Catch - 17 Carp, 4 Skimmers, 4 Roach, 1 F1, 1 Perch
Weather - Warm & sunny - slight breeze
Match - Open - 2nd out of 7
With Acorns now re-opened, the numbers for this match was
down slightly, so the 7 of us had plenty of space on Match Lake. With p19 not
in, I was happy to draw 18, since a few carp have shown here recently. For
company Keith Fielder was on p15, Nigel Bartlett on p20 and Mike West opposite
on p5.
No silvers rigs today and the caster/maggot brought from Tony’s
yesterday stayed on the bag. Based on previous matches, the fish have preferred
to stay tight to the island in the shallow water, but have been difficult to
catch down the track. I was hoping following some heavy rain over the last few
days it would force the fish down and easier to catch down the middle.
Rigs for the day were as follows:-
-
4x8 > .15 > 16 B911 – tight to the island
-
HB shindig 0.2g > .14 > 16 B911 (pellet/corn –
down the track)
-
Ackoo carrat 0.3g > .16 > 16 B911 (meat down the
track)
With so much space, it would have been easy to over
complicate matters, so I tried to keep it as simple as possible. Meat was feed
by the tree to my right, 3mm krill pellet/corn 14m to my right towards the gap
and 6s/corn 14.5m to my left at the bottom of the shelf.
I decided against cupping in a big pot of bait by the
island, because it produces loads of tails waving at you, but no proper bites.
So instead I toss potted some meat/hemp with 8mm meat on the hook and a few
minutes later I was attached to my first carp. However these carp are cute and
soon wised up. I managed 2 more by the end of the first hour, however Tom
Mangnall on p1 was catching loads according to Mike, so it looked like we were
all fishing for 2nd already, although the fish at that end tend be
much smaller.
The middle part of match proved really frustrating. I
occasionally went back to the island, but the fish just won’t settle, which
meant I needed my down the track swims to work. I kept catapulting 6s into my
left hand swim, but was pestered by small roach, either on pellet or corn. The
right hand swim produced more bites, with a few small skimmers and a F1.
Because the breeze had picked a little I set up a HB chump 0.3g > .12 >
18 silverfish pellet in the hope of catching a few more skimmers and F1s, since
the carp appeared to have stopped feeding. So it was no surprise that I caught
a carp, but very few silvers. I actually hooked 3 more carp down the track but
lost all 3, I suspect they were foul hooked. My meat line was also proving
fruitless.
I had been feeding some meat into the right margin and did
hook a carp, which promptly snagged me in a trailing branch, so I decided not
to bother trying here again. The left hand margin was shallower, but did
produce another carp.
With 90mins to go I only had 5 carp in the net and any
chance of framing was rapidly disappearing, in fact I was probably close to
last. Keith was catching on hard 6s down the track, Mike had a few big skimmers
and a couple carp. Mike Duckett had also started catching following a slow
start and Tom had slowed down, but was still leading.
With the sun dropping a little, the sun wasn’t shining quite
as strongly against the island, so I decided to try shallow again, toss potting
meat & hemp I started to catch consistently for the next hour. All of a
sudden I was back in the race, including a few 7/8lbers. I had intended on
fishing to the p17 pallet, but because I kept catching I never got around to
it. My left hand pellet swim produced 1 lost carp. My meat line finally
produced a decent carp towards the end, plus a big skimmer. So 12 carp for
probably 60lb in the last 90mins and needless to say I was quite happy, wishing
they had turned up earlier.
Tom was first to weigh his 22 carp and commented he couldn’t
catch on the deck and suffered a bad middle period of the match, before
starting to catch again towards the end. According Mike West, Mike Duckett and
caught constantly for the last 3 hours, however he had lost a few. I was sure I
had beaten Keith, so it was case of whether I had enough to beat Tom. My first
net which was all the fish I caught in the last hour weighed 42lb, plus my
other net meant I didn’t quite catch up Tom.
1st 95- 1 – Tom Mangnall – p1
2nd 89- 9 – Ken Rayner – p18
3rd 63- 0 – Keith Fielder – p15
4th 59- 8 – Mike West – p5
5th 56- 9 – Mike Duckett – p11
6th 39- 8 – Dave Wescott – p22
Silvers
1st 23- 2 – Nigel Bartlett – p20
2nd 14- 8 – Mike West – p5
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