David's end peg

This year it was Munsters time to host the Inter Provincials so Inniscarra near Cork was the venue chosen.

The journey took just over 4.5hrs from Enniskillen to Coachford where the draw was to take place. 3 of us travelled down together - myself, Jack and Gavin (Driver). There was no Connaught Team this year so there was only Ulster, Leinster and home province ‘Munster’ to battle it out.

At the start of the week we wer told it was a feeder match but as the week went on, reports came back that other methods were starting to produce and we ended up bringing a variety of kit to cover different options. 20Kilo’s+ was winning most days during the previous 3 weeks of festivals so were were hopefull for some good fishing.

There were 3 main sections in for the 2 days, i’m not sure on names but the Graveyard Stretch had 3x 3 peg sections (9 pegs), another stretch had another 3 sections and the final stretch had 4 sections.

At the draw, the team captains were drawing for peg 1, 2 or 3 in each section. Ulster ended up with peg 1 in each section for day 1, Leinster on peg 2 and Munster on Peg 3. The 3 of us that had travelled down were on the Graveyard stretch for today so we drew for which section we’d be fishing in - I drew 3, Jack 2 and Gavin 1. That meant that Gavin was on end peg 1 for today, Jack on peg 4 and myself 3 pegs from the other end on peg 7.

The gear was carted down a steep field to the stony shoreline and I wasn’t looking forward to bringing it all back up again later on. After plumbing up we found a steep drop off that went out to 12m+ and then it was quite level from there on out. A count of 7 seconds on the 1oz bomb from 20turns right out to 50+ turns. It was very deep on the 7m to hand line - 5m+ of water here.

2 methods for today, a long ‘to hand’ line between 6-8m for us all and the feeder. I set up 2 Trabucco Slim Powers @ 7m with 5g and 6g floats as that’s what the Munster anglers were opting for. The feeder went out to 25 turns with a 30g feeder.

Groundbait: We were hoping that it was going to be solid with fish so plenty of groundbait was needed. For my line to hand line I mixed 3 pints of Coarse brown crumb, 3 pints of black crumb and 1kg of VDE Secret to make it sticky and get to the bottom in the deep water. For the feeder I opted to 3 pints of Coarse brown Crumb, 3 pints of Black crumb and 1Kg of VDE Gold Pro Bream.

Bait was 4 pints of caster for the 2 days, 1 maggot for hookers, 1 pinkie for feeding through the feeder if needed, 4 pints of hemp, 1/2Kg of worm and a tin of corn.

Unfortunately, 2.5Kg of Worm was left behind in Enniskillen for the team so I give a 1/4 Kg to another team member and still had 1/4Kg fresh for myself along with 1/4kg of older worm.

At the all in everyone balled in on their line to hand line. I done the same with plenty of Caster and hemp. A few anglers were into a couple of Roach within the first 10 minutes of the match on the line to hand pole  whilst others started to bait up their feeder lines. I started straight away on the 7m line but no indications straight away. However, I did manage 1 bite within the first 10 minutes from a 5oz Roach but it came off as I tried to swing it. No more bites resulted in a change to the feeder.

I fished the feeder for the remaider of the match, but took a look on the 7m line every hour to see if the fish had arrived but noone caught much at all on the pole lines.

I got an indication first chuck on the feeder on double red maggot. I fed caster mainly through the feeder but when the bites tailed off I tried introducing hempin an attempt to get the skimmers to settle over a bed of it but this resulted in smaller fish coming into the swim. Pinkie also had the same effect. Caster was defnitly the best bait to feed through the feeder. Pieces of Worm on the hook wasn’t getting bites any faster then double maggot.

I was catching slow but steady on the feeder, beating both anglers either side of me but the Munster Angler on end peg 9 was catching big Skimmers on worm. With an hour to go he had 25 bream whilst I was on 42 fish but only 6-8 of them were big skimmers. There was no catching up with the end peg and he finished on 33 Bream and I finished up on 50 fish.

At the weigh in, Gavin lost a Bream in the last minute and missed the net with a roach and went on to loose the section by 40g to end up with around 5Kilo and 2pts. Jack weighed in 3Kg odd and 3rd in his section with 5Kilo winning the middle section. I was first to weigh in my section and my 50 fish put 8Kilo on the scales. Peg 8 weighed in nearly 3 Kilo and the end peg won by a mile with 13 Kilo.

Between the 3 of us we were 2 pts down on Munster so we just had to wait for results to filter back to us to see if we could pull anything back.

Back at the Pub word finally came in that Ulster had 4 section wins, 4 section 2nds and 2 section 3rds. Munster had nearly the same but with 4 section wins, 5 section 2nds and only 1 section 3rd.

Munster were leading after day 1 but only by 1 pt and Ulster lying in 2nd place.

DAY 2 Report coming soon…