MATCH NEWS
Simon Willsmore books a place in the big final after finding the bream at 50m
Bream catch seals trip to final
SIMON Willsmore got his qualification for the big-money Drennan South East Reservoir Champs done and dusted at the first hurdle as he topped the 60-peg eliminator at Kent water Bough Beech Reservoir with a 49-12-0 bream bag. It’s the second year in a row he’s gone through at the first time of asking!
Former England star Simon picked off the slabs using the feeder at 50m and had a week of extensive practice before the match, fishing for bream on local gravel pits.
Drawing fancied peg 62 on the natural bank, the Hydra and Spotted Fin-backed star ended the match over 13lb clear of runnerup Nick Howell. He worked with both window and cage feeders to net 12 bream backed by roach and skimmers, although before the whistle, he wasn’t thinking of winning the match – topping the section and going through to the final was the target…
At the peg
“On the natural bank the pegs are very similar in terms of depths and how far out you need to cast, so I put in two feeder lines at 35m and 50m and the pole at 11.5m.
“Sometimes you can catch the fish at short range, so I had that shorter feeder line. The idea was to begin on the pole to see if it was solid and then switch to the short feeder. If that was no good, I had a banker line at 50m.
“Sometimes the pole can be better than the feeder, so I began here. I balled in groundbait and casters at 11.5m and caught four roach, but it wasn’t the start I was after. The fish weren’t big enough or coming fast enough, so after 10 minutes I picked up the feeder rod.”
No good short
“The 35m line wasn’t much better, with only two roach in 15 minutes. It was clear I needed to focus on the 50m feeder line. This distance is about as far out as you need to go at Bough Beech for the bream and skimmers, fishing in around 15ft of water.
“I’d put 10 feeders of bait out at 50m, using Spotted Fin Sweet Superblend groundbait with micro pellets, corn, dead maggots and only a little chopped worm and I caught up to 10lb of roach and skimmers pretty quickly, so my match was finally underway.
“Among the smaller fish were bream, and I’d catch them in spells. It wasn’t one every cast, but by using a stopwatch I worked out that when I got a bite, it was within two to three minutes of casting out. Averaging between 2lb and 3lb, they were the fish I was after. Casting regularly, instead of playing the waiting game, got me more bites.”
Positive tackle
“Bough Beech doesn’t get fished a lot, so the fish are not especially fickle. You can fish heavy gear – I used a size 12 Hydra IM70 hook with four or five red maggots or a worm to a 65cm hooklength of Hydra Nature fluoro. This is very stiff, and allows me to reel in quickly without getting line spin.
“I began with a Guru X-Change cage feeder, but switched between window and cage feeders regularly. This was to offer a different way of feeding – the cage creates a cloud near the bottom, while the window gives off nothing as it sinks and was much better for catching bream that were already in the area. Often I’d make a change and catch one immediately.”
What the scales say
“I thought I had around 50lb, so I wasn’t far wrong in the end. I also knew that from such a good, fancied area, that might be enough to win. I didn’t feel at the start of the match that the peg was a winning one, and reckoned that around 30lb would be enough to get the section and qualify. It’s good to qualify at the first time of asking, though.”
RESULT: 1 S Willsmore, Hydra/Spotted Fin, 49-12-0;
2 N Howell, Daiwa, 33-6-0; 3 M Cole, Brunswick Bros AS, 31-0-0; 4 C Vandervleit, Drennan/Mainline Match, 27-4-0; 5 B Marriner, Sensas Oakwood Angling, 26-10-0.