Weight – 48lb 15oz
Catch – 17 F1, 16 Carp, 4 Rudd, 1 Roach
Weather – Cold start. Cloudy with easterly wind
Match – Open – 7th out of 10
I’ve never fished Whiteposts, but reports were that the top lake had been drained and the fish moved into the bottom lake, with winning weights of 190lb. So a knock up was organized and 10 turned up. The lake itself is a long 16 peg lake ranging from 14m to 25m wide, full of small carp and F1s.
When I got to my peg I wasn’t particularly happy. It was tight with trees immediately either side, which meant no margin. There was a more open peg to my right, set back in the bay, but apparently this was 1 of the worse (& widest) pegs on the lake. I was also told the lake is 4-5ft, so was a bit surprised when plumbing up to only find 2-3ft and with the cold I wasn’t expecting the big weights of previous matches.
Settled on 3 areas. 10m to my right where I found slightly more depth, a waggler across to the far side and 10m further to my right towards the platform as far as the tree would let me, fishing left handed.
Starting off at 10m and the first hour was slow, but picked up going into the 2nd with a run of carp. I was feeding 4mm & corn via a toss pot, with corn on the hook. What was evident was the fish would drift in and out of the swim, probably due to the shallow water.
My back plan was the waggler, although a cold easterly blowing down the lake was making presentation a bit tricky, but I got the waggler sitting as it should, but only had little dinks and no fish on corn. A switch to maggot only produced tiny rudd, so that was soon binned. A switch back to corn did produce a couple of F1s but no carp.
The rest of the match was a case of scratching around for fish. A big pot of corn and pellet to my far right did produce a couple of carp, but bites simply weren’t coming quickly enough, whilst on my main 10m line I would get loads of dinks on the float, but no fish.
In hindsight, the mistake I made was catapulting pellet. I had started the match feeding via a toss pot at 10m. Sometimes I would catch at 10m, but also caught a few fishing a metre past. I started to catapult pellet over the top whilst fishing other lines and all that did was encourage more F1s into the swim and I think a lot of the sail way bites I was get were liners. I should have stuck with the toss pot, but left my brain somewhere else.
Mark won from the bottom end of the lake fishing at 9m all day, feeding via a toss pot with corn on the hook. 3rd and 4th came either side of Mark, so there was obviously a few fish in the area.
A disappointing day when I should have caught more, but I’m back at Todber on Park Lake in 2 weeks, so an opportunity to make amends.
1st 127-4 – Mark Poppleton
2nd 103-8 – Nick Merry
3rd 102-7 – Tom Ince
4th 98-10 – Terry Lead
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