Martin Holmes tells you how he won this year’s Preston Innovations Festival at White Acres.
Instead of a love-hate relationship, I have had a hate-hate relationship when it comes to the Preston Festival at White Acres! I have sworn on more than one occasion that I would never fish it again. In the half dozen or so times I have fished it I have drawn appallingly, and probably fished just as bad too! And, I have never picked up a penny other than a section win by default!
In the spring Festivals, however, I have fared much better and have had two top 10 finishes in the Milo Festival, coming 9th in 2009 and 3rd in 2012. I have also finished agonisingly 11th two years on the trot in 2011 and 2012 on the Dynamite Baits Festival.
Rob Wootton discusses the lessons learnt from a tremendous week in Ireland.
I’ve just returned from another really enjoyable trip to Ireland; this time my destination was Inniscara lake down in the south of the country and the competition was the annual FeederFest, sponsored by ale giant Guinness.
As the name suggests this event is a feeder-only affair and given the lake’s vast stocks of roach and skimmers, fishing at short range is normally the name of the game. Last year’s event saw me finish in fifth place, not bad considering 100 top feeder anglers were in attendance, but even so I was still keen to improve on this result.
Guest blogger, Craig Butterfield, recollects a day that has potentially scarred him for the rest of his life. . . Match fishing is not an easy sport to partake in when you’re not old enough to drive.
This month we had the privilege of following Jamie Hughes, arguably the hottest talent in UK match fishing, during the recent first qualifier for the Preston Innovations UK Pole Championship at Aston Park Fisheries.
Without wishing to get enthralled in a tit-for-tat battle, Tom Scholey’s blog reply to my editorial in February’s edition of Match Fishing entitled ‘The Pursuit Of Perfection’ needs addressing.
In brief my editorial was about anglers putting methods and species on a pedestal and, more to the point, anglers suggesting that certain tactics required more skill than others to execute.
Tom disagreed with my comments – he’s entitled to his opinion no less – but I couldn’t let it lie without a suitable retort.
In particular he strikes out at Method feeder fishing and, by his own admission, it’s something he “could be a lot better at”.
Middy’s Andy Quarmby has been on fire again recently thanks to thinking outside the box! Theale pit is a natural lake, in Theale, just outside Reading; it is quite a big lake, probably around 15 acres. It was stocked with carp about 25 years ago and the same stock have survived and bred, and it is literally solid with 6oz-7lb carp. However in recent years the match scene has gone downhill, through fallings out, and poorly run matches to name a few. In April of this year, my friend Pat Pritchard announced he was taking over the running of the matches, with organised pay outs, and a few rules such as a 5kg groundbait limit, to keep a bit of order etc.
Stewart Lister reflects on an enjoyable Veterans Festival. I am sure I’m not alone in the belief that we are not getting older, and think we can still do what we did 25 years ago? Sure, the odd niggle here and pain there, are little reminders of the years creeping by. That along with those annoying age category questions that I see all the time on the internet, you know the ones that put us all in nice age brackets like 18 – 24 years, 25 -30 and so on. Well, you know time is marching on when the next bracket that applies to you is over 65! So, what is this all about in a fishing article? Well when you get to the magical age of 55 you become eligible to fish ‘Veterans matches and festivals’ like the Coors Veterans held annually at White Acres! It was really great meeting up with a lot of old friends as I competed in my first vets festival, I am a little annoyed with myself for not doing it a couple of years ago as I have missed out on a really great event, it’s one that will now be pencilled in my diary for as long as I am able.
The Build Up
Round 1 of the Supercup had soon came round and following a practice session over the Easter weekend the Stockton Heath Angling Group (S. H. A. G) team were confident in the days leading up to the match which was being held at Goose Green Fishery near Alderley Edge.
Harry Billing ended with a good result in the White Acres Garbolino Spring Classic. Here’s how he got on…
I was really looking forward to the Garbolino Spring Classic at brilliant White Acres. It is smaller in numbers than the usual festivals, but still full of very good anglers and I would need to get my drawing arm going this week! I was also hoping to continue the Garbolino-sponsored anglers domination of the recent festivals, with Grant Albutt, Andy Geldart and Darren Cox all winning the three major Spring festivals!
DAY 1 – TREWATERS 26
Really fancied this peg but it was windless and really struggled for 19lb. I couldn’t make anything work, all the fish seemed to be to my right which was where the wind was blowing.
Rob decides to go back to the venue known as roach heaven!
After my last visit I was really looking forward to this match on the Welland in Spalding town centre - I had won the last match with 35lb, my best all roach catch from a natural venue. My mood was soon dampened though as Tim, my partner for the day, handed me my peg, the areas leading out of the town centre hadn’t been competing with the rest of the match length in previous weeks and after a week of frosts, snow and then a big thaw it was likely that the fish would be shoaling up even tighter. I reckoned that a draw between pegs 10 and 25 would probably give a good days sport as this area is around a couple of bridges where as my home for the day, peg 34, was on a straight almost as far away from a bridge as possible on this stretch! There was no way I could go to my peg downhearted though - me and Tim are right up there in the pairs league and with Tim drawn in a favourable area I would need to do my best just to keep us ticking over in a league that is decided overall on weight. On arriving to my peg my spirits lifted a little, I had a lot of room to my left, probably around 60 yards until the next angler (Westy), I’m told this area had been left out as it’s much shallower than the rest of the stretch and as a result not very productive, nevertheless any extra room has got to be worth a few fish.
Every one seems to only talk about success stories here’s something Rob Wootton thinks we can all relate to. . . The team I’m fishing for this year has had a mixed start to their winter league campaign on the river Soar - a soul destroying team last on the first round on an out of sorts river knocked the confidence a little but when we finished second in the next round we knew that there was still hope of a turnaround.
Tom Scholey on a great weeks fishing, and a lesson learned the hard way. The highlight of my angling year is always the three or four White Acres Festivals that I fish. In my mind, they are without doubt the most fiercely competitive events in the match fishing calendar, attracting the sports very best names, and with each one being contested over five days, these are not events that you can win by just getting lucky. I suppose my best result in Cornwall was a win in the Preston Innovations Parkdean Pairs Festival back in June with Matt Godfrey – a great week, but at a little under a third of the size of the spring and autumn festivals, hardly as prestigious.
I have had a couple of big matches over the last two weeks at a very local venue, Lakeview Fisheries. Being only five miles from my house I decided it had to be one of the Fish ‘O’ Mania tickets I would apply for. I had already been fishing the complex quite a lot during winter for Lakeview’s Middy Extreme winter series. These are matches fished every Wednesday and Saturday and the winner from each goes through to a final where £1,000 is up for grabs, plus plenty of section prizes to be won.
