31/03/12 - Acorn - Paddock Lake

Weight – 48lb 11oz (18lb 11oz-silvers)
Catch – 32 Skimmers, 12 Carp, 3 Tench
Weather – Cool & cloudy. Cold northerly breeze.
Water Temp – 15.7c – 16.3c
Match – Open – 5th out of 23 overall

Back on with the fleece, following a week of warm weather today was a bit of a shock to the system, with a cold northerly blowing.

I found myself on p26, which normally is a poor draw, although Dave Wride managed 31lb of skimmers from the peg in Tuesdays open, but generally it isn’t great. To make matter worse the peg is at the end of the long straight, with the wind blowing straight down and I was bloody freezing.
Due to the “lack” of carp in the area, I decided to concentrate on catching silvers, which meant ignoring the shallow water by the island as well as the margin, thinking not too many carp would be happy sitting there with the cold wind.

I started at 10m at the bottom of the shelf with a 0.3g HB frostie, but after 15mins I was a setting a 0.4g SZ munkeez which sat better in the wind. After the 1^st hour I had 7 skimmers, but by the 2^nd I was up to 20, including a carp. Bait was 4mm expander, however I started to catch more on JPZs, probably because they were a bit denser than the expanders and sat better in the tow.

In the meantime I had been feeding at 11m to my left in open water with potted meat and pellet. First put in with meat produced a carp, I tried pellet but this didn’t produce, so decided to just feed 4mms by catapult, hoping to pull in a few more skimmers. I also started feeding meat by hand to my left at the bottom of the nearside shelf.

During the 3^rd & 4^th hours it was a case of rotating and picking up odd fish, including a decent tench. The skimmers seemed to have done a disappearing act, although I was finding more carp, which created a bit of conundrum. I really wanted to be catching silvers, because I didn’t think my peg was a framing peg, but they just didn’t seem to be any volume in front of me. I kept feeding pellet hoping the skimmers would return and tried down my left hand margin and picked up 4 carp and 2 very useful tench over the next hour.

Going into the last hour the skimmers had finally returned in the open water swim, including a proper bream, before I had a couple more carp.

During the weigh in pegs 17 & 18 weighed 27lb & 30lb of silvers, with 44lb winning from peg 1. My total weight was the best from peg 10 around to peg 34 when Rod weighed 51lb to finish 3^rd. There was a couple of low 50s with 61lb weighing (I was hoping the Acorn website would show the results, but it hasn’t been updated yet). So in conclusion I was very surprised to be so close to the overall frame and I should have spent more time trying to catch carp. Never mind.