Tuesday 22 April 2014

21/04/14 - Rood Ashton

Weight - 86lb 8oz
Catch - 26 Carp
Weather - Sunny with light breeze
Match - Wests Tackle Open - 2nd out of 20

A change of scenery today. I would have fished Lands End, but Tony had yet to make a decision about whether he was fishing so I booked in with Wests.

Reports so far had suggested the lake has been fishing well, with 4 tons in yesterday’s match, although there were only 11 fishing. With 20 today the fishing was likely to be a little harder, but at least it looked like being a decent day weather wise.

Pegging today meant peg 1 was on the far side opposite the reeds, then peg 2 by the car park rotating clockwise round the lake. I drew p20 in a peg called the “snag pit” and as you can see from the photo it’s a bit of a trek to get to the peg. Needless to say Mark was pleasure fishing on peg 1, which brought a few groans at the draw.
 
Most of the pegs on this side of the lake have deeper margins, because the land owner uses a digger to de-silt close in. However plumbing around discovered it was the same depth all around, just over a foot deep. Yesterday was cold & wet and I fully expected a slow start in such shallow water. As well as 2 pole rigs, a HB Billybob 0.1g > .14 > 16 B911 to fish at 13m & a HB AK47 0.1g > .16 > 16 B911 to fish the margin, I also brought my tip rod, thinking about setting up a method feeder, but instead decided on the straight lead, feeding 8s at 25m. 

On the all in a mixture of micros & 6s was deposited at 13m to my left where it was slightly deeper and started at 13m to my right in the slightly shallower water toss potting 6s. After 20mins I hadn’t had a bite from either swim so switched to the straight lead & meat, catching 2 carp before the end of the first hour.
 
Moving into the 2nd hour a switch to 6mm expander resulted in getting bites quicker and 3 carp, followed by 2 carp on the pole on 4mm expander. Over the pole line it was the left hand swim which produced, whilst the right hand swim didn’t produce a bite despite a couple of attempts throughout the match.
The 3rd & 4th hours were very slow. It was a case of catch a carp from 1 swim, before switching to another, landing 3 on the pole and 2 on the lead, but losing 3 carp to snags didn’t help my cause. I kept feeding 6s over the pole line and eventually the carp seemed to be more settled with 11 more carp on 6mm expander in the last 2hrs. I had also started feeding meat & little hemp into the margins, but this only produced 3 smaller carp in the last 2hrs.
I was in shouting distance of Mark and knew he had beaten me, but wasn’t sure about the anglers to my right, because I couldn’t see anyone, other than the anglers opposite on the lawns. After the initial slow start I had an enjoyable end to the match and the new pole had a proper workout as I had to stop a few carp from diving into snags, which gave me confidence that I have brought the right pole.
 
As for today many struggled in the bright conditions, particularly those that fished paste or meat and I think a few attacked there swims a little too much, forgetting it’s still only April. 

1st 118-14 – Mark Poppleton – p1
2nd 86- 8 – Ken Rayner – p20
3rd 73- 2 – Ady McTiffin – p9
4th 63- 2 – Paul Sims – p11
5th 43- 6 – Tim Martin - p8
6th 39- 0 – Bryan Neale – p17

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