05/05/14 - Lands End - Johns

Weight - 28lb 8oz (10lb 5oz - silvers)
Catch - 9 Carp, 14 Skimmers, 7 F1s, 2 Crucians, 2 Roach
Weather - Bright sun start, becoming increasingly cloudy
Match - Avon Angling Open - 17th out of 21, 6th - silvers

My third straight days fishing and must admit I was feeling a little tried, but the usual good breakfast at Shipham and a late draw (10am) meant I was raring to go and looking forward to it. Today’s match was split over Match & Johns Lake.

 

I had mixed feeling about p70, since it can be very good, particularly in the winter or very poor, but it usually holds a few silvers in the shape of F1s and skimmer. Unfortunately Tony had decided to pay out overall rather than per lake, which meant winning with silvers was going to be tricky.

 

Plumbing up tight to the spit it was disappointing to find 4ft of water which was too deep and a snag stole my plummet and hooklength as well. In the end I decided to target silvers fishing expander over micros & 4s at 13m towards the weed bed and 6m in front using a Chump 0.3g > .12 > 16 B911. I also had a meat rig and long line shallow rig just in case.

 

After feeding some caster & meat between the weed bed and margin, I started on double 6mm meat and 10mins later a carp was hooked, but the hook pulled. I did hook another carp down there later on, but lost that one as well. Despite several tries I never had another bite, but to be honest I suspect I may have overfeed trying to force the swim.

 

By toss potting 4s & 6s at 13m after an initial slow start, it took me 40mins before I caught my first fish a F1, several small skimmers followed, plus a couple crucians. I would have been happy to stick with this, but after landing a small carp I struggled to get any more bites. So the swim was topped up with some micros and 4s. A switch to the 6m line produced another small carp and then a small roach, but nothing else.

 

Going back to the 13m line and it was struggle to get another bite in the increasingly bright conditions. Throughout I had been catapulting 6s towards the spit and some carp were showing an interest. Since I couldn’t catch the silvers quick enough and I was sure that Match Lake would produce some decent silvers weight, I started chasing the carp across by the spit. By swinging the rig into the spit so the carp didn’t shy away from the pole, which they did very quickly, I caught a few carp on 8mm pellet, however they were small, with biggest only being about 3lb. The fish eventually backed off and knew I wasn’t going to do any good today as reports that both Trigger, Tom Thick and Andy Hembrow were catching, Also whilst Tom Mangnall & Joe McMahon opposite were catching some better fish than me, they were also struggling, but doing better than me.

 

With 90mins to go I decided to convert my 6m pellet line to meat, priming it whilst chasing carp with the shallow rig and down my margin. I was left wishing I had tried it earlier, because I started to catch again on 6mm meat, but instead of proper carp it was more F1s and a small carp.

 

I did have the highest silvers weight on the lake, but couldn’t get close to what was produced on Match Lake. Never mind, at the moment the carp on Johns, are well spread, with the bigger fish sitting around the middle areas of the lake.

 

1^st 167- 6 – Tony Rixon – p1

2^nd 134-14 – Craig Edmunds – p46

3^rd 128- 4 - Bob Gullick – p13

4^th 121- 3 – Andy Hembrow – p58

5^th 103-10 – Tom Thick – p62

6^th 92- 2 – Dave Sawyer – p7

 

Silvers

1^st 30- 0 – Rod Wootton – p24

2^nd 24-14 – Dave Sawyer – p7

3^rd 16-14 – Eddie Wynne – p19