15/11/14 - Lands End - Match Lake

Weight - 94lb 4oz (15lb 3oz - silvers)
Catch - 17 Carp, 7 Skimmers, 5 Perch, 2 F1
Weather - Bright, mild & sunny day
Match - Open - 2nd out 10 (2nd - silvers)

After what has been a very tough 18 months at work, mainly as a result of various regulation changes, I decided it was time to look for another job and after 14 years I start a new role next month, which I’m really excited about.

I was a little later than I would normally like for the draw, so it was a bit of a rush to get my kit to my peg and ended up being ready 5mins after the start. I drew peg 13, which I wasn’t that keen on because it’s not my favourite peg, but it normally produces a few fish. For company I had Andy Hembrow opposite on p11 and Dave Wescott on p15.

Must admit my initial thoughts were to target the silvers, because the carp tend to be on the small side at this end of the lake, however you never know. Plumbing up and with the water levels still low, it was too shallow to target the left hand edge, although the shelf along the island at 16m was a little deeper, but didn’t expect any fish to show here till late.

With the colder weather all rigs where on .12 bottoms, expect for the margin rig under the p14 pallet which had a heavier .14 hooklength.

Having seen a carp move under the pallet, I started down there on corn after feeding 4s & micros at 5m, long towards the aerator and long in open water. Despite a few liners I had no bites, so started feeding caster and corn for later.

In the meantime Andy already landed 2 carp and was playing his 3^rd as I started on my long line, which produced 2 small skimmers on 4mm expander before catching my first carp. However I couldn’t catch as regularly as Andy, but at least I was catching, as were a few other further down the lake.

After 90mins I was struggling to catch and switched from toss potting bait to catapulting 4s, really to try and drew some fish to my side of the lake, away from Andy. A switch down the margin on double caster produced 4 decent perch, but no carp.

Back out on the long line I ended up switching between the open water, which I kept fed via a catapult and by the aerator feeding micros/4s via a toss pot. This worked quite well as I picked up carp and a couple F1s.

With 2hrs to go, Andy was still catching. In fact he fished the same swim for most of the match, so a nice easy match for Andy, whilst the rest of us were fishing for 2^nd place. From those I could see a few fish were being caught and wasn’t confident that I was in a framing position.

Back down under the pallet only produced 1 more perch. So far I had kept my 5m line topped up with pellet, which as yet hadn’t produced, but 3 skimmers in 15mins boosted my silvers net and going into the last hour I wasn’t sure whether to stick with silvers or carp. As it turned out carp turned up over the short pellet line, which sorted that problem out.

I had also started pinging pellet towards the island and the 5 carp caught on 6mm pellet proved decisive. My margin swim only 1 small carp, but Dave decided to take advantage of my well fed margin and nicked 2 decent carp from the other side of the pallet!

1^st 156- 8 – Andy Hembrow – p11
2^nd 94- 4 – Ken Rayner – p13
3^rd 83- 7 – Rod Wootton – p24
4^th 64- 5 – Mike Duckett – p22
5^th 59- 2 – Steve Seagar – p20
6^th 49-12 – Dave Wescott – p15

Silvers
1^st 19- 0 – Kev Molton – p7 (perch)
2^nd 15- 3 – Ken Rayner – p13
3^rd 10-15 – Rod Wootton – p24