04/04/10 - Lands End - Speci Lake

Weight – 18lb 15oz
Catch – 40 Roach, 18 Perch, 8 Skimmers, 2 Rudd, 1 F1, 1 Chub, 1 Gudgeon
Weather – Sunny, but windy.
Match – Open - 21st overall, 6th in silvers.

With 31 booked in, Johns, Match and half of speci (25-32) were in the bag I was a little under whelmed to draw peg 26.

Carp or silvers? I decided silvers would be a better option, since there we so many better carp pegs, however carp rigs were set up in case a few did show, but you tend to find the cap sulk away to the other side of the lake when only 1 side in pegged.

A pinch of micros & caster went in at 11.5m, at 1 o'clock, whilst ½ a big pot went in 11o'clock, plus some caster on the island. The issue today would be the wind although I was a little bit sheltered, fishing 17m to the island meant keeping the rig steady would be the challenge.

I started on the island whilst letting the pellet swims settle and 1st drop in on double caster a 2lb F1 found its way into the net. 3rd put in another F1, which I lost when the hook pulled at the net. However 40mins, later I had only added some roach and decent perch, as well as bumping a couple of fish.

Because of the wind I couldn't catch quickly enough from the far side so time to look over my pellet line, but these only produced a couple of fish and none of the decent F1s that Pete Notton was catching on a very sheltered peg 25 or the big skimmers that Martin was catching on peg 28.

The 1o'clock swim started to produce regular bites by toss potting micro pellet and caster, with either caster or pellet on the hook, but most of the fish were roach.

Time for a change, I started firing 4mms towards the island as well as feeding caster at 5m. The 5m line began to produce roach, plus the odd bigger perch, but I lost a big fish (not a carp), which just upset the shoal and I had to change lines. Both the 11.5m swim where only producing odd fish, but it seemed every time I hooked a decent size fish the hook pulled, which Martin was finding very amusing, it will teach me for taking the piss when he pulled out of a skimmer.

Things weren't going well, I was getting plenty of roach, but very few decent fish. The 4mms kept going in towards the island in the hope the wind would drop long enough to be able to fish.

In the meantime I started to feed caster towards the pallet on peg 27. My 5m line came back to life and I picked up some more roach and perch either on double or single caster. The pallet swim produced a few more fish, mostly decent perch, plus a chub.

With an hour to go I tried the the far line again and caught a big skimmer on hard pellet on top of the shelf and a roach at the bottom of the shelf, so there wasn't many carp around then! Another try over the 11.5m and a new 13m 11 o'clock swim but again only small fish, so last 45mins concentrated on p27 pallet and 5m swim. I had trickled a few casters into the near brambles. First drop in resulted in a sail away bite, loads of elastic coming out and a broken hook length, as a chub successfully made its bid for freedom. Another lost fish this was getting really frustrating, which Martin found even more amusing.

I thought Pete had more than Martin, because he had been catching F1 until the last 2 hours, however Martin had managed to catch mostly skimmers for most of the match. I had hoped to sneak into 3rd for silvers, but there were a couple of lower 20s on Match. I reckon I probably lost 8-10lb of big silvers, so an expensive day and sums up the poor run I seem to be on, only picking up once from the last 6 matches, prior to that I had 10 from 11.

Today I couldn't get the number of quality fish and suspect with the water warming up and the fish becoming more active that micro pellet is losing its effectiveness and attracting too many small fish.

1st Nick Duckett 79- 2 - P19 (pellet)
2nd Mitch Artus 66- 6 – P21 (pellet)
3rd Chris Davis 65- 4 – P44
4th Brian Shanks 63-5 – P60
5th Shaun Townsend 60-5 – P18
6th Lee Trivitt 57-10 – P68

Silvers
1st Martin Pettifer 33-6 – P28 (pellet)
2nd Pete Notton 31-8 – P25 (pellet)
3rd Mike Duckett 24-14 – P3 (caster)