26/05/24 - Rood Ashton

Weight - 72lb 3oz

Catch - 15 Carp, 2 Roach

Weather - Dry start, but thundery and very wet late on.

Match - Tackle Den (14 fished) - 1st overall

No fishing last weekend as I travelled up north to see the in-laws and the weather was lovely. Back to this weekend and the weather has turned cooler, with more rain forecast. When will it end?

For today’s match we only had 14 fishing, as a number of regulars were fishing a 3-day festival at Hillview. At least it meant the worst pegs could be left out, however the change in weather had impacted recent results with only 50 odd pound required to win a midweek match.

I found myself on p16 behind the island which is a reasonable area and made a change from drawing on the ‘lawns’ bank for the last 4 matches.

On the all-in I started on the method cast to the island, but after 30mins I hadn’t had a bite, although I could see fish moving around, which was a worry. An early look on meat at 11m to my left next to the overhanging branches only produced 1 roach.

In the meantime, I started pinging 6mm p-nut pellet and fished the straight lead with meat. I soon switched to an 8mm p-nut pellet as the roach were being a pain and I eventually caught my first carp after 90mins. Another 4 followed in the 3^rd hour and I hoped this would be a sign the fish had arrived, but the 4^th hour only produced 1 carp on the 11m line which I had converted to a paste line. The slowdown coincided with the wind picking up and the incessant rain.  I also lost 2 carp, a 6lber where the hook pulled at the net and another that found a snag by the island, losing my whole rig, which didn’t improve my mood.

The 5th hour produced another 2 carp on paste at 11m and the fish eventually turned up in the last hour down my right margin where I had been feeding meat covered in Uzit A-krill cloud, catching 5 carp and a further 2 on paste at 11m.

I was little surprised to have won and thankful for catching 3 carp in the last 10mins for 22lb which helped swing the result my way. No catch shot as it was still chucking down.

1.    72-  3 – Ken Rayner – p16

2.    67-  7 – Brian Duckett – p21

3.    63-  4 – Pete Philips – p3

4.    57-10 – Matt Greaves – p20

5.    47-10 – Cliff Dutton – p6