02/08/25 - Harescombe - Match

Weight - 56lb 10oz

Catch - 23 F1, 11 Carp, 4 Roach, 1 Skimmer

Weather - Warm & sunny, breezy at times.

Match - Open (8 fished) - 5th overall

There were 10 booked in for today, however 2 didn’t turn up without offering a reason, which is annoying for everyone. So, we were down to 8, which at least meant plenty of space for everyone.

P24 for me, a peg I’ve never drawn before, and it can be boom or bust. When I arrived, I quite fancied it with the wind blowing in, although the only thing I wasn’t able to do was fish past p25 pallet against the end bank.

I started against the island fishing paste (fine attrax), feeding a few 4mm attrax pellet fully expecting to get off to a quick start. 15mins later I eventually caught my first carp, however the roach were a being a right pain. I tried a different spot to my left against the island for more nibblers. By the end of the first hour, I managed to add an F1 and it wasn’t looking good, as the swim just seemed to be full of roach. I should have brought a whip and some pinkie.

I had to set up a pellet rig just to try and get away from the roach. Fishing expander wasn’t the answer but a banded 4mm caught me another couple of F1s, although it was slow, pushing me up to 4 F1s and a carp after 2hrs.

My short line (5m) where I had fed 4s, produced a couple more F1s whilst the carp were proving elusive. I had also been feedings 4s by the p25 platform, but again more roach!

Eventually I had run of fish fishing towards the end bank, but not before losing 5 fish on the bounce. Speaking to others after the match, everyone seemed to have suffered a similar fate.

In the last 90mins a few better stamp carp started putting in an appearance, fishing a new swim set up towards the end bank, 3m to the left of the original swim on paste. I had also fed my left-hand shallow margin with micros and 4s, initially on meat but the roach couldn’t help themselves, so switched to corn which resulted in a couple more F1s, before catching a couple more on paste in the slightly deeper water.

I had hoped my short line would produce a late run but only caught small F1s.

In the last 90mins I put 30lb in the net and ended up feeding nearly 3pts of pellet during the match to try and feed off those roach and encourage the carp to feed.

A bit of a frustrating day, ending a run of 6 straight pickups at Harescombe.

1.    100- 1 – Chris Cameron – p10

2.      85-15 – Steve Partington – p16

3.      83-10 – Chris Gay – p5