02/06/24 - Manor Farm - Windmill Lake

Weight - 46lb 13oz

Catch - 27 F1s, 1 Skimmer

Weather - Warm and sunny. Breezy at times.

Match - Tackle Den (22 fished) - 2nd in section, 4th overall

A new venue for me up near Evesham, where you can park behind every peg and the lakes were full of F1s and carp. Originally, we were booked on to Middle Lake, however due to numbers this was moved to Windmill Lake. As we had 22 anglers it still meant some tight pegging was likely.

I drew p9 and was really disappointed when I saw my peg as the reed bed was encroaching in front of the platform and was told ‘we don’t normally put that peg in’. Anyway, after some whinging, I was left with no choice but to strip off and get in pulling up as many of the reeds as I could and I was proud of my work, although I badly sliced my little finger on one of the reeds. Thanks to Pete Phillips next to me on p10 for providing the first aid and plaster.

My plan of attack was always going to be caster shallow. I also set up rigs to fish on the deck. There was no point plumbing further than 2+2 as it was already 5ft deep and only getting deeper. Due to the numbers on the lake, I wasn’t sure whether we would catch short, however I really didn’t expect us to catch long on the deck due to the depth of the lake so felt I had no choice but to set up rigs for the short lines.

Although Pete to my right was quite close, the reed bed to my left afforded me some space to the next angler. So, on the all-in I started at 2+2 to my left on pellet. This produced an F1 almost immediately and with no more bites after 10mins l switched to fishing paste (Uzit GLM & Betaine) next to the reeds, feeding a couple of 4mm p-nut pellet I caught a couple more F1s before hooking a carp which tore down the length of the reeds eventually snagging me and losing the whole rig.

By the end of the first hour I had 5 F1s on the paste, whilst Pete had started shallow and caught a couple of fish. I had decided to prime the shallow swim prior to fishing it and as my reed swim had died it was time to give it a go.

The next 90mins was tricky. The right to left breeze was making feeding caster difficult at 14m and the depth meant it was difficult to find the fish. I had a few on a jigga, before catching some bigger F1s at 18ins on an overshotted rig. However, the fish just disappeared on me. In the end I decided to stop feeding and retried an hour later feeding pellet, but never had a bite.

The rest of the match was mostly spent fishing by the reeds with paste. I had also set up a meat line, but never had a bite.

In the end a tricky day for most with Andy and Ali having good days catching either side of the first island including a number of carp up to nearly 20lb. Despite my moaning at the start, the reed bed proved to be my saviour as the fish wanted to be near some cover.

1.   127-  3 – Andrew Black – p6

2.    121-  8 – Alistair Tilney – p32

3.      51-  2 – Ian Barker – p21

4.      46-13 – Ken Rayner – p9

5.      38-  7 – Bobby Moore – p30