14/04/22 - Durleigh

Weight - 6oz

Catch - 1 Skimmer, 1 Roach

Weather - Cloudy, hazy sunshine, light winds

Match - So Simple Open (18 fished) - 9th overall & 2nd in section

With 18 angler’s, todays match would serve as a useful practice for next weeks So Simple league as we would be using the same pegs.

At least it wasn’t as windy as last week, however reports suggested the fishing had been hard during the week due to the bright, flat conditions

The draw put me on peg 2, with Elliot on peg 1. We were effectively pleasure fishing as peg 3 was 50-60m away, however we were probably at the wrong end, with the majority of fish coming from the shallows, so a hard day was expected.

I started at 66m, fishing a method and a conventional feeder, but never had a bite and pushing further out was unsuccessful. In fact, Elliot was the only one in our section who had caught, catching small skimmers on a cage feeder and maggot at 40m.

Being quite deep close in, I regularly fed small balls of groundbait and dead maggot at 16m, fishing a cage feeder over the top, but surprisingly no bites. With 90mins remaining I eventually caught a roach at 40m on maggot and I’ve never been so happy to catch a roach. A small skimmer followed, and I at least avoided a blank.

Out of sheer boredom I also fed 2pts of 8mm pellet at 25m hoping for a rogue carp or big bream late on, but it never happened. Well done to Elliot for winning the section with 2lb 14oz and there was a total of 9 blanks. Hopefully it will fish better next week.

1.    49- 6 – John Brown – p17

2.    24-15 – Simon Poynter – p13

3.    17- 0 – Colin Butler – p18

4.    10- 9 – Nigel Franks – p9

5.      6- 1 – Gord Meers – p15