LINDHOLME LAKES TUESDAY OPEN MATCH - BONSAI
After the
tiniest amount of arm twisting from Shep #www.carlshepherdsonstittletackle.com/ I decided to
go with him to Lindholme for the Tuesday open match on Bonsai Lake. As you are
probably aware this is one of my favourite lakes; but today we were in for a
battering, as strong winds were on the cards all day!
The Battle Plan
After some
banter with Aaron in the onsite tackle shop it was draw time! Peg 43 was my peg
for the day. On arrival at my peg I was greeted with a strong side wind going
from right to left. In front of me I had the choice of 2 islands to fish too. The
islands are roughly 25m apart, so I also have a decent amount of open water to
go at too. My approach today… bomb, bomb and bomb, on top of this I have set up a top kit plus 1 section
for my left margin.
Rod #1
I set up 2
bomb rods: Firstly the trustee Browning Force Bomb 10 foot, married with a
Browning Backfire reel loaded with 6lb Browning Cenex Feeder line. On the business
end was a 10g square lead, free running, with a 0.12 Hooklength with an 18 hook
hair rigged with a micro band.
Rod #2
The second
rod is my new Browning Commercial King F1 wand 8 foot, married with a Browning
Xitan HM reel again loaded with 6lb Cenex feeder line. The business end is
exactly the same as the other rod.
Pole
For the edge
set up I am using a top kit plus 1 section from my Browning Xtreme Margin pole.
There are some really big fish that come down the edges in this lake, so you
need to be geared up for them. The rig consists of 0.14 Browning Hybrid line,
the hook length is the same material to a 16 B911 Kamasan hook. The float is a
diamond shape float in a 4x14 pattern.
The Match
On the all in I cast a bomb close to the left
hand island; the reason I went for the left hand island instead of the right
one was because the wind was extremely bad at this point, and the tree on the
right hand island was being blown
right over, causing an obstruction for where I wanted to fish. One positive
aspect was that it was easy to get the 6mm pellets to the left island.
The first
bite came after 10 minutes. and a nice F1 was in the net; however the wind was really
hindering casting, it sometimes took 3 or 4 casts to get the bait into the
right place! Once in the right place bites came within 2 minutes. If I casted the
bomb too far away from the island I would remain biteless, so taking a few
extra casts was more than worth it.
Change needed!
During the
day the winds became more powerful, making casting with the 10 foot rod
difficult, so I changed over to the 8 foot wand. This helped improve accuracy
by quite a bit, as the rod was less affected by the wind. This improved my
catch rate considerably with regular flurries of fish.
With a
couple of hours to go I decided to start feeding the margins with lose ground
bait with a few micros in it. I left it to settle for 20 minutes before trying
it, with 2 fish in quick succession, then nothing, so I topped up and went back
on the bomb. For the last hour or so I kept swapping between the bomb and pole,
picking up a steady run of fish.
Final Whistle
On the final
whistle I didn’t have a clue what weight I had, after 2 weighs I totalled 80lb
15oz which gave me 4th place in the match, a cracking days fishing
considering the conditions. I cannot
wait until my next visit!
