Thursday, 6 March 2025

02/03/25 - Harescombe - Match

Weight - 8lb 3oz
Catch - 11 Roach, 8 Skimmers, 2 F1s, 1 Carp
Weather - -4c overnight, bright and sunny
Match - Open (12 fished) - 9th overall

I haven’t fished the Match Lake for a while and was looking forward to it, and I was happy enough with p13.

I also knew the fishing was likely to be tough following overnight temperatutres of -4c and it was bright and sunny during the match. Lovely to fish it, but not necessarily good for the fishing.

I started off cautiously just feeding a tiny nugget of groundbait with micros to the left and right at the bottom of the far shelf, fishing a 4mm expander. I soon caught a skimmer and pulled out of another from the left hand swim. A quick try over the right-hand swim didn’t produce, so returned to the left hand swim. After a couple of quick bites I thought there might be a few silvers in the swim and soon switched to a maggot rig and lighter elastic.

I caught a couple more skimmers and then the swim just seemed to be full of blippy roach. When I caught an F1, I thought I would get a few more, but just caught more roach and going nowhere fast.

Back to the right-hand swim, I caught a small carp and another F1 on expander, but these were the only fish I caught here. To try and make something happen, I tried pinging 4mm pellet over the right-hand swim hoping to catch late on, however without success.

As the upper layers of water warmed up, I was convinced I would catch fishing tight across to the island in shallower water. Despite feeding different baits and groundbait to get a response, I only had a couple of liners and no bites.

Having left my original left-hand swim alone for 90mins I went back, but the swim was still full of roach.

I had also been feeding maggot short, hoping for a carp/F1 late on, but only had more roach or tiny skimmers. As a final throw of the dice, I had meat and micros down the margin, again hoping for some carp/F1s, but never had a bite.

A really frustrating day. The fact I had so many silvers in my peg just illustrated there weren’t many carp in the swim and for what ever reason they just didn’t want to feed.

1.    40-11 – Robin Shaw – p25
2.    24-  8 – Jerry Wiggett – p16
3.    18-  0 – Steve Partington – p21
4.    17-  9 – Tom Driver – p29

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