12hr Match at Tingrith

12 hour Fun Match & BBQ Tingrith Fishery

I had a very busy day on Saturday 20th June this year taking part in the first 12 hour match held on Browning Tingrith's Fringe Lake.

Normal fishery rules applied with weigh-ins every 4 hours.

Although I had broken both tib and fib at the ankle back in January which gave me little chance to practice on my new pole, I decided that what the heck, the pole would be my chosen means of attack. I drew Peg 9 which was bordered on each side by reeds. Due to my inexperience fishing the pole I was very concerned and didn't fancy my chances in keeping the carp out of the reeds if I was lucky to hook one so I decided I would fish very shallow at 14mtrs.

I had read somewhere the trick of tying a pellet to a hair and varnishing it so that rather than constantly changing bait, the varnished pellet would allow the same rig to catch many fish and keep the baited line in the water longer.

My second line of attack was to fish further over to my right past the reeds to the vacant swim and drop bait just under the unused platform. As the whistle blew for the all in, I emptied a pole cup of 6mm GOT Bait pellets and another cup made up of half and half small cubed luncheon meat and sweetcorn.

I then went out at 14mtrs with a shallow rig of 18 inches deep using a Preston Durafloat 10 shot below with a couple of size 10 Stotz to a 6lb Drennan mainline attached loop to loop to a 5lb Drennan hooklink tied to a size 16 Kamasan B911 hair rigged with 6mm varnished GOT Baits 6mm pellet.

Using a catapult I fired out around 10 - 12 GOT Baits 6mm pellets every 15 seconds and after 20 minutes the float started to show signs fish nosing a the bait, a few seconds later, and the float buried to the first crucian of the day. As I fought and played each fish to the net I continued to fire out pellets to keep the fish feeding and preoccupied in the swim. I also continued regularly to feed the swim to my right by the vacant platform.

At the first weigh in I was the last swim to go to the scales and weighed in 90lbs.

Interestingly the second weights weren’t affected a great deal by the emptying of the nets after the first 4 hours. The last 4 hours saw a change in the carp coming on in the evening session to the margin. The work of the regular baiting to the vacant swim platform paid dividends seeing carp to 8lb making their way to the net.

My winning weight was 181lb 12oz approx, 80lb of which were crucians and silver fish with the rest carp, all caught on a pole using pellet at 14 mts and GOT Baits Atomic Paste wrapped round luncheon meat in the margin

Runner up was Ricky Stone of Finchley, North London, with 130lb 5oz of roach, rudd & crucians up in the water. A close third was to Pip Bolam, also of Bedford with 103.12 oz in peg 8 and the 4th place went to Vic Jackson with 103lb exactly!The 12 gruelling hours were followed by a very welcome BBQ and refreshments.