Rather than fishing a commercial open this weekend this was a small knock up match but still very enjoyable fishing with just a few fellow Jubilee Nomads, with a lot of banter going on!  

This was a Nomad match arranged between us Jubilee Nomads. Being January when the fishing isn’t good we decided to book our own match on the Willow pool at The Jam Factory at Lower Broadheath fisheries. 

This gave us just eight anglers fishing on the whole pool so we would all have plenty of room and hopefully catch a few fish. 

I drew a good end corner peg. The intel before the match suggested this was a good flyer and you should fish to the pipe over to the far left hand bank. So still being in the depths of winter I decided to start the match throwing the Bomb and Bread to the pipe. I caught 3 good sized Carp during the first hour doing this and I was leading going into the 2nd hour.  

The next hour saw the rod motionless and I chucked the peg around looking for a carp but I didn’t find any and the other anglers now were beginning to catch on their pole lines. 

I’d fed two pole lines at 14.5 metres, one with mirco’s and the other with corn and a tried these lines with various hook baits for another 30 minutes which resulted in no more bites at all. 

A change was needed. I needed to catch some fish. So at this point I potted in a few 4mm pellets and a few grains of corn tight up against the left hand bank at 14.5 metres just away from the corner of the pool. I felt the fish didn’t really want a lot of bait being dumped in as my two pole lines hadn’t produced anything. So I was feeding just for one fish at a time on this shallow edge line.

I left it for 20 minutes while I tied the Bread and Bomb again which produced nothing. 

At this point I began feeding my short 2+2 line with a few pellets, little and often as a backup swim but I really needed the edge line to produce. I tried it next and I got a bite straight away which gave me the confidence to sit on this line a little longer and after 10 minutes I landed a carp. 

The next hour produced four more good sized carp. feeding very lightly with just a few grains of corn with a single grain on the hook after each fish. After an hour they’d gone probably because the water wasn’t really coloured enough to hold them there but I now had 8 good sized carp in my keep nets and a possible framing weight was on the cards. 

The last hour was hard I just threw around the peg with the Bread again looking for the odd carp to add to my weight and 10 minutes from the end of the match I hooked one but it was sadly foul hooked and the hook pulled out. 

These 8 carp weighed in at 43lb which was enough for 2nd place in the match and an all important section pick up. The match was won with 59lb so even if I’d landed that last foul hooked carp it wouldn’t have been enough to win the match. 

I really enjoyed this match. It was nice to fish a knock up style match with my Jubilee Nomads fishing mates rather than the usual opens that we fish. The match was interesting and fished with plenty of banter during the match which is something that open matches don’t really have.   

Bread and Bomb set up – 10ft Preston mini plus rod with a 2508 Daiwa TDR reel loaded with 6lb Daiwa XT mainline with a small 10g Preston ICS inline match cube with a 15 inch 0.17mm hook length tied with a size 18 KKM-B hook, hair rigged with a rapid stop. 

Baited with three 10mm bread disc’s.   

Edge Rig – Nick Gilbert 0.3g NG XT Edger Slim HD pole float on 0.19mm Guru N-Gauge mainline with a small bulk of no.8 shot above a 6 inch 0.13mm Size 16 LWG Guru Ready Rig. set up on purple hydro. Yes purple hydro in January!

(There are big Carp in this pool. there’s no point fishing light even in January)