09/11/13 - Lands End - Match Lake

Weight - 38lb 12oz (20lb 4oz - silvers)
Catch - 4 Carp, 11 Skimmers, 11 Perch, 8 Roach, 2 Rudd
Weather - Cold heavy overnight rain. Cloudy with the odd shower
Match - Open - 1st Silvers (3rd out of 9 overall)

At least all this rain meant the lakes are now nearly full, however it would be interesting to see what effect last nights heavy cold deluge would have on the fishing. With only 9 fishing today, it would also mean there would be a few extra spaces for those carp to hide away.

I couldn’t quite believe I drew last week’s p22 again. So since June, that’s 9 matches on Match Lake and 5 times I’ve been on down this end of the lake, either on peg 22,23 or 24 – not happy, because at the moment this isn’t the place to be if you want to win. However, at least I knew the contours of the peg and decided that silvers were likely to be my best option. For company I had Mike West on p20 and Ray White on p1. Peg 24 wasn’t in, which meant a little extra space to my right.

I had some new floats to try out courtesy of Ackoo (Mark Haskins), which were a more defined model of the Carrat, with a thinner 1.2mm tip and carbon stem, instead of glass. So a 0.2g model was set up with .12 bottom and 18 silverfish pellet hook, to fish the bottom of the shelf with either soft pellet or corn. Other rigs included a HB Frostie 0.3g > .10 > 18 silverfish pellet to also fish down the track and a HB Frostie 0.2g to fish caster on top of the far shelf and margin.

On the all in, micros were deposited @ 14m towards the point of the island, a big cup of the same @ 14m to my right in open water towards p24 and some caster by the island.

Starting on corn fishing into the undisturbed water to my left, hoping for an early carp, I lost 2 foul hookers, confirming there was at least a few fish around but they weren’t feeding. After 30mins it was time to try the far side. Mike was off to a flyer catching plenty of perch from the island, but whilst I caught a few fish (as well as losing a few), it was very slow.

So after an hour and only 3 perch, it was almost a repeat of last weeks match, although everyone seemed to be struggling and was glad I put on my thermals for the first time this autumn, because it was a little chilly.

Like last week, it was again a case of rotating swims to keep the fish coming, but at least this time I was catching the odd decent skimmer on pellet, in amongst the roach and perch I was catching on caster or maggot. The far line only produced a couple more fish, fishing against the pallets, left and right, produced some perch and roach, but no big boys. I bumped 2 skimmers from the far right hand swim, where I dumped a load of feed, but only caught a few small roach.

Mike in the meantime had slowed down and struggled in the last 2 hours. As for me my left hand swim, which I kept topped up catapulting 4s at the bottom of the shelf got stronger, with some bigger skimmers and a couple of carp. I thought (and hoped) I had overtaken Mike, but knew it would be close.

At the weigh in it became obvious the weather and really knocked the fishing, with most continuing to struggle. Mikes silvers net was slightly more than I thought, but at least I got my 3rd silvers win on the bounce at Lands End.

1st - 62-13 - Rod Wootton - p11
2nd - 40-14 - James Wither - p18
3rd - 38-12 - Ken Rayner - p22
4th - 22-11 - Dale Howsen - p13
5th - 19-13 - Dave Wescott - p15
6th - 17-13 - Mike West - p20

Silvers
1st - 20- 4 - Ken Rayner - p22
2nd - 17-13 - Mike West - p20