Weight – 82lb 5oz
Catch – 15 Carp, 12 Bream.
Weather – Warm, sunny and slight breeze.
Water temp – 18.0c > 19.5c
Match – Fish & Chip Open - 9th overall, 2nd in section
Over 40 anglers were booked in for this mid week match, so both Tanners and Woodpecker were in. I drew peg 6 on Woodpecker, which was OK, but I felt I was fishing for section rather than framing.
Whilst setting up, a numpty turned up to fish peg 5. I queried this with him, since I felt he should have been on peg 4, but after a bit of a discussion he was sure he was on peg 5. I knew there was a few fishing the match so I thought that Andy might have jammed a few pegs in.
I set up 2 pellet wagglers, a full depth waggler, a lead and a pole rig for the silvers in case I was struggling. On the all in I fired my 8mm pellet towards the island, the numpty on peg 5 managed to spray his pellet all over the place, but after 10mins he caught 2 carp. Oh please, don’t let me get done by a numpty.
After 2 hours I had 9 carp switching between the waggler and lead, whilst numpty continued to feed every inch of his swim. He even managed to feed Mikes swim on peg 36 and I had to tell him to stop casting into my swim! Not a happy chap.
The fishing started to get harder and from what I could see I was doing OK. Peg 36 was catching (as expected) and I was aware that peg 22 was sacking, but neither was in my section. The middle part of the match started to prove frustrating. I couldn’t get the fish to settle and I was losing fish, mainly as a result of foul hooking.
The 1 thing I have found with Woodpecker is unless you are on a flyer then you can suffer from blank spells. I decided to set a silver fish line at 5m, but this never took off at all. Most of the skimmers I caught were in 4-6oz range and they weren’t coming quickly enough, so whilst I periodically tried the silvers line during the middle period, in total I only spent 20 minutes trying for silvers
In the last 2 hours I concentrated on the island, but I could hear peg 8 starting to catch (I had trees either side of me so I couldn’t see), so I needed a few more carp. I did catch a few more, but had I caught enough? My concern was a couple of my carp were smaller (3lb) than the average 5-6lb.
Peg 8 weighed 85lb to win my section, which meant I came 2nd and missed out on £50. I let my feeling be known to the numpty on peg 5, because in transpired he should have been on peg 4. How hard is it to remember a number?
The match winner came from peg 3 on Tanners, whilst the best weight on Woodpecker came from peg 22 with 207lb on the tip for 2nd in the match. I finished 9th overall.
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