Our club has been having similar issues and with 20+ turnouts now regular the match organiser is looking at 30-40 “peg” venues. I use the word “peg” carefully as the 30-40 on some are really worth 20-30 true spaces. We have been able to do a few deals with commercial owners being open and honest up front and looking for a peg 2 leave 1 as a minimum.

Our options as we saw it:
1. Do a deal and leave space to catch a few…
2. Charge slighly higher match / peg fees to leave room and catch a few…..
3. Only book venues with sensible pegging in the first place, there are some who work hard to spread you out and recommend the better pegs…..pity they are the exception!
4. Fish canals and catch very few…….
5. Don’t fish!!!

Interestingly Heronbrook have recently re-pegged one of the main match pools, Meadow, reducing from 55+ pegs to 33!!! – its gotta be the way forward to keep the clubs coming back….way to go……well impressed with that concept!

Ian

The clue to the pegging is in the word commercial. You are fishing at a pegged for money venue simple as that. Very few commercials have anglers as owners and those that do are more enlightened but still have to make a buck.

Matchmen are notoriously unrelenting in their complaining which does not endear them to the owners. Who must often wonder why they bother having the hassle for 5hours every Saturday and Sunday. If you have got a diplomatic Match secretary in your club then maybe you can get somewhere with the owners of tight pegged venues.

As for the venues that plug big weight wins but fail to mention numbers and back up weights call it ‘Marketing’. Personally I frown on the practice and prefer to fish venues where you know for sure that there is a chance from any peg, even if that means an average of 20lb.

Unfortunately for the sport the expectation of mega weights as an indicator of a good days fishing is ruining the sport, and creating attitude and discontent.

You always have a choice to go or not go.

Drawing a peg is the easy bit, drawing the “right” peg on the day does not guarantee you have the match in the bag. You still need to tackle it properly. Corner pegs will always cause problems as will any pegs on a deep bend, with anglers all pointing to a common area.

Another practice I don’t like on commies and is becoming more common, is the one where you fish into the empty peg to mug fish. I’ve even witnessed people standing off their box and holding their pole behind the bankside vegetation separating the pegs to fish in front of the empty platform They otherwise would not have reached. The resulting hooked fish is then subjected to undue pressure as the angler heaves his pole over the bankside rushes to get the fish into open water!

Where has common decency gone in fishing?

Ive had this issue on a local commercial and in the end i just packed in going there. Its actually a big lake, and you (usually) had quite a bit of room if you were in a corner, the only problem being the fish are always in the middle of the lake or up one end where the wind always blows. Every week I would pull out the same corner peg, or occasionally move to a different corner when the wind was blowing away from it. On the bigger matches, the corners were hopeless as there wasnt even any room in them, and you guessed it i still always drew the corners. And yet every week, no matter how big the match, the same anglers sit on the flier pegs in the middle of the lake, or draw the corners when they have loads of room or the wind blowing into them. Absolutley will not fish venues that are A) this peggy and B) cram in too many anglers so that you dont even get a days fishing let alone a chance.

@iansi01354 wrote:

Interestingly Heronbrook have recently re-pegged one of the main match pools, Meadow, reducing from 55+ pegs to 33!!! – its gotta be the way forward to keep the clubs coming back….way to go……well impressed with that concept!

Ian

Very interesting indeed. Do you know what they have done / which pegs they’ve given more room to?

iansi01354, as a regular on there neil hasn’t only got 33 pegs on meadow!! He still has 55 pegs on the place. What he does in his opens is start on peg 2 then do every other peg giving people loads of room. He has lost a peg in between peg21 and the old peg27 which when he re-pegs it will be peg 26. If he only had 33 pegs on the place you would be stopping at 33 which leaves anther 20 pegs to go at.~hand

Missabite, the pegs as i said from 21 to the now 26 are the ones you have more room on, cos he has lost a peg.All the others are as they were. He is in the process of doing all the platforms on there. The only place he has lost 2 pegs is on the old canal again from repegging the place out, and you now have loads of room.

