Weight – 75lb 13oz
Catch – 13 Carp, 36 Rudd, 4 Roach.
Weather – Cool start. Mostly sunny & breezy.
Water Temp– 15.0c > 15.5c
Match – Club Match – 3rd overall
17 turned up for the match, which is just about right, before you have to start jamming pegs in.
I was happy with peg 22. Jim was on peg 21, so I couldn’t fish to my left and decided to concentrate fishing to my right. 3 swims were set up. 13m feeding 6mm pellet and corn, 10m to my right at a 45 degree angle for my paste and finally a margin swim in front of the pallet on peg 23.
An hour into the match, I had 1 bite, but no fish, which appeared to be the story for most. In fact from what I saw only 3 carp had been caught, so a really slow start. I had a decision to make, stick trying for the carp, or target the rudd at 2m, which I knew I could catch quickly and try for the carp later.
I tried for the rudd. In ½ hour I had 40 fish, but they simply weren’t coming quickly enough. Normally I would expect to have caught 80-100 fish in this time, but there didn’t seem to be any volume of fish in front of me. In the meantime everyone started catching carp!
A switch back to my paste rig and I quickly landed 2 carp, but I was struggling on my 10m line and my 13m swim failed to produce anything. Time to try the margin. From the start I had been feeding pellet so hopefully there would a few round. I had set up 2 rigs for the margins, 1 pellet rig, which I thought would be the main catching rig and a paste rig in case I wasn’t hassled by the rudd.
Since there didn’t seem to be many rudd around, I decided to start on the paste. 1st put in I lost a carp when the hook pulled, but the 2nd put in I landed my biggest fish of the day at 10lb 7oz. This was about the half way point in the match and I felt was about 6th or 7th in the match.
I didn’t want to completely blunder the margin swim, so kept rotating between the margins and 10m swim, catching mostly margins. With an hour to go, I had a caught up most, expect Andy on peg 16. With the wind blowing into the corner, everytime I looked up he was playing a fish. Ian on peg 13 was also catching, so I needed a few more to finish strongly.
The margin swim was still the best area and with 10 minutes to go, I hooked my last carp, which I lost when the hook pulled. This was my 3rd carp to be lost in this manner and I suspect the fish were only lightly hooked, as I had landed a couple of fish that had been hooked around the mouth.
At the weigh in, I knew Andy had run away with it, which he duly did with 113lb, but it would be close between Ian and myself. Ian was 1st to weigh with 79lb 13oz, so I missed out by 4lb.
Overall I was pleased with 3rd. With the right angler on it, peg 16 was always going to be hard to beat and my slow start ultimately proved costly.
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