen in 4 matches so it’s not over yet.  My Monklands B team are lying 3^rd but it’s quite tight at the top so we’re looking to improve at the next opportunity.

On a more positive note, I’ve just enjoyed two 7lb pleasure catches this weekend from a local pond and from  Forrestburn so it looks like sport is slowly beginning to pick up.  Did I need those or what !  Lets hope we can get a few good matches as the next few weeks will be busy for me.  This weekend sees me compete in a club match followed by the SFCA League match 3 and then I’m off to Wales for a practice and an open on the forthcoming 6 Nations venue in Llanelli.  I hope to cover these in the next article.  In the meantime, keep the questions and comments coming and we’ll do our best to post these on the site, with responses of course.

Tight lines

Davie

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