It’s been a really busy last couple of months as this is traditionally the best time of year for match fishing in Scotland. This has resulted in a jam packed calendar both for domestic & international events and I haven’t stopped since you last heard from me. There has been so much on that I couldn’t possibly cover it all in one article so I have decided to cover the international events in a ‘special edition’ on my return from Paris in two weeks. So what’s been happening in Scotland recently? Well there has been 3 tight league matches, the fantastic Dundee Open and a wet but interesting Scottish National…where do I start !!!

The third league match saw the 10 teams back on Forrestburn Reservoir hoping for some good sport. There had been a fair bit of rain in the week running up to this match which had washed in a lot of ‘peaty’ colour from the fields into the motorway section. It had also been windy and the loch was towing hard which meant there was a good chance of a fair match. I practiced with a team mate in these sections on the Saturday with a view to catching a few roach on the waggler but our real mission was to find out just how many of these small perch we could catch on the inside.

We had a couple of hours on the waggler catching quality roach to 12 oz and felt that if conditions were right they would show in the match. However, when we switched inside it was solid with perch drawn in by the wave and colour. We decided to fish the same line (4-5 metres) but feed differently to try and work out the best and fastest way of catching. We both fished chopped worm but I feed it in leam (as explained in the last article) while George fed it softer using peat. The peat worked best for a few reasons; firstly it broke up near the surface creating a smelly dark cloud, spreading the feed over a larger area than the leam. The leam tended to concentrate the fish into too small an area where there wasn’t enough to go round. Also eventually fish moved off after a few had been taken on this spot whereas the peat allowed you to catch around the peg a bit more. We found that they wouldn’t take a lot of feed so decided to chop our worms and simply soak the peat in the juices to keep the food content to a minimum and keep the bites coming longer.

Come the match it didn’t work exactly as in practice (it never does) but we’d learned enough to adapt slightly and won the match with 3 firsts and a second to close the gap on Monklands A to 6 points. I ended up with 1.3kg just behind Stephen McCaveny in the section who had 1.6kg. Only a few bonus roach separated us but I’d missed the chance of catching them by starting short for perch and the roach only showed in the first hour on the waggler.

What a weekend !!! I’ve got to say that this was one of the most enjoyable couple of days fishing I’ve had all year. Frank Larg and the boys at the Dundee club run a great match on Clatto Park which is well organised and boasts great prize money. I had a brilliant practice session on the Saturday catching 120 fish in 3 hours for well over 10lb. I started on 11.5 metres and caught a few roach an perch over groundbait and pinkie but there were fish topping all over the place closer in. So I came in to 6 metres and started to catch one a chuck. I was curious to see how close I could catch so I shortened to 5 metres…more fish, 4 metres…more fish !!! Eventually I was fishing the top 3 kit of my pole to hand and bagging. It didn’t matter how much bait I chucked at them either, there were so many fish in front of me that they just kept coming.

In the match I drew a different bank which had a fair bit of weed going out for about six metres so that ruled out the whip line. I was on an end peg though and as I knew that this was a popular area with locals, I felt that a positive approach was required. I feed 6 big balls of Sensas Lake and Black leam laced with chopped worm and pinkie to get things going and caught almost immediately. I thought that perch would be the dominant species so I fished worm and red maggot hookbaits to begin with but they weren’t coming particularly fast and were on the small side. However, every now and again the float would hold up as roach hit me off bottom and after an hour or so I decided that the time was right to have a go for them. I picked up a lighter rig (0.8g), moved the ollivette 3 feet from the hook with 3 small droppers and set the float to fish a foot of the bottom with pinkie on the hook. Roach demand a well presented bait so I laid the rig in slowly holding the float to ensure that the bait fell slowly through the last 3 foot or so and got my bites either on the drop or just as it settled. Where I didn’t get a bite I simply lifted it and started again but I got a bite just about every drop through. They were only 1-3 oz but there were plenty of them, quicker than the perch and lots of fun to catch.

Perch still showed occasionally and I had a couple of bursts of better fish in along with the roach, finishing the match with over 3kg for a section win and 3^rd overall. The match was won by local ace Ryan Mooney on the other section with over 6kg…fantastic !!!  It was a great day with good average weights and closely contested sections.  The bad news is that we have to wait another year for the next open so if you re looking for a decent match and a good day out next season it’s well worth the wait and the trip.

