MFS - Bury Hill Fisheries, 30th June 2013

Peg 30

Bury Hill Fisheries is one I've heard about a lot.  Russ Evans, The Obsessed Angler used to be the head bailiff with plenty of videos to be found on YouTube.  I was looking forward to this match where the main species to target is Bream.  I contacted Russ to get an idea of how to approach Bury Hill and he gave me some good advice about the pegs, what groundbait to feed and to be prepared to chase the bream further out as they tend to back off.

Arriving at the fishery I was greeted by Ken who had obviously been set up by the southern lads.  As I walked into the tackle shop Ken says, "I'm sorry mate but it's Sunday and there is a problem", I responded, "What is the problem mate?", he says, "Yeah, Sunday and no Northerner's allowed to fish on a Sunday"... brilliant craic!  I'll thanks Brian Green (Proper Tidal Boy on MFS) for that one! ;-)

The Draw

George was sorting all the lads out in his usual no-nonsense style I drew out Peg 30 and given the advice from Russ I felt confident of catching well.  Arriving at the peg all the lads had been watching a carp angler driving his bait boat out past the point of the island and into out swims...

My neighbours for the day would be Simon and Marcus Page so the banter would be pretty constant!

The Set-up
Today would be a pole and feeder attack. so I set up the two 13 metre lines at 2 o'clock and 10 o'clock. I also checked the depth was the same all the way out to 14.5 metres so I could fish beyond my groundbait.

The island was a big chuck, 70-75 turns and I could not reach it with my largest feeder, so I clipped up at around 50 turns.

Bait for the day was F1 Dark Sweetmeal groundbait, dead reds/bronze maggots, Expander pellets (4, 6 and 8mm), sweetcorn and the trusty worm.


The All-In

Splitting my two pole lines I decided to feed one heavily and one sparingly, so I put 3 balls of groundbait over the 10 o'clock line and 1 ball of grounbait on the 2 o'clock line.  The plan was to top up these lines every hour with a single ball of groundbait until I was ready to fish them.

 

Si looking as happy as ever ;-)

Punching the feeder out baited with a worm tipped with a dead read and settling the rod.  I would leave this in the water for about 3 minutes.  The feeder rig had a 20" hooklength, old skool fishing!  The first 30 minutes I had 10 casts in order to get bait into the area for any passing shoals of bream.

Marcus on Peg 31 was casting into the shadows near the island, a very long chuck which was working and he hooked 3 fish in quick succession.  My tip pulled and then went round, fish on... The bream put up a steady fight and I had a 3lb bream in the net which settled the nerves.  Simon next door on Peg 29 had not had a bite...

Looking out for the fish 'blowing' where you see bubbles in a small area, the bream weren't showing their location, the sun was shining and the water pretty still with little ripple.

The 2 hour mark past and I had 3 fish in the net, Marcus was storming ahead and Simon was still blanking.

Both Simon and myself noticed that the fish had started to show and they were closer in than we were putting our feeders, but still beyond the pole line, so we both cast shorter which resulted in a fish for me and nothing for Simon... the banter started between us, Simon saying, "You are always copying me Mark! ;-)".

Marcus, whoa put it away ;-)

After the 3rd hour I decided to try the pole line and was quickly into a fish.  As advised by Russ, I swapped to my other line to see if I could snag a fish, but nothing.  One lucky fish so it was back out on the feeder.

The final couple of hours and eventually Simon caught to break his so far, blank, but he would be unlucky as he hooked a pike which are not allowed to be weighed in, so back it went.

Interestingly the pole line there was a very bad tow, the wind was blowing from right to left, yet the float, even though it was a couple of inches overdepth was towing left to right.  I kept adjusting my depth to counteract the tow and ended up 6" overdepth to hold the float.  The float was already a 0.6 gramme and a couple of the lads had commented on how wierd the tow was that day.

Simon had started to catch and my catch rate, although not sintilating had back right off and it was looking like a close call... after all the last thing Simon wanted was to be beaten by the Product Wearing Geordie Tw*t!, sponsored by L'Oreal no less ;-)

Marcus was still storming ahead and remember he was on the Golden Peg which had not been won and the pot stood at over 300 quid!

The all out sounded... would I have beaten Simon...???

The Result
7 bream for a total of 18lb 12oz.  Beaten both sides by Marcus and Simon.  It was a good tussle with Si, but he got me in the end.  Well fished Marcus, only 1oz from winning the golden peg, unlucky mate...

Thanks to Brian Green who had a cheeky quid with me... I'll leave it in my seatbox Brian for next time ;-)

Conclusion

Although Bury Hill is a natural venue, my choice of natural bait, worm, while worked, not half as well as Marcus who fished a banded 8mm pellet with some long casting to the shade over near the island and caught steadily throughout the match.

 

 Dark groundbait was key which was a lesson Simon learnt early on.  There are plenty of preditors in this lake and the fish where no doubt more confident or a darker groundbait rather than a lighter one which would have showed them up more.

A lovely day with mixed fishing along the bank, looking forward to the next outing here in a couple of weeks time.



Full Results

PEG	NAME	WEIGHT	SECTION POSITION	MFS POINTS	MATCH POSITION
SECTION A
26	Shedfull	25:09	3	4
27	Hathers	33:00	2	5
28	Proper Tidal Boy	4:14	7	1
29	Big Bloke	22:08	4	3
30	Lewy	18:12	5	2
31	Marcus Page	73:11	1	7	2
32	George T	15:04	6	1

SECTION B
33	Simon Pavey	4:01	6	1
34	Mark M	56:09	3	4
35	Colbrad41	27:02	5	2
36	Danny Wynn	61:06	2	5	3
37	Micky D	73:12	1	9	1
38	The Bard	47:02	4	3
39	Pikey	DNW	-	0
SECTION C
40	76 Trombones	40:14	2	5
41	Flintstone	18:02	5	2
42	Dapping T	21:06	3	4
43	Squeaky Roller	19:06	4	3
44	Toplights	12:00	6	1
45	Chris N	43:12	1	6