Weight - 46lb 12oz (15lb 2oz - silvers)
Catch - 8 Carp, 9 F1s, 9 Skimmers, 3 Roach, 1 Crucians
Weather - Mostly sunny with cloudy periods.
Match - Open - 19th out of 26, 5th silvers overall
With 26 fishing, it was 13 each on Match and Johns lake. There was also a club match on Speci, so the car park was certainly busy.
I found myself on p68, which has shown some recent form and it won yesterday's match with over 90lb - so no pressure then!
I had forgotten to bring any expanders, but wasn't overly concerned sticking with hard pellet and meat, since I didn't expect to be targeting silvers. With payouts per lake, it was going to be difficult to pick up, since our lake was like a baggers convention. Opposition was Paul Elmes (p41) and Tom Magnall (p42). To my left on p70 was Neil Mercer who was getting advice on how to target the silvers from Mike Duckett and to my right on p66 was Trigger.
Decided to target the island early, whilst letting the 5m line settle for as long as possible. Well it didn't go according to plan!
Toss potting 4s tight to the island (SM Pellet 0.2g > .12 > 18 B911) with 6mm banded pellet I started catching F1s and a couple of carp. There were a number of carp swimming around and tried slapping an 8mm pellet around, but they weren't interested.
After 2 hours, I began to struggle for bites and was wasting too much time chasing carp trying to entice a take shallow. At my end of the lake we were all struggling for bites, but the grapevine suggested Anton Page on p50 was already up to 100lb and I could see Adrian Clark on p45 catching well.
The middle part of the match proved to be a struggle and when Rod Wootten (p62) came down for a wander he said that Mike West (p61) had a few skimmers, but no one else had caught many silvers. I knew Neil had caught a few skimmers, although he said he hadn't caught any F1s, which meant the fish I had seen him land were small carp, which meant targeting the silvers was probably going to be my best chance of a pick, particularly since Trigger had started catching carp, as had Tom and Paul opposite.
Setting up a new swim in open water feeding mostly 4s to target some silvers, resulted in a few skimmers on 6mm pellet, but regretted not bring some expanders, because the skimmers were small and were pecking at the pellet, rather than taking it properly.
In the meantime I kept feeding 6s towards the island and meat at 5m. The first fish over the meat line was a F1, which was handy for the silvers, but suggested there wasn't many carp in the area. With no more fish, a switch back to the island resulted in a couple more F1s and carp.
A switch to my open water swim, resulted in a hooked carp, but lost the whole rig as the fish found an underwater snag by the island. With only 45mins left I decided against setting up a new rig, so concentrated on the island and 5m, but could only add another 2 carp.
Come the weigh in I was little surprised when Neil said he had about 15lb of silvers. Turns out some of those small carp, were in fact F1s! Fortunately I came 2nd in silvers on the lake for a pick up. I could have kept with the carp, but genuinely don't believe there were many carp in the area. Paul and Tom had 60lb & 70lb respectively. Trigger on p66 had 103lb for 3rd on the lake, catching most of his fish from the margins or the reedbed, with only a handful of carp at 5m.
1st 209- 0 - Tony Rixon - p3
2nd 171-12 - Sean Townsend - p18
3rd 160-14 - Anton Page - p50
4th 133- 3 - Allan Oram - p19
5th 121- 9 - Russ Peck - p16
6th 117- 5 - Adrian Clark - p45
Silvers
1st 30- 2 - Paul Faires - p24
2nd 26- 1 - Tim Ford - p11
3rd 19- 2 - Neil Mercer - p70
4th 17- 1 - Gordon Cannings - p5
5th 15- 2 - Ken Rayner - p68
6th 11- 0 - Mike West - p61
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