Weight - 78lb 0oz (6lb 10oz - silvers)
Catch - 14 Carp, 6 Skimmers, 2 Roach, 2 Perch, 1 Golden Tench
Weather - Cold & cloudy. Heavy rain the day before
Match - Open - 1st out of 11
Winter is still hanging on and today's weather was more like January. Ideally with the 2nd round of the pole only series at Acorns next week, I should have gone there today. However, with the poor weather, match attendances haven't been great and the fish just sit in the quiet water, which meant there was no real advantage to practising. Also the forecast was for a cold easterly wind and Acorns doesn't afford any cover, whilst Lands End does. Plus I think Lands End is a better fishery, particularly in the winter.
At the draw, peg 9 was put in, together with 7 & 11, despite my protests, because 7 can be a flier, but becomes very ordinary when 9 is in. I think the reason is due to the pegs being slightly narrower and shallower. Peg 3 was left out and it doesn't take a genius to know where the carp were sat during the day.
As for me p21 was my home for the day, with Keith Builder on 19 and Allan Oram on 24. 21 won the Wednesdays match, but with a days worth of very cold rain falling yesterday and overnight everyone was expecting a bit of a struggle. So it was a bit of surprise to see fish moving around, they must be really confused at the moment. The increased light conditions, means they need to think about spawning, however the water temperature is more like January.
4 rigs for the day. HB Chump 0.3g > .12 > 18 silverfish pellet (soft pellet down the track rig), HB Shindig 0.2g > .12 > 18 B911 (to fish corn down the track), HB frostie 0.2g > .12 > 18 silverfish pellet (top of the shelf), Ackoo Powertrap 0.2g > .16 > 16 carp feeder (hair rig double corn).
Due to the cold conditions, I started cautiously feeding a pinch of micros 14.5m to my right at the bottom of the shelf and some caster/dead maggot on top of the far shelf.
Starting on the double corn rig 14.5m to my left, the float didn't even settle I was already in, although it was hooked in the wing. My next carp followed 10mins later and this one was hooked properly, but no more followed so after 45mins I decided put some feed into the LH swim. A switch to the RH swim with pellet I lost a 2lb skimmer at the net, before netting 3x smaller skimmers, by rotating between the LH & RH swims.
By the half way point I had added another 2 carp on pellet from the LH swim and knew I was likely to frame, although it was close between Allan, Nick Duckett (p1) and myself. Nick was catching carp & few silvers, whilst Allan was catching some decent silvers.
I tried the top of the far shelf with caster, but never had a bite, so that wasn't tried again. I also tried by the p22 pallet where I had been feeding caster from the off, however only had 2 small perch. I did try again later in the match and caught a cracking 1lb roach on double caster, but no other fish, so that line was binned with 90mins left.
I had been feeding a pinch of pellet into one swim and fishing the other, but it became obvious the LH swim was the stronger of the 2, so at the half way point I started to catapult 4s into the RH swim simply to try something different. In the LH swim I started cupping in slightly more feed. By continually rotating between the 2 swims I kept catching mostly on pellet, included a lovely looking common of 11-10 and a 2lb golden tench. I also tried the double corn rig, which produced 1 carp and the shindig rig which produced 2 small carp towards the end on corn.
A couple of pots of corn/caster was dumped by the p20 pallet, but never a bite so didn't waste too much time.
In the last 2 hours, I pulled away from Allan and Nick. I could see that most struggled and the grapevine suggested that those I couldn't see were also struggling, so a convincing win in the end and it was nice to be drawn at the right end of the lake particularly after my last 2 matches.
1st 78- 0 - Ken Rayner - p21
2nd 45- 7 - Nick Duckett - p1
3rd 40- 5 - Allan Oram - p24
4th 29-15 - Mark Walsh - p13
5th 26- 2 - Keith Walsh - p19
6th 25- 8 - Tom Mangnall - p11
Silvers
1st 17- 3 - Allan Oram - p24
2nd 13- 0 - Tom Mangnall - p11
3rd 7- 1 - Nick Duckett - p1
4th 6-10 - Ken Rayner - p21
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