Clyde season again !!  Swanston Street and Glasgow Green were the sections used for this one and I knew very little about how it would fish. I managed to sneak 2 hours practice on Saturday afternoon just to get a feel for the place again.  I found that I could only catch by holding the float dead still in the flow and a foot overdepth on top of my groundbait. I finished with 8-9 eels, 4 roach and 4 dace, not great but okay.  A few of the Central club were out practicing also and they had been 3 and 7 pounds each so it looked promising. 

On match day I drew the green, one up from the last big willow tree but I didn’t really fancy it.  I caught from the off though laying in double pinkie slowly and then holding it on the bottom as in the day before, but it lasted only 30 minutes and I struggled for the remainder of the match catching odd fish in two’s or three’s.  Brian Lynn of Postal caught well throughout and won the section with 2.4kg leaving me 5^th with 1.2kg from the peg below me.  On reflection I feel I could have pinched a few fish from him by feeding a more cloudy mix to create a big mess in the water to drift through his peg.  This can often work on the Clyde when the peg below is catching and you are not and you do it by adding light leam, cloud groundbait or Tracix to your mix and throwing 4 or 5 good balls in.  The cloud created hangs slowly in the water and eventually goes through the peg below drawing curious fish up to the feed you have in front of you.  It almost encourages the fish to feed and move and would have been ideal for this situation but hindsight is a wonderful thing.  I was disappointed with 5^th especially when I heard we’d been beaten again by Monklands A who were now running away with the league.

Back on the Clyde on a miserable wet day for the National.  We were all on Swanston Street this time and I drew way upstream on the top bend of the section which was an area I’d never fished.  Because you are on the inside of a bend the river at your feet is dead but picks up pace as you go across.  I picked a line at 10 metres which put me in the flow and set up 1.5, 2 & 3g rigs to cope with changing conditions.  I needed them as the river changed pace a few times during the match, so much so that I eventually put up a 4g rig when it really started to move towards the end.

Fishing in these conditions can be really interesting as you need to alter your tackle and presentation to keep in touch with the fish as the river changes. On the Clyde you can be catching one minute when all of a sudden the river will move or slow and bites stop and that’s what makes it a difficult venue to get your head around.

I ended up with 15 eels and 8 roach holding back well overdepth for 1.1kg and 3^rd in the match behind Karl Altdorfer who had won with 1.5kg. I think my peg definitely had more roach in it than my catch suggested and could have been worth a win.  But I suffered a nightmare day, losing a few fish, tangling rigs ... you name it, it happened, so it wasn’t to be.  Still we picked up the team trophy which was more than welcome.

What can I say about this one, again on the Clyde, other than it was crap !!  It was a really disappointing match with low weights and even a few blanks despite the river looking fine when we arrived.  It seems to be that you can catch good weights any day of the week on this river except a Sunday!!  We’ve discussed this phenomenon at length recently and suspect that increased sewage flow into the river at weekends is the most plausible explanation.  During the match itself it was clear that sewage was being pumped into the stretch in large quantities as it could be seen and smelled in the water. I know if I was a roach I wouldn’t fancy eating my dinner in that lot and it was no surprise that they did not feed which was a real shame.

I scratched away and had 13 blade roach and dace for 190g and another 5^th in the section. Monklands A again proved they are the team of the moment by extending their lead over us at the top to 24 points which surely wraps up the league with one match to go.  We now need a miracle and a match with blanks to stand any chance of catching them…but wait a minute, this is Scotland and stranger things have happened you know !!!  Well done also to Monklands D who won their first match of the season and to Postal A who made it to the knockout final with Monklands A.

So there you have it, good days bad days and a few lessons thrown in for me along the way.  There are now only two SFCA events left this summer (venues on a postcard please) and the World Championships in Paris which I leave for tomorrow.  I’ve heard that in some sections you can expect to catch odd big fish (ie roach to 1kg and bream to 3kg) but elsewhere it will be a real grueller where you are scratching for a bleak.  Read all about the worlds premier match fishing event as well as the recent 6 Nations Championships from Wales in the next months special edition Davies Diary.

Tight Lines

Davie

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