Weight –114lb 4oz
Catch – 48 Carp, 5 F1, 2 Bream, 1 Crucian, 1 Roach
Weather – Warm &sunny. Northerly breeze
Match – Match Fishing Scene website – 5th (out of 23). 2nd section
This match was scheduled to be solely a MFS match, however due to a shortage of numbers, Mark & I got a few “ringers” involved to bolster the numbers. So we had 24 booked in, but a no show meant 23 would be fishing. I don’t know why people think it’s acceptable to do this.
Mark didn’t know which peg to leave out, so in the end he let fate decide. The hot draws were 7 & 38. Fabio drew 38 for Mark and the peg left in the bag was 7 which was opposite! I found myself on peg 5, which I wasn’t too disappointed with and was definitely in the right area.
Talk leading up to the match was that meat was the bait, with some people feeding up to 10 tins! With up to nearly £2 per tin that’s an expensive day and neither Mark nor I felt it was necessary. Also I very rarely fish with meat, so decided to stick with paste and pellet, mixing 2kg of paste the night before.
Arriving at my peg there was already loads of fish slurping on the far bank, eating the spawn. Settled on 3 swims, the far side at 14.5m, 6m and down the RH margin. On the all in a handful of 4 & 6mm went down the margin and 6mm’s at 6m. Since there were fish in the far side, I went straight over with paste and the float had hardly settled before I was attached to a carp.
I started to feed 4mm with paste and started to get loads of liners and not able to properly hook a fish. And after 30mins I only had 2 fish in the net! Decided to cut out feeding the pellet and just use the paste, which helped, but fishing tighter to the far bank really made a difference and I started motoring for the next hour or so catching most put in, before the F1 started to put in a appearance. A switch to hair rigged 8mm pellet resulted in an F1, so switched back to paste.
After 3hrs I was up to 40 fish, however the 2nd half of the match proved to be really frustrating. From the beginning I had kept feeding the 6m line and the RH margin, hoping for the bigger carp. Unfortunately, I was getting loads of liners and the fish just weren’t getting their heads down. The next hour I only added 2 fish and I knew I was falling behind Mark opposite who was catching a load of fish down his margin. Also Ben to my left was catching, although looking down my section there didn’t seem to be anyone running away with it.
After that difficult hour I started catching again, but had to continually rotate my swims and I did manage a couple of better carp, but not enough.
On the all out I was left frustrated by the number liners. The lake hadn’t fished as well as previous weeks and the fish seemed to be more interested in spawning. In hindsight, was I right to stick with paste? Or should have targeted the F1? At the end of the day I was 37lb off 3rd, so I needed carp and I only needed 1 more carp to win the section. I think where I really missed out was that 1st 30mins when I should have fished tighter to the far bank sooner.
As for the problem with liners and the fish not getting their heads down. I felt I needed to feed a handful of pellet, just so that it reached the deck, because if I just trickled pellet in I doubt any of it would have reached the bottom.
Needless to say an enjoyable, if not frustrating day, with 102lb average per man.
1st 177- 7 Mark Poppleton - peg 38
2nd 164- 6 Tim Ford – peg 25
3rd 151-5 Tony Rixon – peg 29
4th 115-13 Ben Bench – peg 3
5th 114-4 Ken Rayner – peg 5
6th 112- 7 Mark Blake – peg 14
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