03/07/11 - Lands End -Sydney's Lake

Weight – 31lb 0oz
Catch – 16 Carp, 15 Skimmers, 2 Rudd, 1 Roach
Weather – Hot, sunny, light breeze
Match – Avon Angling Open – 11th out of 21 (5th on lake)

Today’s match was split between Johns & Sydney’s (lakes 3 & 4) and I was disappointed to draw peg 78 on Sydney’s, half way down the lake with Johns lake behind. I’m still waiting to draw a flyer on this lake, so a difficult day was likely, particularly with the forecast hot & sunny weather.

Whilst Mike is away doing his trade shows, he needs to get Nick to do some work and tidy up both lakes, because the undergrowth is getting a bit unruly. I couldn’t see my margins properly, so had to so some gardening, but due to all the vegetation I couldn’t see anyone expect Dean on 72 and end peg 71 thanks to the curvature of the lake.

At the all in a large cup of Gimps Gold/3mm pellet went in at 6m and started firing 6mms towards the point of the island. There was a small bed of lilies 12m to my right and I went straight over with paste, with a few 6mms in a toss pot, without any additional feed. After an hour, I had 5 carp and doing ok from what I could see, although the end 71 was probably ahead.

I kept the pellet going in towards the point of the island and topped up my 6m line. Staying near the lily bed, I started getting silly bites and a small rudd confirmed silvers had moved into the swim. A switch to hard pellet produced a few skimmers and another carp, which prompted me to change back to the paste rig which provide me with 2 more carp, but that was it. The skimmers were causing problems, if they were a decent size it wouldn’t be a problem, but at 3-4oz they became nuisance.

A quick look at the point of the island didn’t produce, although there were carp moving around, so decided to keep the feed going in to give the fish more confidence and switched back to the 6m line, fishing 4mm soft pellet. However this line was very slow, in fact much slower than I thought it would be which was disappointing.

At the half way stage, I felt I was ahead of Dean and had caught up with the end peg, but I needed to keep the fish coming. I started feeding my margins for later, as well as setting up a new line 14.5m to my left towards the point of the other island. In the meantime I made a few adjustments to my shallow pellet rig. I would catch 1 or 2 fish, before they backed off. I really needed some ripple on the water, but it remained bright and flat.

Unfortunately my margin, 6m line and the new 14.5m failed to produce anything of consequence, which meant the last 2 hours was a struggle, catching only a few carp. The end peg had stopped catching, but Dean had a good last couple of hours, catching shallow next to a large bush. I knew I had beaten the anglers either side, but other that I didn’t know. Also I couldn’t see the anglers on the opposite bank due to the islands.

Dean won our lake with 46lb and the only other person to beat me on my bank was Ron Crandon on the other end peg with 39-8 for 2nd on the lake. He included 2 carp for about 11lb, which are big carp for this lake.

In hindsight, I misjudged how the lake was fishing and spent too long fishing the 6m line, expecting regular bites from skimmers & odd carp, when in reality I didn’t catch nearly quickly enough. The other issue was I concentrated on the end of the island to the left of a large tuft of grass, when I should have also tried to the right of the tuft in the shallow. I felt like a right muppet, but Tony confirmed that’s where he caught last time he fished the peg, although to be fair the weather condition didn’t help today.

1st 157- 2 Tony Rixon – peg 57 (shallow 8mm pellet)
2nd 62- 8 Steve Seagar – peg 65 (paste)
3rd 61-12 Craig Edmunds – peg 42
4th 47-12 Paul Elmes – peg 68
5th 46-4 Dean Malin – peg 72
6th 39-8 Ron Crandon – peg 83