Weight - 44lb 12oz (3lb 15oz - silvers)
Catch - 7 Carp, 37 Roach, 3 Skimmers, 3 Rudd
Weather - Mostly overcast and showery
Match - Short Pole - rd 3 - 7th out of 28, 2nd in section
I'll be honest. I wasn't really looking forward to this match, mainly because I have struggled to come to terms with the venue, although to be fair I haven't had the best draws. So today was about just trying to have a days fishing, which meant my carryall was weighed down more than usually with various baits. The intention was if I couldn't catch carp, I would at least try for some silvers.
For the 3rd week on the bounce we have had nice weather during the week, but come Sunday it was back on with the Gore-Tex as it rained on and off for most of the day.
At the draw and peg 14 put me one peg away from the favoured corner of 15 where Martin Lenaghan sat. My section started with me going round the end bank to p22, which included Tony Rixon on p19 (with the big snag now removed) and Trigger on p22, which won the section in the last round.
When I sat down on the peg, I quite fancied the margins to produce as I had a little more space than some pegs. The right margin was about 2.5ft deep, so that would be fed with groundbait later in the match and the left margin was 4ft deep, which would be initially fed with caster, with the option to fed pellet later depending on how the match progressed.
At the start of the match I hedged my bets a little feeding 6s to my right and groundbait/caster to my left. Starting in the right hand swim with paste was a little slow, eventually hooking my first fish, a 3lb 'flying' bream after 15mins, which promptly threw the hook mid air - bugger.
Despite loads of fizzing I couldn't get another bite on paste, so switched to a 1g silvers rig and double dead reds on the hook. Netting a 3lb carp. The left hand swim failed to produce, so decided not to bother with it. Everyone else seemed to have caught a couple of early skimmers or carp, but after an hour everyone was now struggling.
A switch to the left hand margin fishing with one of Mike Nichols favourite float patterns, a 4x14 jolly I started catching some very small roach on caster, with the occasional bigger 2oz fish. At one point the swim went quiet and I thought perhaps a carp had moved so tried the paste rig without success. Switching back to the caster rig and the swim was now full of motherless minnows (no doubt attracted by the paste) and I couldn't get a proper bite.
The right hand depth swim was proving to be a nightmare. There was loads of fizzing, but simply couldn't get a bite. A number of people were experiencing the same issue and can only put it down to the fish feeding a couple of feet off bottom. In an attempt to force the fish down I feed a big pot pellet, fishing worm which produced 2 skimmers, but nothing else.
I had also started feeding 6s to my left in an attempt to catch shallow mostly at 2ft deep on 6mm banded pellet. This produced a few better roach, but pulled out of a couple, so switched to a light 6-10 hollow. Typically my next bite was a carp, which kited right snagged up on Dave Evans rig. Fortunately Dave was very good about it and I managed to unhook his rig, before landing my carp. A 2nd carp soon followed, but the ripple had now moved out in the middle of the lake, before going flat calm. I couldn't get another bite after that.
So with 2hrs to go I had 3 carp and my silvers. I knew I was behind Martin, Tony and Trigger, but from what I could see not much was being caught.
I had started feeding groundbait down my edge an hour previously, but so far couldn't get a bite using my favourite Carrat float. I tried bunches of maggot, worm, double corn and meat. Eventually I had a carp on double 8mm meat. I couldn't get a bite anywhere else so for the last 30mins stuck with the margin and caught 3 more carp all on meat. Needless to say the margin was solid by the all out, oh for an extra 30mins.
It looked like Trigger had at least won the section, but it would be close between Tony and myself. During the weigh in it became obvious the lake had fished harder than expected. By the time we got to Trigger I was leading the section, beating Tony by 3lb and needed Trigger to frame so I could pick up the section which he duly did.
1st 110- 2 - Mike Nichols - p31
2nd 59- 8 - Craig Edmunds - p22
3rd 52-15 - Glenn Bailey - p4
4th 52-12 - Paul Elmes - p3
5th 52- 4 - Gordon Cannings - p7
6th 46-10 - Rod Wootton - p2
Silvers
1st 23- 9 - Vic Bush - p30
2nd 9- 1 - Dave Evans - p13
2nd 9- 1 - Tom Mangnall - p25
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