Weight – 38lb 8oz (16lb 8oz – silvers)
Catch – 14 Perch, 5 Carp, 3 Ide, 3 Roach, 2 F1, 2 Bream, 2 Rudd
Weather – Mostly sunny, breezy later
Match – Open – 8th out of 15 (1st – silvers)
A bit of a gap from my last blog. I did have a couple of pleasure sessions, including 241lb in 4.25hrs from my club water trying a new paste and Thursdays Rood Ashton match was cancelled.
Arriving at the venue I was surprised to find a nearly full car park, with a club match on speci lake and pleasure anglers on lakes 3 & 4. For today’s match we had 15, all on match lake, which meant pegs 18 to 22 were all in and to be honest I didn’t fancy drawing in the 20s due to the lack of space, so I shouldn’t have been surprised when I drew p21. Ray Bass was on 22 and the carp slayer that is Rod Wootton on 20 (I know he will be reading this – so I was delighted to be pegged next to him – not!).
It was also no surprise to find the fish waving at Rod as we were setting up, so no doubt he will be having a few. Normally I would have been happy with my draw had I at least 1 spare peg, but knew today was likely to be difficult in bright flat conditions.
At the start a small amount 3mm’s & a few 6’s were deposited at 6m. I went straight over on the paste fishing the far shelf, feeding a pouch of 6mm’s over the top. After 30mins and 2 lost foul hookers meant I was off to bad start, with both Rod & Trigger on 24 catching.
Only 1 skimmer came from my 6m line and no bites on pellet on the far shelf, meant after an hour I was going nowhere fast, seriously falling behind those around me. I was thinking about changing to caster when Ray caught a 9lber on caster off the far shelf which made up my mind.
I had to set up a new rig and first put in on double caster resulted in a carp – great sussed it! Not quite. The carp didn’t seem to settle and I had to keep lifting and dropping to get a bite, but at least I was now catching, including some decent F1’s and Ide up to 2½lb.
As the match progressed, I was feeding a pouch of 6mm’s to pull in the carp, plus a toss pot of caster. Hook bait was double caster, although I had some better fish on worm. By half way I knew framing was unlikely, so decided to stick with caster to keep the silvers coming hoping to pick up the silvers pool instead.
I only had 1 more skimmer from the 6m line, despite regularly feeding small amounts of pellet. They just didn’t want to play today and I suspect the bright, flat conditions didn’t help. In fact very few skimmers were caught today.
With about an hour to go, I felt my far line was fading, because it was becoming more difficult to catch and I felt the carp just were settling properly, because I lost a few foulhookers as they swam though the line. So decided to deposit ¾ big pot of caster with a few 6mm’s, feeding ½ pots every 15mins. This produced another carp, plus 2 more big ide.
By the end the match, I was confident of at least 15lb of silvers and thought I might be close to 20lb, but those Ide are hollow and don’t weigh as much as you think. Anyway I had enough to comfortably beat Dave “Beany” who had 10lb also caught on caster and worm. In hindsight I think I made the right tactical decision to swictch to caster and enjoyed my days fishing. However, I should have started on the pellet, instead of paste. Mike West struggled on p19 fishing paste, so they obviously didn’t want it.
1st 107- 5 – Lewis – peg 15
2nd 96- 3 – Rod – peg 20
3rd 92-14 – Trigger – peg 24
4th 48- 7 – Andy – peg 3
Silvers
1st 16- 8 – Ken – p21
2nd 10- 0 – Dave – p5
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