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Angling Direct Meets - Rob Wootton
I met up with no other than match fishing genius Rob Wootton at Shearsby Valley Lakes in Leicestershire. The weather was less then welcoming, with sleet, snow, and a temperature of just two degrees!
Needless to say, the front lake was half frozen. The plan was for Rob to try and catch some of the venue’s carp, skimmers and other coarse species; with conditions certainly less than ideal, we first headed for a walk round the venue in the hope that the ice may thaw.
Shearsby Valley Lakes is a complex which has long been an integral venue on the local match scene. The venue is under new ownership, and the three-lake venue is being transformed into a four-lake venue with its own tackle shop, café, and stock pond on site. The new ownership is set to make this one of the premier match and coarse venues in the Midlands, if not the country, and I look forward to heading back when the work is complete.
After a walk round and being amazed by the awesome fishery management and plans for the future of the fishery, Rob and I headed back to the front lake to tackle the task of trying to catch.
Rob elected to fish the pole, and set up halfway along the lake, as close to the edge of the ice as possible. Rob’s preferred method of attack was “dobbing’ bread. A technique that I wasn’t familiar with but it’s pretty self-explanatory. You simply attach a simple pole rig and “dob” your punched bread hookbait around various parts of your swim until you get bites.
Now, Rob being a man who has gained £70,000 by winning the Maver Masters match didn’t “dob” like you would think, and he revealed some hidden gems to this technique. He started with his pole float set about a foot from the bottom as this would mean that his bread hookbait would be off the bottom, where the fish would be sitting in such poor cold conditions.
Rob also set up his pole at 13metres, with an extra meter of pole behind him. This meant that he could “dob’ his rig in a large area around his swim, and he had the option of going a metre longer, as well as to the left and right.
Rob used two sizes of bread punched hookbait and pressed them tight before hooking them to ensure they sank. He lifted his rig clear out of the water and moved it to another part of the swim continually until he got a bite.
Rob caught carp steadily all session, with fish coming over to his right and taking on the drop as well as when the float settled. By putting in no loose feed the only food offering was Rob’s bread hookbait which resulted in him getting bites where introducing feed may have resulted in a blank.
After three hours fishing with only a Facebook live video and bacon butty in café to interrupt, Rob had caught over 40lb of fish which, considering the conditions, was an incredible haul.
I look forward to meeting up with Rob again soon, as well as trying the art of “dobbing” bread myself over the winter.