25/07/13 - Leechpool

Weight - 40lb 6oz
Catch - 23 Carp, 1 Skimmer
Weather - Warm, SW breeze
Match - Wiltshire Angling Evening Series - 7th out of 11

Arriving at the lake, it was obvious the recent hot weather has had an effect with the water level down at least a foot, which on a venue that’s only 3 foot deep, means a 1/3 of the water has evaporated.

Tonight there were 11, which caused much debate on how to peg the lake and it was decided to put 2 pegs in the carp park swim, instead of using the right hand corner. These were pegs 8 & 9, with peg 1 in the cattle drink working anti clockwise round to peg 11 by the house. Jon Atkins drew 9 and promptly drove off in a huff, before returning 15mins later to watch the match, which at least gave Rob some extra room to fish in p8.

I really fancied a day fishing shallow, so low number was required in the wind, however ended up on p10 and Mark was on p11. With the water level down, meant I could set up in the lake, which gave me an extra metre, but due to the wall behind me I could only fish top 3 + 2, before I would have to break the pole down, so I really didn’t fancy fishing any longer.

Due to the peg I decided to concentrate on paste, but my concern was the wind which was blowing down the over end, so expected those with the ripple to catch well. And this is how it turned out.

After a slow start I had 10 carp after an hour, but the rest of the match was a real struggle. The fish just didn’t want to settle over the feed. Mark was catching shallow, but said afterwards he was also struggling to keep the fish in the swim.

I also tried shallow, but only caught 1 fish and I even tried a full depth pellet rig, but that didn’t produce a proper bite. So it was a case of sticking with the paste in the hope and expectation the fish would settle and I would catch well towards the end. Unfortunately it didn’t happen that way, despite trying various ways of feeding, I couldn’t get the fish to settle. Towards the end I found it best to cup in ½ pot of pellet, which produced my PB fish for the venue of 8lb, but I would have to re-pot after only 2 or 3 fish and ended up feeding 5pts of pellet.

Speaking to Gary afterwards I thought his assessment was spot on, whilst there was fish in my swim, there wasn’t enough confident fish due to that lack of ripple. As expected my end of the lake struggled compared to the other end and even without Jon being sat next to him, Rob only managed 26lb, which included quite a few skimmers.

I seemed to have hit a mini run of poor form. Hopefully I’ll sort this out on Saturday at Viaduct.

1^st 131- 0 – Gary Etheridge – p2
2^nd 101- 4 – Ian Willetts – p5
3^rd 84- 5 – Pete Neate – p1
4^th 62- 6 – Tony Gilbert – p7
5^th 60- 2 – Mark Poppleton – p11
6^th 59- 0 – Stuart White – p4