Weight – 34lb 6oz
Catch – 8 Carp, 9 Roach, 6 Perch
Weather – Mostly cloudy, heavy rain late on.
Water Temp – 7.1c – 7.8c
Match – Lands End Christmas Open – 8th out of 38
At least the frost stayed way last night, but I still didn’t want to draw Speci Lake because I didn’t fancy fishing 16m for the 2nd day on the trot. So was more than happy to draw peg 5 on Match Lake, where I came 2nd 4 weeks.
Today was likely to be a case of fish for bites, since the water was still very clear. I set up 4 rigs, 1 to fish shallow/top of the shelf on a long line and 3 rigs for fishing the deck to cover all options from fishing single pinkie to corn/soft pellet.
Having only fished the peg 4 weeks ago, I was hoping to catch carp at the bottom of the shelf towards the gap and this is where I started on corn with no feed. Other than 1 liner I had no fish after 20mins, so switched to double maggot and I had an 8oz roach, plus another smaller one.
A switch to the island where I had previously potted some chopped maggot and caster, produced some small roach but decided this was a nonstarter and went down the shelf, toss potting caster. This produced some more small roach, plus a couple of perch.
I had also fed caster under the platforms either side of me, which produced 3 decent perch in a 15min spell, but nothing else all match.
By the ½ stage I had caught all my silvers, but as yet no carp, although I lost 2 foulhookers, which meant I was behind Kev Molton (p7) and Steve Seagar (p11) to my right, as well as Dave Westcott (p18) and Tony Rixon (p19) who was foul hooking fish for fun. Solid comes to mind.
The pegs to my left were struggling, which was true on the other side of the lake from p20 to p24. I kept flicking the odd caster towards the island, as well as 4mm to the bottom of the shelf to my right.
My first carp was a foulhooked 2lber. I was starting to get the occasional liner, so the carp weren’t really settling, although they didn’t appear to be being put off of the pellet being catapulted in so I upped my feed from 4x pellets to 6x pellets a little more regularly. To combat the liners I tried my shallow long line rig and had 1 carp, but no more followed.
I then had 2 carp on double maggot in 2 put ins on the deck, before another foul hooker unsettled the fish. With 45mins to go I was still flicking the pellet in and switched to corn and had 4 carp, all a little too late to catch up those around me, plus I had the smaller stamp of fish.
Not too sure what I could have done differently, other than possibly switching to corn sooner, but I got the impression I was on the edge of the fish. This peg has some recent form, but there generally better pegs on the lake.
At the end of the match, Mike’s family produced loads of hot food which was gratefully received by most after the rain came down hard 30mins before the match for an hour. Also everyone walked away with something, with the top 3 winning hampers.
1st 89- 9 Scott Puddy – p33
2nd 51-12 Tony Rixon – p19
3rd 49- 8 Kev Molton – p7
4th 45-11 Nick Duckett
5th 44- 9 Steve Seagar – p11
6th 36-15 Dave Wescott – p18
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