Weight - 63lb 0oz
Catch - 15 Carp, 4 Roach, 2 Rudd, 1 Golden Tench, 1 Bream, 1 Perch
Weather - Warm & sunny
Match - Avon Angling Open - 9th out of 13
A really quiet week at work, meant I had time on my hands so booked myself in for todays match, although a meeting in Surrey yesterday meant I couldn't write about my day until now.
The addition of smaller carp into the match lake has certainly helped improve the weights, forcing the bigger fish to move around and compete more for food. Currently the most consistent pegs are around the gap, so I really shouldn't have been surprised when Tony, Tom and Fabio drew these pegs. Then there are those pegs you really want to avoid and p24 definitely falls into that category. I really wasn't happy, however on arrival the peg was covered in scum and there seemed to a few fish around, so my hopes were raised a little.
I had Mike "give 'em another pot" West on p22 and John Bradford opposite on peg 1, which meant the carp would feel safe and likely to back off to the other side the tree.
The 2pts of caster I asked Tony to bring along would have to stay in the bag today, deciding to attack the end bank with meat at 13m, pellet & paste at 13m in open water (hoping to pull the carp to my side of the lake and away from the snags by regular feeding of 6s) and meat at 5m.
I started down the edge towards the tree, toss potting meat, with an 8mm cube on the hook and started to catch almost immediately. I had to wait for bites, but at least I was catching, although I did lose a whole rig to the underwater snag.
I had periodically tried my paste line and the short line, with my paste line being most productive with couple of carp and a tench. After 4 hrs I was up to 12 carp (10 on meat/2 on paste) and according to the bankside gossip seemed to be doing OK, although Ziggy on p21 was flying. Well that was until his 14m butt section snapped.
So with 2hrs to go I put in a 2nd carp net, which was the kiss of death, because I didn't catch for another for a hour! The carp were now waving at me from the other side of the tree and they felt very comfortable there with John not fishing beyond 6m in his quest for silvers. I could no longer catch down the right hand edge. I tried switching to feeding pellet by catapult but that didn't really work, so the edge got a 1/2 pot of meat, which only produced 1 more fish.
The short meat line never got going, which was a real surprise, because I was hoping the big skimmers would move in with a few carp, but they never did. I even resorted to dumping a pint of caster down the left hand margin to no avail
Mike in the meantime started to catch over his paste and just pipped me by 1lb, but ultimately we were miles away from framing.
1st 146-15 - Phil Harding - p19
2nd 135-12 - Tony Rixon - p7
3rd 125-14 - Tom Mangnall - p18
4th 111-14 - Mark Poppleton - p13
5th 108- 2 - Ziggy - p21
6th 91- 3 - Rod Wootton - p11
Silvers
1st 18- 1 - Rod Wootton - p11
2nd 16-13 - Roger - p5
3rd 16-10 - John Bradford - p1
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