When anglers of the calibre of Darren Cox and Steve Cooke work together to design a rod range you can probably expect something pretty good. Dave Harrell takes a look at their work… Match rod actions are something that have interested me for many years and having been involved in rod designs and developments myself in a previous career I like to think I know a bit when it comes to passing judgement on them. This new range of four feeder rods has been developed by Darren Cox and Steve Cooke, two incredibly successful feeder anglers in their own rights with a long list of match wins behind them on various waters around the UK, so as you can probably imagine I was looking forward to having a look at the finished products when they arrived at the Match Fishing office. My first reaction when I took all four rods out of the bags and set them up was one of surprise, as I’d expected to waggle another set of soft, parabolic through-action rods, which seems to be the current trend with virtually every rod producer.
A quality cool bag is an essential item of tackle, and this massive version from Ultimate looks fantastic. Holding 18 two-pint bait boxes, there is ample room to store all of the bait you need. RRP: £19. 99.
Sensas is making big inroads into the commercial-fishery bait market and its brand-new range of soft pellets caught the eye of Joe Carass at a recent trade show – he just had to take a closer look. A nglers who fish commercial venues are spoilt for choice! Not only have they got hundreds of venues around the country to fish, they also have hundreds of baits with which to target the fish! There are many brands on the bait market these days and it’s often difficult to gain an edge over other competitors. Sensas has looked at this problem, and it would have been very easy for the company to re-badge some bulk-bought pellets and sell them on. It didn’t want to do this, however, and set out to design a range of soft pellets that would appeal to every angler who visits commercial venues… and that’s where the new commercial-fishery range of soft hooker pellets comes in.
Featuring a zip-top lid, this bait bowl will be perfect for transporting your bags of groundbait to the bank. It is also the ideal size to mix groundbait well. RRP: £6. 99.
Well I promised to give you a ‘warts ‘n’ all’ account, and even tell you when I haven’t caught a lot. Well that’s precisely what I did this weekend, caught very little!Saturday saw me visit Woodland View nr Droitwich for a practice match for the following weeks Sensas/Garbolino match. Now I would love to tell you that this was a 100 peg sell-out, but in-truth it was a very poor 13 pegger! When you consider that the five members of my team that took the effort to go, all went through a 350mile+ round trip (except Denty who would have had a shorter journey had he decided to fish on the moon) it was pretty poor. In fact everyone who attended had travelled for miles, it just proves that as popular as I maybe think it is, commercial fishery silver fish fishing isn’t so!Back to the match and we had a very interesting match, I drew on Back Deans pool and was told that there were hordes of small roach in there.
This week has seen me have a fantastic weekend! I really do put a lot of effort into my fishing so it’s always nice to get some good results!If any of you have followed my blog so far you will know that the final round of the Sensas/Garbolino was to be fished this week at Woodland View. After the practice match the week before we were heading into the match very confident, and felt that we could get a good result. We had a slender four-point lead over Daiwa Dorking, so every point that we could score would be vital. Lee Kerry was to draw our pegs and put three of our five anglers on end pegs, High pool 27 was to be my home for the day.
Well there comes a time in every match anglers career when you just look out of the window before a fishing match and think ‘is it worth it?’. That’s precisely what happened on Saturday, I was all set to go and fish the open at Woodlands Lakes Nr Thirsk when I received a text message from Lee Kerry asking if we’d had any snow. My initial reaction was ‘shut up, it hasn’t snowed!’ but one peak out of the window confirmed that there was nearly two-inches of snow! The decision was then made to stay in bed! A wise choice as the match fished terrible anyway. It was an excuse for a much-needed lie-in followed by several cups of tea and lots of rig tying and having a general tackle sort out.
It’s that time of the year again when the team all get together to practice for the Angling Times Winter League semi final. This year it is up at Woodlands Lakes Nr Thirsk. Saturday saw me visit the venue for the first time this year, I was kind of hoping to draw on a pile of carp but that hope was short lived when I pulled out Peg 7 on Partridge. My end of the lake was flat calm when setting up, whilst the other end had a lovely ripple on it and I was sure that end would be where the carp were.
After last weeks poor draw at woodlands I was really looking forward to getting back up there and was looking for a good draw. There were plenty of anglers on the match so Kamasan points were on offer and also I’m doing well in the County Champs tables so was looking for a few points. I drew peg 15 on Skylark, HAPPY DAYS. This has been a consistent area all winter and the main shoal lives in that area.
Well Saturday was the big day for my Ultimate Barnsley Blacks team as it was to be one of our most important matches of the year. Semi finals are always tense affairs and with this one being at Woodlands Nr Thirsk it was always going to be a peggy match to say the least! All we could hope for was a decent draw and a good team performance. We got the good draw that we needed and one that we were confident of qualifying from. I got massively luck and actually drew Skylark 15 AGAIN! I was almost embarrassed when Lee handed me my draw but I had a job to do and with the pegging being very tight I didn’t think I would need a big weight to win the section.