Thanks Lee

theres only one man can peg a fishing match>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>NEIL GRANTHAM

you gonna get spoiled at the Glebe John. there will always be more fish in certain areas but a lot of us never know where they are going to be so it can be won anywhere. there are a few that spend most days of the week there though, and these are the guys to beat LOL.
the regular sunday winter league starts end of OCT, i will peg as fairly as i am able given the number of anglers, which keep growing LOL, will peg usually every other or in two miss one fashion. ps we dont have any corners, only end pegs and pegs next to end pegs and middle pegs.

got to say chosser our club fished its first match @ lindholme last month we had 16 anglers but neil gave us the whole pond (24 pegs)+ told us we could have as long a match as we wanted+if any anglers wanted to stay on pleasuring after the match they could do so f.o.c till 9pm also whilst having a midweek dabble prior to the match he invited us into the new clubhouse+paid us a drink on/nuts on the bar ect he seems a very generous bloke~clap

Thanks for the remarks ,however if you have 500 pegs and get 280 angler per day then you can give anglers every other peg or lakes .If you only have 150 pegs and get 150 anglers then you are pretty stuffed really has most fishery owners have the problem with.
Thanks Chosser for your remarks ,you are still not invited to the special christmas FUR AND FEATHER .LOL

doh

I can see your problem ,but what i am saying is if you booked a 50 peg match here at Lindholme i would try and steer you to say the Bonsai or oasis where you have 85 pegs to split into 50 or 69 pegs into 50.
I have other lakes to put pleasure ,other clubs etc so dont need to fill every peg on each lake only 65% on each is good enough.
If i only had 2 lakes each with 80 pegs on, i would need to squeeze other people on to take enough on the week to pay the bills,has being a club booking you had already paid in advance and that would have been spent!!! ,if you know what i meen .
That is why i think it is best to book matches on the bigger commies has they can usually fit the match .
I have 503 pegs but have never allowed more then 320 book on the day .
i must say i do fill the bonsai lake with 78 pegs out of 85 with a multipul match booking only not 1 big match ,if that happened i would split into 2 lakes and give the room .

surely the idea of a clubbie or small match is to give everyone a good match hence a reduced number, so the shite pegs dont go in the hat .
now if your idea of match is make the owner happy and your punters miserable, then put all the pegs in and your faithfull will find another venue very soon ????

@JohnH wrote:

Is it just me who cant draw a decent peg for toffee or is anyone else cheesed off with the state of pegging on most commercials?
On the last 5 matches now I have drawn barren corners on 25 peg lakes with 25 anglers on and its a nightmare.The last one last weekend I could only fish 6m max in front and when I fished to the corner the guy on the bank to my left was doing the same, virtually down the same hole. I had rods set up ready for wag and bomb and they never came out of the car as I had no room . In my experience corners seem to work if you have some room for the fish to settle. It has now cost me over £100 to sit for 6 hours 5 times knowing I had no chance, is it any wonder I keep asking myself why I bother?
Just one more quick moan, fisheries are quick to post up good weights from certain pegs but you feel a bit of a fool when you draw them and struggle, only to then find out the weight came from the peg when only 6 anglers fished the lake.

I guess you’re fishing club matches? This doesn’t normally happen in opens, not adt decent venues anyway!

I have 124 pegs on the big lake, and 22 on the match lake.
Out of the 124 i would say 4 are unfishable, and never get pegged, and another 10 are not very good, and also dont get pegged.
My pegs are 10 yards apart, and it gives versatility, next week is the Rolls Royce national, and 110 pegs will be in, (the poor pegs, they will be every other peg).
But in the winter, we fish every other peg, making them 20 yards apart, and for general fishing, i try amd peg 2 miss one, averaging 15 yards.
My lake is 200 yards wide though, so every angler has 100 yards of water in front of him, giving mutiple distance lines.
I treat an open the same as a club match, i always try and give them as much room as possible, and generally only sell 60 pegs foe matches, leaving the other 60 for carp and pleasure anglers.
On a few occasions i do use the whole lake, and peg it accordingly.

~clap ~clap to be fair to Neil and other fisheries (lodge farm,ranskill etc) we as a small club are generally well looked after,being able to leave out the bad corner pegs etc ,and usually given more pegs than booked unless like Neil explains more than one club are on the same pond,although John has a relevant point ,i,m sure these fisheries do their best to ensure we have a good day and return to fish their place again.

~clap ~clap I,ll just add to the list of fisheries mentioned above and Mention Alex at Aston,thoroughly decent guy,pleasure to do business with.